Hey, everyone, and welcome to the first episode of Urgent Care Unscripted. My name is Byron Alter, and I am the director of operations and business development for AFC Urgent Care in West Haven. And today I'm joined by my co-host, Muhammad. Hi. Thank you Barbara. And my name is Muhammad Salaam. I am the franchisee and owner of the Urgent Care in West Haven. This, health care related, episode series Urgent Care Unscripted has been a long time coming.
We wanted to, address head on some of the critical and most common of questions related to your health care as it, more important, pertains to urgent care treatments. And, so we welcome you to join us in this podcast series. and during this podcast series, we just kind of want to answer questions that might be a little bit unclear for patients. And we're going to cover, things like insurances and when to go to the emergency room versus coming to the urgent care.
We're going to talk a little bit about immigration physicals and, and much more during, the series. Before I go into the details, just why are we really doing this? I mean, as you think about it, how is your one of your biggest assets that you can ever have in life? Right. And then when you are sick and you are compromised mentally or compromised physically, then the cost is involved. Yeah. Families are involved in some situations.
And then you have many different choices to go, and then you have a different kind of, illness and each kind of illness might need different kind of treatment or treatment facility. So many questions to address and answer and make the right decisions. What we are trying to do here is make it as simple as possible.
Make it as simple as possible for the most common questions that you have to face when you are in that situation of making a choice as to where you're going, how you are getting yourself treated. Absolutely. And I think that it can be very frustrating for patients because they just don't get clear answers from sometimes their providers due to time rationing or even their, own insurance companies. So we're here to break it down for you.
We know that some confusion can lead to mistrust, and what we're trying to do is create a trust, a bond between our bridging care and our community. So that's, I think, where the podcast came about for us. Yeah. And I just want to expand on what, Barbara, that said, it's about two things. It's about, first of all, it's about you and us creating a bond with you and having that communication between the patient and us. This is a beautiful community in the Haven that we live.
And we want to we want to reach out. We want to serve the community. And besides, just, you know, running an urgent care clinic, we want to give back when information is a big, big weapon in terms of your path to recovery. We want to make sure that that information is available to you on your fingertips. If you can come back and watch this episode and get, questions answered before you then have to pick up a phone or, or ask someone else.
Yeah. We just want to be transparent, as transparent as we can with our patients. So to start, Muhamed, why don't you tell us a little bit about you, where you began and why you're here today for that question. I was in supply chain running, organization supply chain, for, for large companies. I had large teams working, for me. But then at the, at the in my heart, I wanted to always, always serve people and use my skills and knowledge of managing people and leading people to serve.
And with that intent is where we started with this urgent care. This is health care is the, one of the best ways to, pure way to really, achieve that, that, that service quality and, and, and within that urgent care is where we can apply, sense of, quality sense of service and reaching out to people. So all of that and, along with, our desire to run, an urgent care planet in a very clean, efficient and caring environment and that brought us to AFC.
Yeah. And my name is, like I said, it's Barbara Rainwater. I have had a passion for health care since I could remember. I have worked as an or within the urgent care or health care operations for a little over eight years now. I started my career fully with the full intention of just being a nurse bedside and just taking care of patients, and at some point I became really intrigued by what goes on in the background.
I, I just wanted to make things more efficient, not only for patients, but also for the staff members as well, because I understand that when you have a happy staff, that happy staff will then translate that care and passion to their patients. So we really focus on making or I try to focus on making health care more efficient and just to make sure that it's a good environment for everybody that's involved. And and I think that's why Muhammad and I make such a great team.
And we are so lucky to have Barbara here. Her mentality, her, core training in process that's so critical for patients that patients want predictability, patients want, smooth flow and process that they can expect when they walk in. And and by the time that they leave, that is a surprise. And that's where Barbara is at her best. And delivering the, the, perfection and ensuring that the process is
predictable, is, is constant. And and along with that, I come in with the desire and with the ambition to serve people, and make sure that everybody's food, that equally everybody is getting the best attention they need. And there is a certain standard of quality that in healthcare is kind of non-negotiable. That's always maintained. There is no compromise on that. So we had a great team from those two perspectives.
Her skills in establishing the process and our desire and ambition to maintain quality of service and then expand on it and make sure that ultimately distributed equally and carefully, it's definitely a good balance, and we are here to share our knowledge with our patients, our community, and hopefully again, to gain that trust. So you guys know that you have a reliable urgent care clinic to come to whenever you need it.
And over the course of next, multiple episodes will be covering multitude of cockpits. Sometimes patients come in and get treated and still feel like I didn't get treated, or the treatment that was offered was not adequate. Sometimes patients are sitting at home and wondering, so they go to an urgent care, or should they go to a, should I go to an emergency room? Sometimes they're wondering with my insurance cover it or not. What if I get a blood spit?
What if I get denied service? What happens? What if I lost my insurance card? So these kind of questions, we would like to address head on, on this, on these episodes. So there's, less confusion and and you know, what to do when that time arises, when you're not following, you know, physically or mentally challenged and you need some service. And, those questions are answered ahead of that happening. Yeah. And we want you to be part of the conversation.
We understand that we're going to try our best to answer as many questions as we can. But if you hear an episode and you see that there's a question that we weren't able to answer, we didn't get to, we are going to have a full episode dedicated to just answering questions that are submitted by the audience and our listeners, so you'll be able to email that to West Haven team at AFC urging Caricom. We'll also put that email for you guys so you can, get that information after the episode as well.
And on top of it to make it, really, really easy to send, to make it really rich with, reliable information and knowledge will be an expertise for you when it says a topic of urgent care versus it's, emergency room. Our medical director also happens to be an ER, physician to the hospital. Joining us, when it comes to a topic like insurance, we'll be bringing in that insurance expert when it comes to legal matters. Moving in.
On our episodes, a legal expert will also share their knowledge with us. So we will do what is needed to make sure that the information that we pass on to you reliable is expansive, and it's covering the topic. So if you are interested in that, follow subscribe. And again, we're here at 354 Sawmill Road in West Haven, and we are ready to see you whenever you need it. Thank you for joining us, and we look forward to seeing you in our future episodes.
My name is Mohamad. The Vietnam defense is your honor. And with me is Barbara Nalder, director of operations at AFC Urgent Care, West Haven. Thank you.