Applying the concept of the tradeoff triangle – Good/Fast/Cheap; pick two, I recently had the opportunity to choose zero. Or maybe I got them all, just in a crappy way. I’m talking about visiting an urgent care clinic.
As you may have seen in past posts, I’m not a fan of health. Luckily, I don’t get sick. Until I do, that is. And when I do, I usually stick it out until I’m better, or in some future instance, I die. Well, this was a case where I wasn’t getting better, but I wasn’t dying quickly enough to get over the annoyance of being sick. And since I don’t really have a primary care doctor, I went to a clinic.
Since I don’t really have a doctor, I’m not sure what is routine and what isn’t. But I’m pretty sure if they cared, they wouldn’t weigh me with my pockets full of stuff. And they would probably check my temperature to see if I had a fever. Maybe check my heart rate while they are checking my blood pressure. Maybe they would show a little bit of interest in me. But, maybe not. It’s just a walk-in clinic.
Maybe they would actually protect their customers’ personal information. Posted throughout the clinic were signs that stated there were scammers calling their patients and asking questions similar to a satisfaction survey. The problem is that through some phone trickery, the call would cost you $3/min. My question is, how are these scammers getting your patient’s contact info?
To sum up the entire visit, I recited the primary symptoms I had: trouble swallowing, swollen tongue and tonsils as well as secondary symptoms I suspected were relevant. All this was entered in some cloud-based web application. (I initially thought he was searching WebMD for the answer.) Then the doctor came in, looked in my mouth (not even using a tongue depressor) and said, “yup” and entered an antibiotic prescription in the web app that was sent to my Walgreens. That was it – he said the medicine should work in 7 days, but if not, there were 3 more days on the prescription. He walked out and I walked out of the building. But not before forcing him to make physical contact with me by shaking his hand.
I left with a prescription that should fix what ails me, but I didn’t leave with any encouragement that I was going to get better. That is depressing as hell. But, I guess I did expect a bare-bones experience. In my tradeoff, Good was not chosen, Fast was fast in the wrong part of the experience, and Cheap was pretty much the entire experience. This does little to promote any desire for longevity in me.
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