Health Services At Columbia

Doctor was nice. The front desk and nurse? Horrible. Front desk receptionists do not even look at me, just staring the monitor with blank eyes. The nurse (or doctor?) who was sitting very upfront when you enter the center was pressuring me and in a rush somehow. Long stories short, she mistakenly thought I was a different patient, and now started to blame me for her mistakes, saying "you didn't check the name on the piece of paper!" A sick patient in physical pain and anxiety, who was first time using the medical center, did not get proper guidance and got rushed through the process, and now being blamed for her not checking my ID and if I am the exact patient? What an experience. Paying almost 100k a year and being treated this way sounds very nice. Do better, please.

Echoing other reviews, for a private university that charges so much and lauds itself for being so excellent, it is UNFATHOMABLE how poorly this office is run and how many hoops students need to jump through just to be seen. The only way to make an appointment is to wait on the phone for at least 10-15 minutes even if you call right at 9am, then just HOPE to be free once ANOTHER triage nurse calls you back “at some point” and then just be ready & available to come in at any point of the day once the triage nurse tells you to. Never mind the busy class and teaching schedules that many undergrad and grad students have. If you don’t live near or on campus, they don’t care, the people who answer the phones are so rude and act as if you’ve inconvenienced them by calling and asking to seek treatment. It’s hard to blame the individual employees, everyone seems burnt out, the clinic really isn’t set up to scale for all the students it’s supposed to serve but the administration —- COLUMBIA, needs to DO WAY BETTER and find a solution this is an unacceptable standard of healthcare. I will give a shoutout though to Linus Cho and Rafaela De La Huerta who have been excellent, empathetic & caring providers, whereas others have been rude, dismissive and even once provided no actual treatment related to nasal & ear congestion (what I came in for) and instead gave me a very condescending lecture on how I needed to lose weight (despite me telling them all the diet & lifestyle changes I’d been making).