Not all urgent care places are equal
And personally, I am not happy with Mercy Go Health
First some background. There are 3 urgent care places near where we live. In the order of opening:
St. Luke’s urgent care (next to a CVS).
Total Access Urgent Care (TAUC): an independent chain that has no affiliation with a hospital; they have X-ray and can run common tests/labs. I’ve been to a location where they have the CT Scan machine. I talked about them quite extensively here.
Mercy Go Health: they opened it almost across the street from the St. Luke’s urgent care.
Scenario: in Labor Day weekend our younger daughter S6 got sick. Tried to take her to TAUC, the appointment time is about 5 or 6 pm when we looked for appointment. In other words, it’s about 6 or 7 hours away. So, I took her to the St Luke’s, our 2nd choice. The estimate wait time was one hour or more. At that time, I decided to try out Mercy Go Health.
Two things I was not happy about:
They didn’t diagnose my kid’s pneumonia. The doctor did listen to her lungs, but I am not sure if the doctor made a mistake or at that time her breathing is still normal etc. They don’t have X-ray, or they didn’t do X-ray on that day.
The bills. I don’t know if their billing department has buggy software or something, I paid the bill on myuhc.com (yes, it’s the United Healthcare in the news lately) but later I received a paper bill with same amount. At this time, I am just too tired to call them - I just paid online. But I may call them later: maybe I would get a refund. I am not saying myuhc.com works 100% of the time. But it seems to me there is some issues or explanation between the provider and UHC.
Lesson for me: next time I will probably go to Total Access Urgent Care. For kids also, I think I would consider going to pediatrician 1st. They may have longer wait time, but I don’t want to waste my time at Mercy Go Health.
Earlier, I talked about this a bit here too.