El Cerrito Medical Group

Visiting the El Cerrito Medical Group’s Walk-​In Clinic was by far the most horrifying and disturbing experience I’ve had interacting with the medical community and under no circumstances do I recommend anyone going to this abomination of a practice.
When I arrive I immediately I learn that they don’t accept my health-​insurance. I could’ve easily walked away at this stage in the game but instead I decide to wait to see the doctor, as I see it I need to get on some antibiotics — no biggie.
At one hour and fifteen minutes into the wait I ask the receptionist how long it’s going to be and she says twenty minutes. Another hour goes by and they finally call my name.
Here’s where the horror show begins sports fans.
The doctor’s assistant leads me into the room and I explain to her my symptoms. It began three days before, I woke up and could barely move, I had swelling, redness, and pain all along my right leg, esp. in the thigh/​groin area. The night before I thought I had just pulled a muscle in my inner leg, and now it was much worse. I stayed home, bedridden, me and my girlfriend naturally began to fool around a bit, and as more blood went into my penis it suddenly began to hurt very much. What inspired me to visit the clinic was the next morning I even found a spider bite-​like wound on my penis (WTF!!!) When I mention this she immediately says
«Maybe it’s herpes (!!!) …I mean, you know, not that I’m saying that uh, I’m just saying duh duhhhh dudh de de daa…»
She leaves after getting all the information she needs for her purposes and hands me my paper doll dress. After a while a doctor comes into the office whom did not introduce herself. After more Q&A she explained that they’d like to take some tests AND get some antibiotics into my system so that they can help to flush out any potential infection. She also explained that in order for us to go on any further she would have to examine «the area» with another practitioner in the room to assist and «witness» taking a culture of the wound on my penis.
I thanked her as she left and after another wait, a woman in a strange and tacky green outfit walked into the room with the first doctor. The name she gave me began with an «N», although I don’t remember it.
The examination was very tense and very awkward, more so than usual as I felt the second, domineering doctor’s bedside manner to be pushy and very cold. The first doctor was obviously afraid of this woman.
She sort of barked at me to move my genitals around for her… As if it were absurd of me to not immediately begin the examination myself. They took a sample for a test and began to rail off a list of STD tests they were going to give me, telling me they think it might be herpes, but they’re not totally sure and they have to be sure.
No mention however is made of the antibiotics that the first doctor, now present, said was standard procedure to administer at this stage. When I ask about the antibiotics I’m now told by the second doctor that their policy is to administer said STD tests, all of them, racking up the hefty bill and making more money as usual, before they can prescribe me antibiotics.
«You know, how can we treat if we don’t know the cause» — kind of policy.
The first doctor makes no acknowledgement whatsoever that she explained to me a very different policy not fifteen minutes before.
Wow.
So after waiting in this hole where the receptionists barely acknowledge my existence, I’m then subject to a stuttering nurse with the bedside manner of a jackyl while wearing a paper skirt with my ass hanging out in a cold room, am then humiliated before two women doctors who are terrified of my genitals and most likely have a disdain for their own bodies as well, compensating because of their own insecurities, they treat me like a disease, lie to me, and then charge me $ 58. And I still have no insight as to what might be going on with my body when I leave, because the clinic I just visited is really a front, like so many medical facilities are, for making cold hard cash, not educating or helping their patients.
In the end, I went to a Kaiser Permanente facility, was tested and came up negative on every STD.
Four days prior to my visit to ECMG I had injured myself on the job, pulling my sartorius muscle and that evening had indulged in alcohol and cigarettes, not something my body is used to… All this combined helped spark a case of what’s known as epididymitis. I had many of the common symptoms.
But at the El Cerrito Medical Group, this is known as «herpes». SKY HERPES that I contracted from a HOBO UNICORN. WEEEEEEOO!!!

I have been going here for 6 years. They do there best to help you and spend time with you in a very busy world. Getting in same day is not alway easy but they do get you in same day — you have to do a walk in — first come first serve (not the most convenient system, but it works) and the are open 7 days a week! and late on Thursdays! Dr. Simon is the best Dr. I ever had.

This place is a disaster. Let’s see — they said I was was enrolled in their group when I scheduled my first appt but I wasn’t and the insurance dinged me for it. They took weeks to schedule procedures, then scheduled them at out of group places so you have to pay for them. They didn’t fax records or return phone calls. And a hundred other things I’ve repressed since moving on to another group.
I’d really choose SF General if it came down to it.