A survey of 19 public health clinics describes a wide variety of response times and medical advice given its researchers, who posed as doctors in telephone calls to clinics across the country in a test that stretched over nine months.

One health clinic officer told a caller describing botulism symptoms to go back to bed. Another told a caller describing signs of bubonic plague not to worry. And not one of the public health clinic surveyed by the RAND Corporation suggested isolating a patient whose face, arms and legs were said to be covered with pustules or other smallpox symptoms, reports The Associated Press.

Overall, public health clinics responded to 91 percent of all calls within 30 minutes, the report notes. But some clinics failed to return calls for days, while others offered troubling medical guidance to people pretending to need help.

The RAND study, funded by the Health and Human Services Department, was released Tuesday,