Activating prescriptions called in by doctors has been a headache since covid, but this pharmacy is shower than any other I've experienced and some of their workers are rude and dismissive. My prescription was submitted, I immediately activated it very early in the morning 0500 and I was not notified that they were working on it until after 1600. I came the following day around 1300 the prescription should have been ready for pickup at or after 0900. I was called up relatively quickly but then told that I had to wait while they "got it ready." I also had to ask for my ID back from the technician at the window. She then ignored me when I stated it was activated the morning before. It took an hour for the prescription to be actually filled and verified by the pharmacist. Then it took another 10 minutes to be called up to receive my prescription. A simple pickup - that was correctly activated - turned into over an hour wait.
See I tried not to resort to a review but Holy Ginger Snaps Batman! As a veteran who just retired this year after 20+ years of service, you would think I'm used to the unorganized gaggle of operations at medical facilities. No, still irritating! On the contrary, good location and convenient, versuses going to Fort Belvoir 45 min away, but staff is needed, communication training, medical systems and software training, and more emphasis on the maximum effective medical support to the local community with military veterans. Arrived at 6:50 a.m. and departed at 1:33 p.m. all for an ear infection diagnosis, ear drops and antibiotics. It's a Friday so the amount of patients were slim to none.
Had a physical in June, waited 45 minutes past my appointment time to be called back. Asked about certain things regarding my health and was told I had to schedule another appointment to talk about those things because SHE was behind on her patients. Finally decided to call to schedule and waited 3 hours on the phone to talk to the scheduler. Waited 4.5 weeks to attend said appointment. Was late 14 minutes because of an accident and was denied my appointment because I was “late”. Don’t come here. You’re better off going to an urgent care.
What a waste of time going to this health center. I'm glad I'm moving away and will never have to come back. Had an appointment for a regular checkup that I scheduled a month and a half in advance because they are I assume severely understaffed and it was the earliest appointment time I could get. The low availability of appointments is already bad, but in that time no one bothered to tell me I apparently needed to have a blood test done before the appointment to review the results during the appointment until I already showed up had annual checkups done previously without needing to do this. Waited at least 40 minutes past my scheduled appointment to see the doctor for a few minutes for basically no reason. Despite the fact that I was constantly asked to confirm my name and birthdate by several people during the visit, my doctor did not bother checking any basic information about me and asked if I was in high school when I have already graduated college and been working for several years. I get that I look young for my age and the doctor didn't mean any harm, but I've seen this doctor before and expect my doctor to have a basic understanding of the patient they are seeing. Even if I could have still asked about getting a checkup, I just wanted to get out of there as fast as possible because of how disrespected I felt by the whole experience.
Although there are caring and kind individuals that work here, the center as a whole is not great. My health care has been delayed multiple times due to terrible patient communication and poor scheduling practices. My prenatal care was delayed by weeks because no one from the center would return my voice-mails so I could get a referral to an OB. I am rarely able to get an actual person on the phone and when I do they usually aren't able to give me straight forward information. Most of the people I talk with at the center seem to have zero motivation to provide quality care. All of my visits here have seemed rushed by the physicians. They probably are required to see a ridiculous number of patients per day. It is such a shame that this is the only tricare prime option in the area.
For the most part I have had no major problems at this facility other than the pharmacy which is by far the worst. It is very long wait times even if it does not seem to be crowded. It took me over 2 hours to get a prescription coming from urgent care in the same building. The switch to new systems is making things worse. Trying to schedule an appointment is even worse because most of the time they will not answer the appointment lines and if they do, next available appointments are maybe a month or longer out.
100% disabled combat veteran here. Took four months to get through their impossible system to get an appointment for an annual physical. Bad traffic caused me to be 8 minutes late on Tuesday this week. Parking lot was mostly empty. No one in the lobby, etc. The nurse from Ethiopia who obviously did not care for American veterans CANCELLED my appointment on the spot and refused to reschedule. Told me to drive home over an hour and reschedule. I am NEVER returning to Tricare. This promise of free healthcare for life is the worst lie and a joke perpetrated on our Soldiers. No wonder we lose all of our wars. I would rather pay 5-10x more for civilian healthcare, so I don't have to be treated like a criminal.
I hope the larger Fort Belvoir Community Hospital administrative staff pay attention to the degrading performance of their outlying medical clinics. The Fairfax location has steadily gotten worse with wait times to get appointments, wait times being seen, staff keeping to their schedules and seeing patients on time, pharmacy filling prescriptions in a reasonable amount of time, etc. I don't blame the staff, I think they are caring and doing their best. I think it is an understaffing, under resource issue. I think Fort Belvoir Community Hospital can do better for active duty, their families, and veterans in the county.
Had great care when it first moved here from the other FFX location, but service has gone downhill. Requires looooonnnnngggg wait time when calling for appointments and PCMs have very limited availability. They always recommend urgent care as an alternative to a 6-week wait. If you need to pick up meds, pack a book and patience because the wait time is horrendous. Perhaps a better option is to find a civilian primary care.
Its 8am in thr morning. 8 people waiting for pharmacy tech working with a customer at the counter for more then 10 mins while the rest of us sit waiting. Just one pharmacy tech at the counter. I did see a glimpse of other workers in the back of the pharmcacy. Its ridiculous, we shouldnt have to wait so long while the tech figure out one customer's problem. Its now 15 mins later and customerd are piling up. They should work on timliness and processing customers through. If there is a problem, have the customer wait on the side and process the rest through. Managment really need to step up
