Medical Mystery Shopping

Yesterday was a busy day, but one of my more lucrative projects.  I posed as a patient at an urgent care facility and earned $150 for my time (forty minutes for the appointment and about one hour for the report).  Medical mystery shopping is particularly appealing to me since I do not carry health insurance.  Earlier this year, I was able to receive a mammogram as part of a mystery shop.  I also had a cholesterol check.  I was paid $150 for each of these in addition to having the procedures reimbursed.  If medical mystery shopping is something that interests you, I highly recommend The Baird Group (http://baird-group.com/mystery-shopping).

So, back to yesterday's appointment.  I went to the urgent care facility and told them I had been having headaches.  I spent $133 to find out I should drink a cup of coffee.  No kidding!  The nurse practictioner (that's right, no docs there) found out I had been off caffeine for eleven days and pretty much ordered me to grab a cup of java.  She wrote me a prescription as a back-up plan, but she seemed to think that Starbucks would do the trick.  I took her advice!

After the urgent care appointment, I did a walkthrough at a local hospital.  A walkthrough is exactly what it sounds like.  You go to a medical facility and just walk through, sit down, hang out, and pay attention.  Oh, and take lots of photos.  I forgot to mention a Smartphone is a necessity for these shops because you might be a little obvious if you're snapping pictures of the receptionist with your Kodak EasyShare.  The walkthrough took just over thirty minutes, and the report was not half as long as the patient visit form.  The payment was $50.  I love walkthroughs.

While I was out, I picked up a few other shops including a hardware store (batteries plus an $8 payment), an office supply store (staples plus $7), a deli (lunch), and two facilities where I was able to mail gifts to my out-of-state family.  When I arrived home, I made a few phone calls to another medical center ($5 each for 10 minutes of work) and then began the reporting.

Completing reports is every mystery shopper's least favorite thing to do.   They can be tedious, especially the longer ones like the medical shops, but the other reports generally take less than twenty minutes each.  Also, once you complete enough of the same type of shops, the reporting is much easier.  I type fast, so I don't really mind reporting.  Unfortunately, yesterday I had eleven edits waiting for me in my editing bin at www.a-closer-look.com, so by the time I finished my reports at 9:15 PM, I still had a long night ahead of me.  But I made over $300 in total yesterday, which will allow me to take a few days off in a couple of weeks when a friend comes to town and enjoy a much needed spa visit.

Have I mentioned lately that I love my job?

To learn more about some of the companies that provided yesterday's jobs, go to www.bareinternational.com, www.mysteryresearchers.com, and www.marketforce.com.