Our family has used this practice for many years. This group has been the mainstay of medical service for Marshall for decades, and they have a solid reputation.
Overall, I give the practice 4 stars overall. I can summarize the entire write-up below as follows: Love the people, generally hate the technology.
My personal doctor is Dr. Houska and he's good. The current support staff are caring, considerate and responsive. I have routine medical appointments that sometimes drive me crazy for the info below, but this is secondary. When I or someone in my family is sick and we need to see a doctor, we are given an appointment almost immediately, which is all very good. I would rate the whole practice 5 stars except for one area. I am writing this in hopes that someone at their practice may actually take the issues seriously.
I would almost showcase this group as an example of how NOT to use technology in support of patient care. Let me start with the one good aspect of their technology implemented:
1. Whatever bugs they may have had with prescriptions and lab tests orders, it all works smoothly for me now. I appreciate the fact that I can see my doctor, speak with him, and know that almost always my prescriptions will be waiting for me at my pharmacy.
Now for the major technology issues, specifically:
1. When a patient arrives, there usually is a long wait. I sense that they overbook, and not only that that the reservation system is setup to make sure that one arrives well ahead of the time on the doctor's appointment. We wouldn't want the doctor to have to wait. I often am the first patient of the day by appointment time yet have to wait for 30-45 minutes to get into the patient rooms. As I said I have been going here for years, and this is the pattern. I blame the reservation system for this.
One someone comes into the patient, they barely greet you. Each caregiver initially goes and sits in front of a desktop computer for your "interview". One would almost get the sense that the patient is the computer. The questions are less about your care in places and more about covering their behinds for the insurance company. Only after the computer's questions are satisfied does one get extended attention from the caregiver. Each caregiver follows a script so often questions are repeated. I find this tedious.
2. The office has been using an annoying robocaller for years as a "friendly" appointment reminder. The robovoice has a relatively long message saying condescending things that aren't enforced (please bring all of your medication with you for each visit). You have to wait until the robot is done before you can press 1 to confirm your visit. But wait if you think that you can hang up now you are mistaken. Because then the robot asks if you are the patient. You must press 1 again. You can never press 1 early, you must listen carefully to everything the robot says, regardless of whether you've memorized the speech. Failure to comply means that the robot will call back until you do.
I am sure that the above seems reasonable to some unthinking person, but deal with this while trying to get kids out the door for school, attending a conference call, or whatever. This whole script could be revamped. If I could simply press 1 right away to acknowledge my appointment that would solve this. But this is 90s technology at the best, and the robot must be allowed to do as he will. Telephony based tools have advanced greatly beyond this. Let's join this century and allow confirmation using texts, emails, etc.
3. Speaking of old technology. The office has implemented a recent patient portal. As a developer of portals for over 20 years, I can tell you that the underlying framework is at least 15 or 20 years old. I suspect that this is a package. Maybe one of the medical suppliers or insurance companies provide. I have used it but it was a waste of my time: (1) I sent an email there and never was given a reply or acknowledgement (2) I had some lab tests done by the VA. The VA portal is modern and effective. I downloaded the results to my laptop and then logged into the CFP portal to upload them there. There is no feature that I could find that allows for attachments to be uploaded. The design is awkward and just out of date. read more
