Allergy & Immunology: Mountain View Center: Palo Alto Medical Foundation

I am rating Dr. Mulligan 5 stars! I had transferred my allergy immunotherapy treatment to Dr. Mulligan from another doctor, after encountering repeated issues with making progress with the treatment (they wanted to reduce my dosage many times for different reasons). Dr. Mulligan, as someone who does allergy shots himself, is much more understanding and helpful at maintaining progress on the shots. I really appreciate that.

The receptionist who does the scheduling is friendly and always recognizes me and the nurses are both friendly and skillful as you would want form people you periodically enlist to stick needles in your arms. Although my doctors are all in Palo Alto, I get my actual shots here due to convenience.

I don't feel that this department deserves a one star review. They work very hard, and they treat me very well.

For some reason they took the shot room hours off the website, aside from that staff are good and with an appointment shot wait times are generally 10-25 minutes

Check-in person is very rude and impolite. Nurses are just sitting, laughing and enjoying their time during the work hours while patients are waiting for their allergy shot. Entire department operate like a robot without any feeling or human empathy.

I wish I could rate just the allergy reception/scheduling. Their doctors are great, but the scheduling system PAMF has set up for their office is ridiculous. I have now been trying to schedule my skin test for over a month. Their office has ONE PERSON able to schedule my skin test. Every time I call that person is not available. I work, I cannot answer the phone at work. They don't leave detailed messages on my VM, just "hey call us back to schedule a skin test". They don't allow for you to see another dr with out special approval, never mind your dr doesn't have availability when you do. Fine, ok I get that. They get the approval, and call me back 1 week later! Instead of calling me and leaving a detailed message about it, they just say "call back", I do and of course, AGAIN that one person is not available.

Turns out I have the ok to see another dr according to the notes, but no
one said that in the message they left. The only person who can schedule is not available. It is so unprofessional to be playing phone tag like this. I asked the lady who answered to just have the guy pick ANY DAY that is a Monday or a Tuesday, ANY TIME, and just schedule it so I have it. Let me know what day it is. She said they can't do that. What? So now I have to yet again sit around waiting for them to call, miss the call, and call back only to likely not be able to schedule AGAIN.
I have encountered similar trouble when trying to schedule my allergy shots.

It should NOT be this difficult to schedule a skin test or an allergy shot. The reception is not user friendly. Unless you have no job, or a job where you can take personal phone calls, you will NOT be helped in a timely manner for important things like skin tests or scheduling an allergy shot.