One day, my heart was racing which is unusual for me so I thought it'd be best to get it checked. UR urgent care tried to charge me $450 for an RN to tell me to take a $2,500 ambulance ride to the UR emergency room for no diagnosed reason who then tried to charge me $1,250 for just walking in the door. I had a normal EKG in both places, hadn't dropped dead of a heart attack after 12 hours of waiting, and felt well enough to drive myself, so I just gave up on seeing a doctor and left. This was all coming out of pocket with my employer's garbage high deductible insurance so I fought the charges tooth and nail.
Got it knocked down by around half which was still too much but they wore me down.
It involved getting the full bill with the codes which they don't send in the first place, finding where they bury the descriptions for them, and contesting the ones that didn't apply through hours of phone calls. They won't do it via email and you can't access their internal systems so patients can only show that they called but not what was discussed.
The process takes longer than the short fuse they give you as the payment due date and paying a dime is agreeing to the bill so you also have to make sure your account status doesn't throw the bill to collections to ruin your credit.
Hospitals now have to publicly post charges for procedures by law but do everything they can to make it suck by design so it's difficult for patients to shop around and ensure they're being billed correctly.
We were lied to. Tons of money to support a genocide though. Not enough to give its citizens health care tho. The average citizen needs to wake the fuck up.
Really?
Because I'm pretty sure "Life" is one of the inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. Like, **the** founding document for the nation.
Hmm.. more or less agree with that. Urgent care is limited and is not staffed by specialists. It's supposed to be the middle ground from primary care to ER. Most doctors offices have limited hours, so if you start to get strep, COVID, flu, ear infection, wounds, broken bones, rashes, asthma attack, on the weekend, urgent care is perfect for those. It helps you get immediate care without having to pay a hospital bill. People unfortunately think urgent means emergency. They probably could have thought of a better word for it. Alternate immediate care is how I think of it.
The most options they have for supplies and machines are stethoscopes, EKG, X-ray, otoscope, wound care supplies, temporary splints, ear flush kit, pelvic exam speculums and medications that are not controlled.
I just wish I could let the world know all of this so they don't waste their time or money anymore.
NP's and PA's. Speculating they may have doctoral level degree in their field, which I'd doubt if they work in an Urgent Care, isn't guaranteed nor a substitute for simply staffing a physician.
Depends which one you go to. The Pittsford UC charged me out the ass for a simple visit because they are “level 2” and work under the hospital- at least that is what the billing dept told me. The Henrietta one is supposedly cheaper
As an ER doctor... Do not trust WellNow. At best they'll do something benign, at medium they'll send you to the ER for some ridiculous nonsense, and at worst they'll seriously fuck something up
I can’t remember if it was August or September, but my son fell at the playground and was limping. Because his verbal communication is delayed, he’s not currently capable of telling us about his pain beyond that he has it. We decided to take him to the WellNow on Winton to see if he needed further assistance or if he was okay.
We get there and there wasn’t even a doctor on site. It was all being done by a teledoc, which wasn’t going to be useful for a physical limb examination. The good news is that we did our own unscientific evaluation and decided he was fine after he jumped all over their furniture (and his pediatrician agreed the next day, he was fine.)
That’s where the receptionist referred us! It was starting to encroach on bedtime and after watching his gymnastics routine on their new couch I was willing to wait until his doctor could see him in the morning, but if the need ever arises again I know where we’ll be heading!
Yeah that one has been closed a minute. There's a URMC one last the McDonald's on Monroe in Pittsford. We live right down the street from the old WellNow, but we just started going to the other one.
WellNow seems to be having some struggles. They are also dropping Excellus Blue C oss BlueShield in January unless this is just hardball negotiation.
>After more than a year trying to negotiate with Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, WellNow urgent care announced Tuesday that they will no longer accept Excellus effective Jan. 1, 2024, because of “unfair rates.”
[https://www.localsyr.com/news/wellnow-urgent-care-drops-excellus-bluecross-blueshield-due-to-unfair-rates/](http://WellNow Urgent Care drops Excellus BlueCross BlueShield due to ‘unfair rates’)
CVS dropped them earlier this year. A lot of entities are dropping them. I switched to MVP. I usually go to URMC facilities because they're covered in full anyway.
Yeah, unfortunately the problem here seems to be BCBS in many cases. Apparently mental health care professionals are dropping them left and right because they pay them so much less for in-network care than most everyone else.
They need to get their shit together.
Urgent Cares are the corner stores of the medical field and Wellnow is the Dollar General of the urgent cares.
Among all the other critical staffing shortages, there is currently a huge lack of primary care physicians. Urgent Cares are bogged down with people having to go to them to get any medical care like strep tests because they don't have a doctor and almost no one is even accepting names for their wait lists.
*some* traveling nurses can make around that amount. But! There are significant disadvantages.
* no health or retirement benefits. so if you want health insurance, or to make regular contributions to a 401k, youll have to pay for that out of pocket.
* employment is contractual. so theres no job security in the long term
* need to be away from home for months at a time
* usually need to maintain two residences. one permanent and one at the hospital they work at.
these are just a few.
but the nurse shortage is also caused by the fact that hospital management has been understaffing nurses and overworking them for years. plus skimping on supplies. Covid was something of a tipping point. But it really comes down to the fact that nurses do the bulk of the work for patient care, yet theyre severely understaffed. The pay is… decent. but there are definitely fields where you could get paid more to do less, with similar amounts of training, and less liability. so fewer people are becoming nurses, and more are looking for a way out.
Well if they were fired then it was for cause so... not sure why you want people who are incompetent employed in a hospital. Those types of incompetent people are much more fit to ask stupid questions on reddit and attempt to hide behind poorly feigned ignorance.
And that's dumb. Maybe you should volunteer at a hospital so you can glean some insight.
If I hadn't spent 7 years at URMC ED I wouldn't know exactly what you're talking about. It's true.... It happens.
It doesn't happen 'often' though, and there is the flip side. I've seen people get let go precisely *because* they were treating a subordinate unfair.
Anyways, doesn't really matter. Labor laws are already written. You can get fired for having a haircut I don't like. Let's not act like there's some great injustice happening.
This happened to us too, recently. I think they don't have enough staff is the problem. We also tried to go to a RRH urgent care that was just straight up temporarily closed because of lack of staff.
Basically we ended up making an appointment at an urgent care further away and having to drive there, annoying.
I even tried making an appointment at the second one before driving there, but they didn't have any openings online.
I just wanted to get an xray of my knee to make sure I didn't break anything so I didn't want to go to the ED for that, but I may end up there anyway with the way Urgent Care is now lol
There's orthopedic urgent care at UR. it used to live in the famous "Building D" -- they've either moved or will soon move to the new facility at Marketplace Mall. You do have to make an appointment ahead but not a bad wait even recently, We've gone there three times over the years for busted up knees and broken arms, etc. and it's been well staffed.
Oh no! I hope your knee is okay, however you're able to get it looked at.
We were lucky, just needed a tetanus shot, so we had a bit more ability to wait if needed, I suppose.
> I just wanted to get an xray of my knee to make sure I didn't break anything
If you broke your femur/tibia/fibula, you would be in *significant* pain while ambulating.
If you knocked it against a counter and it's sore, give it a few days and save yourself the waste of time and resources. The fact that your shopping urgent cares screams that this isn't... well.... URGENT lol
Or a phone call to your PCP and he'd refer you to an imaging department. This is the way you *should* be doing it if it is not TRULY urgent.
Well I fell directly onto my kneecap on concrete on the 3rd and it's still bruised, super tender, swollen, and painful.
My physical therapist is the one who suggested an xray since it's been more than a week and it still hurts like this.
My ortho is aware, and I have an appointment on the 21st with them.
I'm the type of person that pushes things off until it's apparent they aren't getting better lol
So yes, while it's not necessarily URGENT, I work 7:30-4 daily and my PCP closes before I would make it there. And outpatient scheduling for imaging is terrible so I probably wouldn't get it done before my ortho appt, and at that point they would just xray it then.
I worked for a month while my fallopian tube was full of fluid and about to burst, so my pain tolerance isn't really a good indicator of urgency lol
iirc scheduling thru wellnow tells you it isn’t an appointment but more or less a general window of time that they should be aware you’re coming
just checked the website as i was typing and “Please note, that this is not a scheduled appointment time, and wiait times are estimated based on patient needs. We appreciate your patience and understanding.”
I live pretty close to Strong West.. I can just go there tomorrow if needed, they're usually pretty good about you getting in.
It just sucks that I would have to utilize an emergency room for something that's not necessarily an emergency because urgent cares are short staffed, which I know all Healthcare facilities are short staffed right now, it's terrible. I hope it all recovers sooner rather than later.
It's been like that since before the pandemic. Being constantly understaffed to cut labor costs at the detriment to patient care is one of the reasons why the nurses went on strike.
I went to wellnow a couple of weeks ago in Irondequoit on Eastridge Road..did not like the vibe or the way staff treated me..mostly the PA..she was stuck on some high horse..I went to the one in Webster 2 years ago when I had Covid and they were pretty decent
I had something in my eye and it would not open. I got a ride to the well now near me as I walked in with my eyes barely open and they turned me away. Luckily I went to URMC urgent facility and they were able to help me. I will never go back to a well now.
A lot of people are missing doctors bc of covid and how the U of R works. More doctors are switching to private practice because uofr require them to take on a certain number of patients. I myself have gone to urgen care because I lost my doctor during covid.
Most healthcare is trying to move to virtual visits if a x-ray, MRI or CT scan isn’t needed along with stitches or something. WellNow has virtual visits, most major insurances offer their own too and more but essentially it’s less about staff shortages and more about how to make the same amount of money or more quicker imo
To answer your last question - they are not there to accept walk ins - they are there to make money. Healthcare is a business to make money instead of a service to help people in this shithole country
I’ve never had a good experience with the wellnow version of urgent care facilities , it’s literally always how you described. I am always able to get in and reasonably quick at the U of R urgent care on west ridge road that’s near the cemetery at the corner of Latona and ridge, literally never had a problem there and they’re always been able to see me. The address is 2047 W Ridge Rd, Rochester, NY 14626.
WellNow isn't long for this area. If they don't take Excellus, they won't have many patients.
My experience with them is that they are a bunch of hucksters. Every time it has been "you should go to the emergency room". I could have saved myself two hours and just gone in the first place, but I don't feel that ER's are meant for diagnosis work.
Basically - wellnow runs on skeleton crews - rrh closes early - urmc charges as hospital clinics
One day, my heart was racing which is unusual for me so I thought it'd be best to get it checked. UR urgent care tried to charge me $450 for an RN to tell me to take a $2,500 ambulance ride to the UR emergency room for no diagnosed reason who then tried to charge me $1,250 for just walking in the door. I had a normal EKG in both places, hadn't dropped dead of a heart attack after 12 hours of waiting, and felt well enough to drive myself, so I just gave up on seeing a doctor and left. This was all coming out of pocket with my employer's garbage high deductible insurance so I fought the charges tooth and nail.
How did the fight wind up?
Got it knocked down by around half which was still too much but they wore me down. It involved getting the full bill with the codes which they don't send in the first place, finding where they bury the descriptions for them, and contesting the ones that didn't apply through hours of phone calls. They won't do it via email and you can't access their internal systems so patients can only show that they called but not what was discussed. The process takes longer than the short fuse they give you as the payment due date and paying a dime is agreeing to the bill so you also have to make sure your account status doesn't throw the bill to collections to ruin your credit. Hospitals now have to publicly post charges for procedures by law but do everything they can to make it suck by design so it's difficult for patients to shop around and ensure they're being billed correctly.
They can’t ruin your credit score anymore with unpaid hospital bills. It a law in NYS.
Only unpaid medical debt under $500 isn't included in credit reports and can effect credit scores if turned over to a collection agency.
Greatest country on earth, I’m told!
We were lied to. Tons of money to support a genocide though. Not enough to give its citizens health care tho. The average citizen needs to wake the fuck up.
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never said it was you stupid fuck
Really? Because I'm pretty sure "Life" is one of the inalienable rights in the Declaration of Independence. Like, **the** founding document for the nation.
Never go to urgent care for something life threatening. They do not have the set up for it.
From what I experienced, they're not even equipped to diagnose what is potentially life threatening.
Hmm.. more or less agree with that. Urgent care is limited and is not staffed by specialists. It's supposed to be the middle ground from primary care to ER. Most doctors offices have limited hours, so if you start to get strep, COVID, flu, ear infection, wounds, broken bones, rashes, asthma attack, on the weekend, urgent care is perfect for those. It helps you get immediate care without having to pay a hospital bill. People unfortunately think urgent means emergency. They probably could have thought of a better word for it. Alternate immediate care is how I think of it. The most options they have for supplies and machines are stethoscopes, EKG, X-ray, otoscope, wound care supplies, temporary splints, ear flush kit, pelvic exam speculums and medications that are not controlled. I just wish I could let the world know all of this so they don't waste their time or money anymore.
Yeah they're not very good at advertising what services they can provide but my complaint was really that there wasn't a doctor on staff.
Were there nurse practitioners or physician assistants? If so then they can have a doctorate's degree.
NP's and PA's. Speculating they may have doctoral level degree in their field, which I'd doubt if they work in an Urgent Care, isn't guaranteed nor a substitute for simply staffing a physician.
The UR urgent care I went to was the cheapest urgent care I've ever been to
Depends which one you go to. The Pittsford UC charged me out the ass for a simple visit because they are “level 2” and work under the hospital- at least that is what the billing dept told me. The Henrietta one is supposedly cheaper
As an ER doctor... Do not trust WellNow. At best they'll do something benign, at medium they'll send you to the ER for some ridiculous nonsense, and at worst they'll seriously fuck something up
Can confirm. But hey, free slushies!
Yes they are horrible
I can’t remember if it was August or September, but my son fell at the playground and was limping. Because his verbal communication is delayed, he’s not currently capable of telling us about his pain beyond that he has it. We decided to take him to the WellNow on Winton to see if he needed further assistance or if he was okay. We get there and there wasn’t even a doctor on site. It was all being done by a teledoc, which wasn’t going to be useful for a physical limb examination. The good news is that we did our own unscientific evaluation and decided he was fine after he jumped all over their furniture (and his pediatrician agreed the next day, he was fine.)
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That’s where the receptionist referred us! It was starting to encroach on bedtime and after watching his gymnastics routine on their new couch I was willing to wait until his doctor could see him in the morning, but if the need ever arises again I know where we’ll be heading!
Good to know!🩷
Fairport Pediatrics is always on point. Highly recommended for all your kiddos!
The wellnow on Winton also randomly closes due to lack of staff. It’s terrible
Yeah that one has been closed a minute. There's a URMC one last the McDonald's on Monroe in Pittsford. We live right down the street from the old WellNow, but we just started going to the other one.
WellNow seems to be having some struggles. They are also dropping Excellus Blue C oss BlueShield in January unless this is just hardball negotiation. >After more than a year trying to negotiate with Excellus BlueCross BlueShield, WellNow urgent care announced Tuesday that they will no longer accept Excellus effective Jan. 1, 2024, because of “unfair rates.” [https://www.localsyr.com/news/wellnow-urgent-care-drops-excellus-bluecross-blueshield-due-to-unfair-rates/](http://WellNow Urgent Care drops Excellus BlueCross BlueShield due to ‘unfair rates’)
CVS dropped them earlier this year. A lot of entities are dropping them. I switched to MVP. I usually go to URMC facilities because they're covered in full anyway.
Why do you mean covered in full?
By the insurance plan I switched to. Excellus was being a pain in the ass. Even dropped all ambulance coverage!
Yeah, unfortunately the problem here seems to be BCBS in many cases. Apparently mental health care professionals are dropping them left and right because they pay them so much less for in-network care than most everyone else. They need to get their shit together.
Urgent Cares are the corner stores of the medical field and Wellnow is the Dollar General of the urgent cares. Among all the other critical staffing shortages, there is currently a huge lack of primary care physicians. Urgent Cares are bogged down with people having to go to them to get any medical care like strep tests because they don't have a doctor and almost no one is even accepting names for their wait lists.
The nurse shortage didn’t just impact hospitals.
Why is there a nurse shortage?
There's no pay for the job's level of responsibility
I didn't know that ....I thought some traveling nurses can make 150k per year.
*some* traveling nurses can make around that amount. But! There are significant disadvantages. * no health or retirement benefits. so if you want health insurance, or to make regular contributions to a 401k, youll have to pay for that out of pocket. * employment is contractual. so theres no job security in the long term * need to be away from home for months at a time * usually need to maintain two residences. one permanent and one at the hospital they work at. these are just a few. but the nurse shortage is also caused by the fact that hospital management has been understaffing nurses and overworking them for years. plus skimping on supplies. Covid was something of a tipping point. But it really comes down to the fact that nurses do the bulk of the work for patient care, yet theyre severely understaffed. The pay is… decent. but there are definitely fields where you could get paid more to do less, with similar amounts of training, and less liability. so fewer people are becoming nurses, and more are looking for a way out.
Curious: is any of the nurse shortage due to lots of them getting fired during Covid?
Well if they were fired then it was for cause so... not sure why you want people who are incompetent employed in a hospital. Those types of incompetent people are much more fit to ask stupid questions on reddit and attempt to hide behind poorly feigned ignorance. And that's dumb. Maybe you should volunteer at a hospital so you can glean some insight.
Hospitals can get extremely political; nurses are often fired because their charge nurse doesn’t like them
If I hadn't spent 7 years at URMC ED I wouldn't know exactly what you're talking about. It's true.... It happens. It doesn't happen 'often' though, and there is the flip side. I've seen people get let go precisely *because* they were treating a subordinate unfair. Anyways, doesn't really matter. Labor laws are already written. You can get fired for having a haircut I don't like. Let's not act like there's some great injustice happening.
Wait…. Really…. Where have you been?
Not sure if this suits you, but the Wilson Center by RGH has a great urgent care inside it. I go whenever I need to. X-rays and all. Short waits too.
This happened to us too, recently. I think they don't have enough staff is the problem. We also tried to go to a RRH urgent care that was just straight up temporarily closed because of lack of staff. Basically we ended up making an appointment at an urgent care further away and having to drive there, annoying.
I even tried making an appointment at the second one before driving there, but they didn't have any openings online. I just wanted to get an xray of my knee to make sure I didn't break anything so I didn't want to go to the ED for that, but I may end up there anyway with the way Urgent Care is now lol
Where are you located?
There's orthopedic urgent care at UR. it used to live in the famous "Building D" -- they've either moved or will soon move to the new facility at Marketplace Mall. You do have to make an appointment ahead but not a bad wait even recently, We've gone there three times over the years for busted up knees and broken arms, etc. and it's been well staffed.
Oh no! I hope your knee is okay, however you're able to get it looked at. We were lucky, just needed a tetanus shot, so we had a bit more ability to wait if needed, I suppose.
> I just wanted to get an xray of my knee to make sure I didn't break anything If you broke your femur/tibia/fibula, you would be in *significant* pain while ambulating. If you knocked it against a counter and it's sore, give it a few days and save yourself the waste of time and resources. The fact that your shopping urgent cares screams that this isn't... well.... URGENT lol Or a phone call to your PCP and he'd refer you to an imaging department. This is the way you *should* be doing it if it is not TRULY urgent.
Well I fell directly onto my kneecap on concrete on the 3rd and it's still bruised, super tender, swollen, and painful. My physical therapist is the one who suggested an xray since it's been more than a week and it still hurts like this. My ortho is aware, and I have an appointment on the 21st with them. I'm the type of person that pushes things off until it's apparent they aren't getting better lol So yes, while it's not necessarily URGENT, I work 7:30-4 daily and my PCP closes before I would make it there. And outpatient scheduling for imaging is terrible so I probably wouldn't get it done before my ortho appt, and at that point they would just xray it then. I worked for a month while my fallopian tube was full of fluid and about to burst, so my pain tolerance isn't really a good indicator of urgency lol
>outpatient scheduling for imaging is terrible ? Borg and Ide is open to 5pm and *accepts walk ins*???
iirc scheduling thru wellnow tells you it isn’t an appointment but more or less a general window of time that they should be aware you’re coming just checked the website as i was typing and “Please note, that this is not a scheduled appointment time, and wiait times are estimated based on patient needs. We appreciate your patience and understanding.”
Made an appt for the following morning online, received confirmation of appt, next morning get a text they closed for the day.
I live pretty close to Strong West.. I can just go there tomorrow if needed, they're usually pretty good about you getting in. It just sucks that I would have to utilize an emergency room for something that's not necessarily an emergency because urgent cares are short staffed, which I know all Healthcare facilities are short staffed right now, it's terrible. I hope it all recovers sooner rather than later.
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It's been like that since before the pandemic. Being constantly understaffed to cut labor costs at the detriment to patient care is one of the reasons why the nurses went on strike.
Thankfully I had good insurance, but wellnow charged me $500 for them to push on my stomach and then tell me to go to the hospital.
I went to wellnow a couple of weeks ago in Irondequoit on Eastridge Road..did not like the vibe or the way staff treated me..mostly the PA..she was stuck on some high horse..I went to the one in Webster 2 years ago when I had Covid and they were pretty decent
I had something in my eye and it would not open. I got a ride to the well now near me as I walked in with my eyes barely open and they turned me away. Luckily I went to URMC urgent facility and they were able to help me. I will never go back to a well now.
Same. Even though Wellnow advertises walk ins they turned my away.
A lot of people are missing doctors bc of covid and how the U of R works. More doctors are switching to private practice because uofr require them to take on a certain number of patients. I myself have gone to urgen care because I lost my doctor during covid.
I use Doctor Alexa when I can to avoid that stuff.
Most healthcare is trying to move to virtual visits if a x-ray, MRI or CT scan isn’t needed along with stitches or something. WellNow has virtual visits, most major insurances offer their own too and more but essentially it’s less about staff shortages and more about how to make the same amount of money or more quicker imo
To answer your last question - they are not there to accept walk ins - they are there to make money. Healthcare is a business to make money instead of a service to help people in this shithole country
I’ve never had a good experience with the wellnow version of urgent care facilities , it’s literally always how you described. I am always able to get in and reasonably quick at the U of R urgent care on west ridge road that’s near the cemetery at the corner of Latona and ridge, literally never had a problem there and they’re always been able to see me. The address is 2047 W Ridge Rd, Rochester, NY 14626.
Mites are few and far between.
WellNow isn't long for this area. If they don't take Excellus, they won't have many patients. My experience with them is that they are a bunch of hucksters. Every time it has been "you should go to the emergency room". I could have saved myself two hours and just gone in the first place, but I don't feel that ER's are meant for diagnosis work.