I was looking up the Heart Check America phone number to reschedule my appointment and I stumbled upon this site. I'm not sure if I was originally called by this number or not, but I was called by Heart Check America and I agreed to do the free heart scan. I know that they aren't going to give me a free scan without a pitch. They do other scans and I'm sure they have a package deal. I went to their office once for my heart scan and they were backed up to the point where I couldn't wait and had to reschedule, but it's legit to the extent that they are a (for profit, I assume) company that does a variety of medical tests. I'm sure that the price you pay for the free one is to have to sit through their pitch, which possibly could be high pressure according to how easily you are pressured.
They do testing that most doctors would never proactively suggest or prescribe without some cause. What they do is no doubt part of the growing field of proactive testing to try to identify problems before you have to have it done because you already have a visibile, symtomatic problem. Life Line Screening is another company that does proactive medical scans, but they aren't free or a "come on" to anything else.
Is it worth it...that's up to you. But so many of the comments here make it sounds like they are phishing to steal your identity or something sinister and based on my experience, I have not seen that to be the case. The free heart scan is their marketing approach. The reason you get the call and no response when you say hello, is because, like many telemarketing companies, they are calling on what is called a "predictive dialer." They have bands of people with computers in front of them and the system continues to "poll" to see who is not on a call and they send the call to that telemarketer. There is a gap between the time you answer and they say hello because your information hasn't come up on the screen yet. In other cases it's because the call was sent to an agent who just got on another call or was otherwise unable to answer. Nothing spooky about it, but a technology issue.
No. The worst possible thing that could happen is that you get a "false positive" result on the test. That is, they tell you that you are horribly ill. You go to your doctor and go through a long list of expensive, painful, possibly dangerous tests to confirm the result. Those tests show you are fine. Then it turns out the scanner or the person who interpreted the results did something wrong.
And you can expect those folks to contact you at least once/year to repeat the screening. They'll suggest more screenings that aren't free and aren't covered by your insurance. Depending on what the test is you are probably being exposed to x-ray radiaton you don't need. X-rays are not without their danger. They are fine when you need them, but should be avoided except when there is some evidence of a problem.
Total sammers. What I like to do is keep the scammed on as long as possible. At some point I ask for a supervisor and wait for the excuse. This time it was "he's in a meeting".... right. Eventually they hung up on me. I believe they are calling from India, she had a horrible accent.