My mother and I experienced some of the worst healthcare service we have ever received.
Our experience was was subpar for a number of reasons but was made unacceptable because of the lab technician, Camden. Camden was extremely unpleasant to say the least.
My mother is above the age of 60 and although she is mobile, she needs help getting around and sometimes needs help remembering things. Because of this, I took time off work to take her to this appointment.
We made an appointment for 2:15pm but arrived at 1:30pm and checked in.
Despite this, we never saw or interacted with our technician, Camden, until 2:30pm. We only achieved this interaction because, more than 10 minutes past our appointment time, I had to physically seek her out. It took ringing LabCorp's designated "assistance" bell and asking St. Vincent staff to find her only to wait for an additional 10+ minutes for her to even emerge.
When Camden finally appeared from the back, she approached us frowning and with both hands in her pockets. Even after beginning our conversation, her body language did not change. Her hands remained in her pockets, a look of vexation remained on her face, her neck was even protruding as if to say she wanted our brief conversation to make a point so she could leave. Her body language clearly communicated that our presence was a bother and that she had much better things to do.
After explaining that we were there for blood work. She left and disappeared for another 10+ minutes. Camden explained LabCorp had technical difficulties which made them unable to process the lab order from mobile devices. To process the order, Camden said LabCorp needed a physical copy. It took calling my mom's physician's office and having them fax over the physical copy. Although it took two attempts for the fax to come through, the entire process took about 1 hour. All this was exacerbated by the non-existence support from LabCorp. While waiting for the fax to come through, LabCorp staff (Camden) was entirely inaccessible. Whenever we needed to check on the status of the fax, it routinely took 15 minutes to make any form of contact with her.
However, the worst issue happened while waiting for the lab order fax to come through. Because my mother was also scheduled for a urine collection, she drunk plenty of water before leaving home and in the car on the way to the office; because our appointment was experiencing incredible delays, she need to use the restroom before the scheduled collection. Nevertheless, with multiple confirmations from her physician's office that the lab order fax had been sent, my mom decided to ask if she could provide LabCorp with the collection although our appointment was not officially being serviced. However, Camden did inform us that if the order could not be received via fax, she wouldn't be able to process the collection. That made sense. What didn't make sense was why the LabCorp technician did not retrieve the sample afterwards.
To be clear, my mother sat in a public lobby, with a jar of her own urine for about 40 minutes. That was humiliating.
Despite everything that happened, my biggest concern is how much worse LabCorp would have treated my mom if I was not with her. Is this how older citizens are treated daily? How much worse are individuals treated if they do not have the physical ability or energy to continually play hide-and-go-seek with an increasingly inaccessible employee, who could not care less about the circumstance of patients in need?
Camden is an awful technician. The words that concisely capture Camden and LabCorp's service are apathy and indifference. Based on our experience, this does not seem to be a customer-service issue. This seems to be a person-problem. A problem rooted in people (technicians and leadership) who don't care to show individuals in need the minimum of attentive decency and could not be bothered to take any account for the dignity of people in their "care".
Please know that Camden and this LabCorp location mistreats human beings who need help taking care of themselves. read more
