I have a 15 year-old who it totally fearful of needles... For his hep B shots for school, had to pretty much sit on him the first shot, and very much coerce him to get his second and third shots... So, when I heard over the phone from Dr. Viljoen's office from his medical assistant that he didn't have to go for blood test, I was ecstatic!!!! Even planned my day around that.... to say nothing of having the proper cash on me based on this... However....
Let me explain....
June 15th - Made appointment with Dr. Viljoen's nursing assistant. June 29 @ 1PM. I asked to confirm the price and if there was GST on the price. The price would be $260/Adult and $140/Child. She told me both boys would be considered children, so the boys at $140 each = $280 and me at $260 would be $540 with no GST. But it could only be cash. They don't accept credit cards for Immigration medicals.
June 26th - Received phonecall from the nursing assistant (I don't know her name, and she wasn't wearing a nametag) of Dr. Viljoen asking if we could move the appointment up a day to June 28th at 12PM. Sure, no problem, I say....
June 28th - Day of Medical appointment. All 3 of us showed up at noon. Sat in the waiting room for about 10 minutes. The nursing assistant calls us into a small room with a computer where she, doing each of us separately, took down our particulars, asked for our AHC cards, asked for our passports, and then vaccination records. As she's updating this on her computer, she's doing a lot of copy/pasting within the immigration document (Word Document). She took the boys and checked the weight and height of them and just took my info from the driver's license. Also, as she was doing each one of us, we were told to stand on the opposite end of the small room and read from the eye chart. All in all, for 3 of us, it took about 45 minutes in this small room (imagine doing this with 2 bored boys...!). While we were in there, I asked her how many Immigration medicals they do in a month, and her response was "Oh, we do about 4 a day. We're booked right up until the end of July with Immigration medicals."
Anyways, she put each of the boys in separate rooms where they had to remove their clothes for the medical check. In short, Dr. Viljoen goes into each of the rooms and does the check on the boys. After doing the oldest, Dr. Viljoen comes up to me and tells me that my oldest will have to do blood tests and xrays. I tried to explain to him how it's worse than pulling teeth to get the oldest anywhere around needles, to say nothing of his nursing assistant told me he wouldn't have to do the blood test and xray. Dr. Viljoen says, the choice is either he does the tests or he doesn't go... nothing like a good bedside manner here.... Leads me to think that he does this "on the side" and it interferes with his normal business... Now comes my turn. His nursing assistant tells me that I need to take pants and underwear off and to sit on the table. She digs out a big paper blanket for me to use then leaves the room. Twenty minutes later, Dr. Viljoen comes back apologizing about his delay, and then says "oh ya... forgot that I have to do something". He grabs something out of the fridge and disappears again. Ten minutes later he returns and completes the medical checks on me. Once again, with these delays, I now more firmly believe he does this "on the side" and is inconvenient for him.
Once I'm done, we all head up to the wicket to where I'm told that I need to pay $660.00. Uh... what?
I was told $540. Nope, the oldest has to be considered an adult since he's 15 and therefore has to do the blood test and xray. I only have $540 cash, since I generally use debit or credit for any purchaes. She says, well you could put $120 on Visa, which was fine with me. Of course, I'm thinking to myself, why couldn't I just put all of it on Visa??? GRRR!!! 
I then handed her the photos... in fact I wonder if she would have forgotten them if I didn't offer...Now, my intention before this day was, as soon as I was finished at the Dr's office, I'd just head over to Calgary Lab Services, Glenbrook location, as told by the Dr's office and do the blood work. And as I provide IT support for CLS, as well, once I was done that, then I would do tickets that I have for there (one of which had to be done that afternoon). Now, I have a 15 year old that has to go there, and it would be considered unethical to bring the boys to work... employers don't really like that sort of thing. Anyways, I drop the boys off at home and went to CLS Glenbrook to do the tickets. Talked to the management there and arranged for a specific person who deals with reticent young teenagers the next morning to do my 15 year old.
June 29 - I managed to drag my oldest son to CLS Glenbrook mid-morning where we got our blood drawn for the blood test. Other than the dragging him to the lab, he was done quickly. We then went to the Radiology Associates place to get our xrays done. Well... low and behold, the Dr's office forgot to fill in and sign my oldest's son requisition form. They can't process him until they have a signature from the doctor, but "beware, this doctor's office isn't known to be quick in sending faxes" and "they don't always answer their phone". Joy...
(all the more reason why I think this is a side business for this doctor). They were able to contact the doctor's office and were given the promise it'll get done right away. Figured in the meantime, I could get myself done. So, I was done in 5 minutes and we ended up waiting another 30 minutes before the fax came in with the properly filled out requisition. My oldest was done within 5 minutes of receipt of the fax.Now we wait for the packages...
So... in summary, as I've mentioned before, this seems to be a sideline for Dr. Viljoen. The way that the nursing assistant copied and pasted in this Word document, it's a wonder that they don't miss more details in their requisitions and forms for Immigration.
Maybe my views are tainted somewhat by the frustrations of getting my son to do the needles, but it seemed to me that the medical offices of Dr. Viljoen are not run that well. He's probably making more money through the cosmetic surgery and spa side of his business, hence the more resources for that side of his business. I also think that if they have a macro in Word that prompts for fields (eg: Passport number, AHC number, Vaccinations, auto-dates, etc) it would cut down on the amount of missing details in requistions and Immigration documents. Maybe my expectations are too high, but....
Anyways.... hope this helps others in Calgary...
Scott.
........ as he was lifting the paper sheet he said to me "well if you don't look like a bull frog down there you should be okay to go"! I was in total shock........ it's too bad there isn't a place where you can report some of these doctors that work for Immigration.......... then there's the thing with all the civil surgeons here in the US and how they rip people off so badly just to transcribe the vaccination supplement.
