How to get hold of your doctor at Park Nicollet

This is mostly for my own benefit (and possiblypameladean 's) but if you get Health Care through Park Nicollet you might find it helpful. 

Park Nicollet is, IMHO, a really good homegrown health system that did not weather the merger with Health Partners gracefully. The clinics and hospitals still provide good health care and friendly customer service, but the website is something else again. Over the past few years there has been a determined effort to remove all contact information from public view. I recently spent a half day researching the question of how to contact a Park Nicollet doctor, and this is what I learned.
 

WAYS TO CONTACT YOUR DOCTOR
---If you still have the old direct 952-993-xxxx number for your doctor/nurse, do not lose it!

---Individual clinics still have their own numbers, but googling the clinic name is easier than finding it on the HP website. If they still answer the phone, ask for "Dr. X's nurse."  The number for Park Nicollet Clinic Minneapolis (aka the Blaisdell Clinic) is:  952-993-2000

---The main Park Nicollet number has an option for leaving a message for your care provider.
952-993-8000 #4

---Leave a  MYCHART MESSAGE

pameladean helped me find this, and claims it works, although I haven't tried it. 

• Login to HealthPartners site and select My Care from top menu
• Select "Messages" from menu that now appears in purple bar
• Select "Contact your care team: send a message"  [oh, there's the word "message" but it never appears again]
• Now you are at a page labeled  Your online care options
  • Scroll down to "E-Visit with your doctor" and then all the way to the bottom. 
  • Press the green ACCEPT button
  • Scroll past the list of irrelevant medical problems that you don't have and select "Other"  [near the bottom, right side]
  • "Who would you like to send this E-visit to?" is a dropdown box. Apparently "E-Visit" is what we used to call a "message." Select a doctor. Only doctors you have seen in the past will appear.
  • Finally you get to a freeform text box where you can type your question or message.

-- Respond to an inbox message. The little envelope icon in the main menu bar is just an inbox, not a full-fledged message app. You cannot initiate messages to your doctor, but if they send you one you can reply. Click on the envelope, then select "Go to your inbox"

OTHER HANDY NUMBERS
952-993-8000   Main ParkNic number (appointments, among other things) 
612-726-3329   HealthPartners Customer Assistance. #1 appts, #2 website help, #3 helpful human 
800-993-1000   Urgent Care, St.LouisPark 

NURSE LINE  "Welcome to the HealthPartners Care Line / Nurse Triage Advice Line..."   
The nurse line is still there, but almost impossible to contact!  It can only be reached by accident ... calling a dead-end number, for instance, and waiting through all the options until it rolls over to a person, who is sometimes the "HealthPartners Care Line Nurse Triage Advice Line." If you ask this nice person how to get to her directly, she will tell you that the only way to do that is to call your clinic after hours and it will roll over to this number. That is not actually what happens, however.

But I found a few numbers that still get to the Nurse Line directly (at least on a Sunday).  Two were on a "contacts" dropdown link under my profile name on the HP website. I'm not sure where I found the other one. 

800-551-0859   

800-284-9745
612-339-3663  (different phone tree, but I think it ends up at the same care line)