Occidental Area Health Center

Don’t leave the office without having the orders faxed while you are there! The medical secretaries sent an urgent order to the lab center and it was incomplete. 10 days later after calling almost every day to ask if the corrected order was sent was what it took to get the appointment paperwork finished. The medical secretaries did not follow up on sending the referral to the chosen lab and they didn’t correct the mistakes on the order, the doctor is not reachable, I’ve been told over 10 times that OHC sent the needed info, and they haven’t. Next, I’m told by these secretaries to go to an EMERGENCY ROOM to get that order corrected. That is unacceptable for them to tell me to re-​do an appointment like that.
You may wonder what they do; they give vaccinations, and promote constant use of hormones for birth control, and give well woman exams as their main source of income!!!
It’s a rural center. You’ll need a referral for anything more than basic check ups, and they won’t get the orders from your appointment out for you in a timely fashion even if your life is hanging by a string.
You will need to be a really aggressive person to get health care from this small handful of providers, and their not so handy medical secretaries. It will take constant calls to them, pushing them to finish your appointment paperwork, even days and days later. Perhaps I’m too soft spoken, but I made calls and let them know I needed the paperwork from the visit to be corrected. It’s humiliating to even need to give a bad review of this place, but it’s what the experience has gifted me and it’s humiliating but it needs to be said.
Update on the labs that they never sent; the secretaries tried to blame a top notch JACHO certified hospital for the «confusion,» and when they hadn’t re-​faxed the order, they finally sent the fax with the order 10 days after the actual order date. It was Occidental Health Center that drops the ball. The Occidental health center secretaries didn’t enter the order codes correctly on the order, then they pulled lies to try to cover up their mistakes rather than being honest and sincere about not finishing the paperwork from the visit. Lied to me directly.
This is not unusual for them unfortunately, I speak for three others who have shared experiences of late faxes to the pharmacy (sending it took more than 3 hours from their office). They just don’t seem to see that the paperwork is part of the visit, and it all needs to be complete at the end of the visit, not the end of the day.
They are not electronically sending orders, they FAX everything later in the day after multiple appointments. When I was having an asthma attack and went to go pick up the inhaler I ended up waiting for a prescription order to arrive at the pharmacy for 5 hours the day it was ordered. The only person who didn’t know I was having an attack and needed to go get my inhaler urgently was the medical secretaries.
My only hope for advice is to have everything sent while you wait. Good luck with these secretaries, I don’t even know if they will cooperate if you ask them to send the prescription orders while you wait for the confirmation from the fax.
It’s not all bad, it’s close to home, I love the doctor, she’s great & friendly. She’s got the skills needed to do her tasks, but it appears she is not following up on the orders she writes, so I ran into the problems when I tried to get my doctors advice on labs done.

this place is great. great people. great service. treat everyone equally and fairly.