Recent changes to Mayo Clinic patient portal

I am in the same situation. It wants me to schedule an appointment group. I'm guessing that means more than one appointment. It does offer several time slots to choose from but I have no idea what the appointment(s) are for - and that does make a difference. Some appointments, like blood draws, are very quick so you can schedule the next appointment fairly soon while other appointments, like CT scans and MRI scans, always have a lot of waiting and take longer so you schedule subsequent appointments a little later. You have to be fasting for some appointments and sometimes you might want to wear different clothing but this does not give me a clue about any of that. This has got to get better to be considered useful. The way it is now I will have to do some calling and/or messaging to find out how many appointments they want and what for before I schedule anything.

After a long phone call, it turned out they wanted 3 appointments(it didn't tell me that) and they were for my next scan check which is in August(it didn't tell me that).
However on the phone we were able to get them all set up. Blood draw one day, CT scan the next day and a consultation a minimum of a few hours after the scan.

OK, appointments all done so now I get a message and an alert that I have 2 new estimates. Now having estimates at all is new to me but what the heck, I'll play. It says "You have 2 new estimates. Review them now" so I click that expecting to review 2 new estimates. But no... it says "Loading Request an estimate" and takes me to a screen to "Create a new estimate" like this whole thing was my idea.
When I was developing and an application made you say - "What the...?" - that was considered a bad thing.

@nonobaddog
The estimate is basically amounts before it goes through you insurance and not the amount you are responsible to pay. If you send Billing a question or call them you will get a better explanation than I can give.

My husband keeps tabs on what goes through our insurance. I need to relearn .. I used to do it. I think it needs to be a joint effort now. We each have our days of “it is Greek to me”. I tell him sometimes “ it is gobbly gook to me” 😁

ZeeGee

Thank you. I think I understand what an estimate is. What gets me is that it says I have 2 estimates to review but then won't show them to me. It wants me to create an estimate. That seems to be strange. It never shows me the estimates it says it has for me. I really do not care very much. I have never had estimates for anything before in almost 50 years of being treated here so I won't miss them now if it won't show them to me. To me this appears to be a change that is not fully baked at this point.

@nonobaddog
We just make sure all is billed correctly .. matches our insurance EOBs. I don't think we have had any discrepancies with Mayo Clinic… local doctors we have.

App is very slow in responding and portal is very confusing.