How to get hold of your doctor at Park Nicollet

[dreamshark]

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)
 

 

Comments

[pameladean]

Thank you, this is very useful!

I was given the Nurse Triage Advice Line when I was trying to get through to my mother's doctor a few months back. Unlike most of the other numbers, it rang right through and I got a nurse and she gave me advice. I misplaced my notes, however, so it's good to have that.

P.

[dreamshark]

Of all the obfuscation being perpetrated by HealthPartners I think the most egregious is eliminating the Nurse Line. The weird thing is, the nurses are still sitting by the phone waiting for it to ring, but since no one can find the number they probably aren't getting many calls. When I followed one of the above numbers to the end of the phone tree and it finally rang, a nurse answered immediately. She was probably disappointed that I didn't want advice, just wanted to grill her on how to get through to her next time.

The Nurse Triage number that I got from Urgent Care last September no longer works, so the one you had may not have been good any longer either.

The Helpful Human at the HealthPartners Member Assistance line seemed to have a lot of time on his hands too. I asked him to find the number of my clinic, which he was eager to do (although it took him quite a while to find it). He might very well be able to put through a call to the nurse line. In any case, he'd probably like someone to talk to.

[minnehaha]

I've been going there for over 40 years (in SLP, but also other locations). I also switched to the Smart Care Clinic within Park Nicollet and have never waited more than 5 or 10 minutes to speak with a nurse. I don't think that they are running on Sundays, however. I've gotten same-day appointments at Smart Care nearly every time I've called, so I am beyond impressed.

I switched when my doc retired. He was old-school "maaaaaybe you can get in in six weeks."

K.

[dreamshark]

What is Smart Care? Is it a physical location, or is it another secret phone number/online tool?

it's a place

[minnehaha]

It's in the SLP location, walk allllllll the way straight down the hall keeping the parking garage behind you all the time, and when you get to the elevator banks, you turn right and that's where it is. It's some sort of subset of the PN clinic.

There might be other versions of Smart Care in other places. I knew about it when I bought the insurance from Healthpartners, but I cancelled that for the COBRA which turns out to be wildly better for me.

K.

[dreamshark]

Wow, thanks! This is a fantastic tip! Once you know it is there, Google can find the deeply hidden webpage within the HealthPartners site. It appears to be just another Park Nicollet Clinic location, available to anybody with HealthPartners coverage. You just have to know that it is there (which you would never know from the HP website). The phone number is listed as 952-993-1190.

Have you actually been calling the clinic number to make appointments? I don't think that still works anywhere else in the ParkNic system. Yowza!