Welcome back to Urgent Care Unscripted.
I'm Barbara Ronalter, the director of operations
and business development for AFC Urgent Care in West Haven.
And this is Mohamed Zaman.
I am the franchisee and owner of the AFC Urgent Care in this haven.
No.
Today, we are here to talk about
the most common questions that I hear from the patients at our clinic.
So I'll start with the first question.
Do I need an appointment or do you accept walk-ins.
So both are okay at our urgent care clinic?
Thankfully.
But, if you do, do make an appointment that just saves.
You know, sometimes
that's some time you can complete some of the paperwork online
and upload the documents, and your visit will be more efficient, a little faster.
Typically, we see more people doing it, making the appointment ahead of time.
But both.
Yeah, absolutely.
Next question we have is do you have onsite
laboratory services and what tests can you perform.
So this is, a broad question.
So, yes, we do have a few tests that we can perform on site.
Some of those tests include Covid, RSV, flu, strep.
Urine analysis is to check your urine.
We can do, glucose check.
And I feel like I'm missing one strep test as well.
And mono. Oh. Need to check your iron.
So those are a few of the tests that we can do within the clinic.
That means you're going to come in, you're going to get tested,
and we'll get you the results within 15 20 minutes.
Now, the other tests that we can do
is everything else that gets sent to the laboratory.
So within our clinic, we draw blood.
We can do, other like STD testing.
So vaginal swabs and urine tests, and we can send those to the lab for testing.
Those results typically take about 48 hours to come back.
Some tests can take a little bit longer.
Some tests are faster.
Definitely call us to find out the timeline.
We can definitely tell you that ahead of time if you have any questions.
But we can do all of those tests and we'll get the results as soon as possible.
Amazing.
So those are about the common questions about test.
We often also hear from the patients are you and what are your
operating hours and what are your hours for that weekend.
So guys we are open seven days a week and typically on weekdays we open 8 to 8.
Simple,
8 a.m.
to 8 p.m.
weekends we are open 8 a.m. to 6 p.m.
and even for major, most of the major holidays, we typically try to stay open.
There are just a handful of exceptions.
Other than that, we are open more or less the year round.
Yep. Absolutely.
And you can always call
and if you have any questions about that, you can call us to find out if are open.
You can check Google.
We update our hours on there religiously.
So if you are having a question about a holiday you can check there.
And you can also check our website for the hours.
Next question that we have is
what measures are in place to ensure patient privacy and confidentiality?
We talked a little bit about this in one of the previous episodes.
So one of the big things that we do is we try to do all of our check ins online.
So patients are able to do all of their paperwork
and information right on their phones.
That way there is no paper mix up.
There's no, you know, information that gets Miss Mis written.
I think a lot of times
when patients are writing on a piece of paper, it's really easy for our staff
to not be able to read the handwriting and put the wrong date of birth.
Then that can get mixed up with a different patient.
So we try to make sure that that's being done.
Online, all of our services online are secured and HIPAA compliant.
So we know that there's no information that's going to get mixed up
or, get, mixed with other patients.
Thank you. Bye, Brad.
And we often hear from patients what is the typical
wait time, for a patient.
So this is quite important for us.
I know for most of the patients, it's not all patients visiting urgent care.
In general, this is a very important and,
something that we prioritize to make sure that is as low as possible.
But typically, patients are coming in and going out between 50
to 45 minutes, depending upon what kind of service.
And so you get the service you need,
but it varies between 50 to 45.
Yeah, absolutely. That's door to door.
That means you come in and you get out within 45 minutes typically.
And I think we mentioned this in a previous episode as well.
So if you schedule online, that tends
to keep your wait time in the waiting room, faster.
So you don't have to wait as long.
Next question we have is do we offer extra services
and who interprets the results?
That's a really good question.
So yes, we do have extra on site.
We have extra at least five days
a week and most Saturdays as well.
We have, great X-ray tags.
They are amazing.
You'll get to meet them right when you come into the clinic.
They're usually at the front desk and the results get, preliminary.
Preliminary read by our providers that are on site,
and we get a final confirmation read from a radiologist
that is working remotely that really comes back,
that comes back pretty fast within 30 minutes or so.
And you have the option to either way at the clinic for those results to come back.
Or you can go home and we'll call you with the results.
And then oftentimes we also hear from patients,
who am I gonna be seen by all who is treating me?
So the answer to the question is quite simple.
We have a physician who also happens to be in the ICU,
and you could be seen by the physician themselves,
or you could be seen by our physician assistant,
or you could be seen by a nurse practitioner in any of those situations,
we ensure that the provider that's treating you
has significant and urgent care related experience.
That's a promise from us.
And, let's take that urgent care to, all of our patients. Yep.
Can we manage chronic conditions or refill medications in our office?
The answer is yes.
We typically, like we mentioned in another episode, we can do preventative
care at the urgent care, we are able to do refills on medications.
We do recommend that you seek a primary care physician,
just to continue that, care and continue that, medication.
But we can do refills and we can, manage a short term
for chronic medicate, chronic conditions, short term.
And,
oftentimes, there are a lot of families around, West Haven.
It's a beautiful community.
And the parents would like to know that we can treat the kids, babies and infants.
Do we have pediatricians on site?
So yes, we we are trained, the providers are trained to see patients.
Six months at, all the way.
But yes, we do not have a pediatrician.
Our providers are deeply trained to take care of anyone.
Six months.
Yep. Absolutely.
And, the next question that we have is, do you provide
vaccinations and immunizations?
So the answer is yes and no.
Unfortunately, most insurance companies,
do not cover vaccines in an urgent care.
They do like to go to your primary care doctor or pharmacy to get that done.
But on the other side, we we do have those vaccines within our office.
we can definitely provide that to you
at a self-pay rate, which is we usually have our pricing.
It's really competitive and really good if you are, if you need to go that route.
We also offer them for our immigration patients.
So if you're coming in for an immigration physical and need a vaccine,
we can definitely get that for you again at a discounted rate
So the next question is do you provide follow up
care or referrals to the specialist if needed?
Yes, we do.
So if you're seen by and or by us and you need a specialist, we do give you
we will give you a referral for a specialist to be seen.
That referral could be on paper,
but we also fax that over to the specialist
so they can call you and schedule that appointment.
And one
question is like, patients want to provide feedback.
Patients actually want us to, improve.
How do we how do you provide how can I provide feedback to the clinic?
And what happens once they have provided feedback.
So the best way to provide feedback nowadays is through Google reviews.
Obviously you can call and tell us about your experience.
You can give us advice, suggestions.
That's always welcome.
But overwhelming number of feedback.
So, you know, we take every interview very seriously.
And as you will, notice on our review or any urgent care review,
there is a common thread there in terms of patient's expectations,
which we then take seriously and try to implement.
Cleanliness is a big expectation.
Time to, how long is it taken for?
Your visit is a big expectation.
How am I being treated or addressed at the clinic?
Come friendly are are the staff and, team members is also being expectation.
All of those.
We are very strict and try to continuously improve.
On the other hand,
billing concerns and questions about cost is also a concern for patients.
We take that also.
And I think I believe personally that communication
is the key when this kind of cancer that does not arise every day,
we have seen so far in just about one year, 10,000 plus patient visits,
and there are a handful of situations where we have seen this happen.
Communication was the key to solving those issues and addressing the patients
so that those patients continue to come to us and they treat it.
So so that's how we, typically address that feedback, some,
questions.
Yeah, absolutely. And it makes us better.
That's we want to improve. Right.
Nobody's perfect.
And feedback just helps us further next patient.
And we appreciate that. We appreciate it very much.
Thank you so much for joining us today.
That was it for our questions.
If you do have more questions that you want us to answer later on,
maybe next season, you can email us at, if, sorry.
West Haven teams at AFC Urgent care.com.
We'll put it in.
We'll put the email for you in the video so you can email us
a thank you from, Mohamed and Barbara for watching results.
And we welcome you to, watch our service again in future.
This is as you know, it's interesting when I run out or thank you so much
for joining us this season, and we look forward to coming back.
Thank you, thank you.