Minute Clinic
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Minute Clinic either does not really care about your health, or it’s a scam. Take your pick.
I have had two experiences with the Minute Clinic, and to be fair they were both at the Oats/Northwest Highway location in Mesquite Texas, so I cannot say definitively that what we encountered was company policy, but it was pretty terrible none-the-less. The first experience was on a Friday several months ago. The left side of my face started swelling, not painfully, but the pressure started making things uncomfortable. My primary care doc closes at noon on Friday, and it was about 2pm when it became obvious that there was something really wrong. I made it to the clinic around 5pm after trying a few home remedies to see if I could get the swelling to go down. The nurse there took one look at me, and said she could not help, even before doing any sort of exam. I thought “well that diagnosis seems a little premature”, which must have come across my face, because she proceeded to look in my mouth and ears before telling me that she thought is was a tooth issue, and I’d have to go to an emergency care facility. She did not charge me. Which is good, because I would not have paid anyway. I went to the emergency care close by. The doctor there examined me, and within 45 seconds spotted a sore on the back of my gums, which he said must have become infected. The sore was not painful at all, and I did not even realize it was there, but he prescribed a off brand antibiotic, and the next day at the same time you would not have even known that I had a problem. I did not think much about this underwhelming experience, except that it was odd that the lady in line behind me at the minute clinic also showed up at the same emergency clinic 5 minutes after me.
Fast forward to very recent history, my wife went to the same Minute Clinic with what seemed like a cut and dry, yet very painful sinus infection. She showed up 15 minutes before closing, and the nurse seemed a little put out, but was willing to see her. After a quick exam (it is called ‘minute’ clinic after all) and a few questions, my wife was told that she had not been hurting for long enough, and so even though her ears and throat looked inflamed, she was charged $80 and told to buy some over the counter decongestants. The nurse did say that she would call my wife in 2 days and if the symptoms progressed she would call in a script. Over the next day and a half my wife got steadily worse, no matter what she did to relieve the sinus pressure, and we decided to be proactive and go back to the clinic and have the nurse make good on her offer to call in a prescription. The same nurse was not on duty, and my wife was told, that it would be another $80 to examine her, and that the former nurse had written down that the problem was a viral infection. (No blood or any other tests were performed; other then the cursory exam mind you). That went over really well with us as you can imagine, especially since she had neglected to inform the patient of her listed diagnosis. The nurse on duty gave us a number to call, which we immediately did, and were informed that they would indeed charge us another $80, to tell us if the problem had gotten worse and was bacterial in nature, but they were standing by their previous diagnosis because it was possible that the viral infection had turned bacterial in a day and a half. Basically, they wanted $80 more to do provide the medicine they refused to provide the first time around.
What a scam! I would recommend that based on what seems to be their corporate policy you avoid the Minute Clinic, if you need to go to a Minute Clinic because there is not other option avoid this one like the plague. It would seem that they are either trying to rack up as many visits as possible, or they really could care less about healing their patients.