This review is for their lab on the 2nd floor. Usually they do a fine job of drawing my blood, but I did have a problem when a lab student attempted it. She could not get the blood to flow well, and kept digging around with an 18 gauge needle, trying to get the vein. It was extremely painful, and I wanted her to just try again in a different spot rather than keep stabbing around. At which point, the licensed lab tech supervising her barked at me "We will assess that and decide if it needs to be repositioned." Excuse me, it is my arm, I'm not blind, I can see the blood isn't flowing and aside from that I am an RN who draws blood / starts IVs and there's no excuse for continuing to dig around when the patient asks you to stop. The trainee did finally get some blood into the tube, but it went very slow and then it came back with my first ever abnormal CBC. When you have this much difficulty getting a lab, often times it won't run properly. So I have to return, get my labs drawn again, and this time - surprise surprise - my CBC is just fine. I suspected the abnormal result from the first draw was due to being hemolyzed, the lab tech said CBCs don't show a bad result from being hemolyzed - which is completely false.
So I call back 3 times, get the run around talking to different supervisors, and finally get one who says she will have to run this by a hematologist. Honestly. She does, and calls me back a week later to say that they didn't do anything wrong, but the MD said it's possible that the blood filling the tube too slowly gave a slightly altered result. AND that they would not bill me for the bad draw.
I didn't get her name. Huge mistake on my part, to trust that they would take care of it. You guessed it, they billed me for both draws. I called to remind them that the supervisor had checked with their hematologist and that this first draw would not be billed. "Oh, who was that? Did you get her name?" I didn't, but I told them it was a supervisor who had an Eastern European accent. Apparently no one had any idea who that could be. She said she would look into it, and then call me back. No one did.
They did wait 3 months, and then billed it again. I guess they thought I would forget if they let the bill cool down a while.
The lab tech who was condescending is usually very pleasant, and does a great job of drawing blood. But look out if you get a trainee, or if there are any issues - I've wasted a lot of time & grief on their mistake - and they won't take it off your bill even when the mistake is theirs. read more