Charles S.
Make Sure Your Insurance Qualifies
I have hematuria, and I needed a routine but significant (for me) test, and with so many labs shutdown in SF due to tyrannical and unjust covid regulations, I felt lucky to sign online with Quest Diagnostics on Post Street. Getting the right results from the lab meant I had proof I was cleared for yet another medical test and could meet that appointment. Without those results, I could not make any medical progress. Nothing on the website gave me any warning, but when the day came and I traveled to the lab and stood before the receptionist, she asked me if I had scheduled an appointment and I told her, of course, yes. Then she said, "We do not accept your insurance." It was an HMO with Anthem. Why was my insurance not good? The receptionist answered, "Your physician group is with Brown & Toland, and we do not accept Brown & Toland patients." What? Discrimination not based on insurance but by what physicians' group you belong to? Guilt by association? I remembered I had tried to call Quest Diagnostics in advance by telephone, but no human being was available to take my call. The menu on the telephone system was completely automated, robotic, and inflexible. The voicemail system allowed the caller no opportunity to ask a question. i remembered even the website, although it had a FAQ, gave me no information that helped me. I could have gone to one of the few labs open in the city owned by Labcorp instead and not wasted any time; Labcorp's website does ask you for your insurance upfront. Because it denied me service, Quest Diagnostics caused me to have to reset all of my future appointments with the urologist and other labs for the following month, delaying my attempt at recovery, just because it lacked the human decency to be upfront about its arbitrary and discriminatory policies, making me make an unnecessary trip and tripping a further delay in my medical recovery. I asked the receptionist if I might pay for the lab test out of my pocket, but all the receptionist did in response was say, behind her covidiotic face visor and window screen, "Here is your insurance card. I'm sorry." Her English was so bad that I didn't try to re-ask my question. What an unimaginably irresponsible company - to make a potential client come all that way downtown for an important lab test and then to arbitrarily deny service based on a secret set of rules for denial of service that it has refused to make public. This company has no integrity and certainly no interest in caring about clients. * * * Through an intermediary, I finally got a chance to get blood and urine prepared for tests at Quest Diagnostics on Sutter Street in San Francisco just last week. The clientele behind the counter were less than gracious. No instructions as to how find the bathroom to give a urine sample, no instructions as to how to sign in (computerized system), and the phlebotomist couldn't identify a viable vein on either of my arms so she took the blood from my hand, and the blood-draw left quite a bruise that lasted for days. Not that she didn't inform me about this bruising in advance; she did. But why can't Quest find a phlebotomist who can find a vein that doesn't leave bruising?