Boise Valley Asthma & Allergy Clinic

Dr. Jeppson has been very helpful in treating my allergy induced asthma. Great clinic. Definitely recommend if you suffer from allergies and asthma

I finally visited last year for diagnosis and help managing what I suspected was allergic asthma. I was right, and Dr. Palmer was great. His approach was conservative without being neglectful, and I had everything under control within 2 visits. The only thing I didn’t like was how crowded the office felt and how thin the (temporary?) walls were. I could hear conversations between doctors and other patients very clearly.

I have been referred here twice by my family practitioner. Once last year after a long bout with bronchitis and pneumonia and again this last month trying a new route to sort out some food allergies in hopes of figuring out my constant stomach pains.
Last year my visit was with Dr. Palmer, I had no insurance. He was short, direct, basically told me not to waste my money on any further testing for my illness at that time. I took advantage of his time then to ask his opinion on food allergies, gluten, my stomach, etc. He went on to tell me that the whole «Gluten» deal was just basically a sales pitch and there was really no way to test for it other than getting a biopsy from the colon. No blood work, nothing. At this time I can’t remember what his comparative was but he was basically saying people will feed into anything. I left there feeling very discourage, hopeless and basically like this was pain I was just going to have to live with.
During this last year, I did have had a biopsy done of my colon, I am gluten intolerant, my colon is black and I am still suffering from the same pain I had a year ago without eating gluten.
This last month, my practitioner referred me back to the same office. I refused to see Dr. Palmer explained why she said okay well let’s try Dr. Jeppson, he is very knowledgeable with food allergies and will do a full scratch panel to see what exactly you are allergic to. I called on Wednesday to make my appointment, while speaking to the receptionist she did notice I had been in before and suddenly my appointment went from next week to March 24^th. After a long hold time I was asked to give a detailed explanation of why I wanted to switch doctors.
Then to my surprise yesterday morning I received a call from Dr. Jepson himself basically telling me that after reviewing my chart he practices a lot along the same lines as Dr. Palmer and he’d be willing to see me but basically there wasn’t a whole lot he could do for me. Is this not discrimination?

The office is comfortable and clean. My appointment started close to the scheduled time. I thought N.P. Neumayer was very professional and knowledgeable. She had a nice bedside manner and got right down to addressing the issues. The nurse who attended to me was also professional and efficient. Based on medical service alone, I would have given them a 5.
The reason I rated them as a 2 relates to the billing and payment experience. My insurance gave me totally different copay and billing information than this provider quoted me. I called back to my insurance to confirm and then back to the provider to question the copay and billing. The receptionist I spoke to at Boise Valley Asthma whose first name started with a «D» (I will leave her name anonymous out of courtesy) was curt and informed me that I was «confused» and stated I should call my insurance back to «better educate» myself about the benefits included under my policy. Her response to my concerns was unnecessarily rude. I was only questioning the fees because the insurance company literally JUST told me they were incorrect and I explained that to her that and she was still rude to me.
For the record, patients should ask questions when there is a discrepancy and the provider should be able to explain why there is a discrepancy without getting rude. It ended up that the insurance company was incorrect about the what type of provider Boise Valley was, but Boise Valley also billed an exorbitant rate for the services. So, I wasn’t pleased with Boise Valley’s billing either. I asked Dr. Neumayer how much the test I needed would cost approximately (I’ve got in the habit of doing this nowadays because I’ve ended up with some unreasonable medical bills.) She stepped away to check and came back and told me the test was approximately $ 99. The overall bill for this visit was something like $ 400-​$ 600 (I don’t have the bill in front of me.) She was wrong about the cost of the test and the overall visit. I think it was an honest mistake, because doctors don’t really concern themselves with how much something is going to cost the patient, but she was way off, which was a concern.
Based on the rude customer service from the receptionist and the inability to provide the patient with a reasonable expectation of what the service is going to cost, I would not recommend this clinic.

Treating allergies is a strange art. I went here when I was having some skin issues. I’ve always also had seasonal respiratory issues. But nothing like the rashes — hives? that showed up on my hands. William Palmer, MD ordered a stretch test and I found out that what I thought were triggers were nothing of the sort. I was not allergic to pine trees. I am so glad I did the test because now I know what to avoid.
Dr. Palmer walked me through what is involved with allergy shots. I calculated how much it would cost to get shots for 5 years and I decided it wasn’t worth it. Going to the office every week is too inconvenient compared to nasal steroids. Dr. Palmer also was very frank about the low effectivity of antihistamines. I appreciated his honesty. I also liked the time that he took to explain how safe nasal steroids are.
Since I know what my treatment of choice is, I don’t see why I need to keep coming back every year to get a prescription. I’ve figured out that it is cheaper to see the nurse practitioner Heidi Peters rather than the MD. She is a licensed prescribing clinician and that is all you need. She is just as good as a doctor.