It’s the end of August, and I get a call that I’ve been in close contact with someone who has tested positive for Covid-19. I’m driving to work, but instead, we head to a rapid-test site. The whole team. It’s basically a company outing. Quality bonding time, you might say. At this point, it’s nearly one, but we have plenty of time before the restaurant has to open.
We arrive at the first Urgent Care testing site and, after a bit of a wait, are informed that their location only tests asymptomatic patients in the A.M. Fair enough: we head to their sister location about a ten minute drive away, arriving around 2:30, and it goes down hill from there.
You see, the sister location, which performs afternoon tests, is located on the ground floor of an apartment complex, and so can’t have throngs of people milling around the building. They have clear signs posted on the door that say to line up in a designated area on the sidewalk across the parking lot entrance. The signage tells us that we must wait in the designated area for a nurse to come out of the building and register us.
We make our way to the area, and there’s a woman already standing there. She confirms that she was informed, in person, that waiting to be registered was the correct action. So we do - for an hour- and no one comes out. About 45 minutes into this hour, I call the Urgent Care (I didn’t want to go inside and break the rules) and am given no useful information by the automated call system.
So I break the rules and go inside. Keeping my distance, I ask the front desk attendants about when we should expect someone to come out and begin registering us, as we’ve been waiting for an hour. They inform me that they are working their way through the patients they’ve registered already, and that once they’ve done so, they’ll start on us. I ask an e.t.a. and they inform me ‘45 minutes’. Fair enough. We’re asking for rapid tests after all.
I thank them: “It’s just better to have some info than be in the dark.” leave the building, and walk over to my group to inform them. As I’m doing so, a completely different nurse approaches us with a clip board in hand, and starts talking to the line of people that have gathered over the past hour.
“You’re here to be tested?”
We say yes.
“Okay, well, you’re not supposed to be out here, seeing as there’s a sign that says ‘max capacity - ’”
She brandishes a little A-Frame sign of a red circle with the words ‘max capacity’ in white lettering, which had been sitting off to the side of the waiting area, inconspicuous and unnoticed.
The scene of our apparent Misconduct. Notice the competing signs. Imagine a person standing right at the front of the line. See any problems with the setup here?
“But I’ll register you now, and then you have to leave. You’ll get a text telling you when to come back for your test.”
She then walks through the line with a QR code that we scan with our phones. The code brings us to a registration form that we fill out online. As we’re doing this, she huffily demands that we leave the premises, because “the building manager will call somebody. People have been behaving inappropriately and we can’t have a line out here.”
At this point, my patience is run out. Make me wait, fine. Tell me I’m at the wrong location, cool. It’s a pandemic; I’m not going to hassle anyone for trying to make a system out of madness. But do not give me attitude for adhering to the rules of the 4 prominent signs you had displayed that gave clear instructions for me to follow, but not noticing the one, tiny, unambiguous sign that was pushed off to the side.
So I snap: “Fine!” Throw up my hands, and walk away. We register in the parking lot across the street. Wait for our texts, and return one by one to be tested. As I’m entering the building for the second time, I notice a new sign on the door: “We are fully booked and are no longer registering any more Covid-19 tests for the day.”
. . .
So, here’s how I would simplify this process.
Eliminate all the goddamn signs on the door except for two.
The first is for Non-Covid Related Urgent Care Patients and Social Distancing Info.
The second is the QR Code and registration information for Covid Rapid Tests.
Here’s a literal 10 minute draft:
And THEN, when people scan the easy as all hell QR Code, or else put in the web address that you have conveniently posted on the front door, you put a count. You put a count in the form on how many people can register for a test before 11 am. Once that number is hit, it locks any further registrants until after 12:15 pm, at which point the count restarts for the afternoon bunch. And you program your form to give wait times based on how many people have registered and how long it takes to process each person. And you, don’t have, to belittle any more people who are FOLLOWING YOUR RULES and are ALREADY worried that they have a very infectious disease, all because you didn’t perform the very simple task of checking to see if a line had formed outside your building in the past hour. And we don’t have to wait in line for an hour for no reason. It’s a win-win.
Because once we got to the online registration portion of this very stupid experience, it was seamless. We filled it out. We got a text saying we would be getting ANOTHER text when it was time to be tested (I actually got a phone call). We got an automatic email that sent us a link to register for their online patient portal. We got to go for a nice walk in a park for about 45 minutes. We got called back to the Urgent Care. Got in, paid for the test, got the test and left.
So the problem here is the needless withholding of an automated registration system, most likely because whoever set it up was either:
1. too lazy or
2. too pressed for time
to set up a count in the system, with appropriate, informative feedback for registrants regarding:
1. the approximate wait time to be tested.
2.What to do once they’ve registered.
3. Whether or not there were any more slots available for testing that day in the first place.
Which, if this is the case, redirect us to a simple landing page that tells us what time to return tomorrow in order to register or directs us to other testing sites in the area. Or both.
If you really want to break it down further - You could have TWO QR codes. One for asymptomatic patients, and one for symptomatic patients. The Asymptomatic QR doesn’t work UNTIL 12:15 pm on any given day. The Symptomatic QR doesn’t work AFTER 11:15 am on any given day.
OR. You could have replaceable QR Codes in the window:
One for the AM: Symptomatic Patients Only. This is swapped out with:
A “Come back Later” Sign for in between Registration Pools. Which is replaced by:
The PM Asymptomatic QR Code at 12:15.
There are so many options that are better than “butt-hurt nurse snapping at people for lining up where they were told to line up.”
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk. Tune in next time when I ‘redesign’ the kids next door so they stop throwing their shitty bouncy balls over a fence four times their height so that they can have trivial human interaction. I AM QUARANTINING, YOU CROTCH GOBLINS.
I mean. . .children are the future…