Short version: unprofessional, disorganized disaster of a practice.
My wife was referred to this doctor due to a cancerous growth on her eyelid. Very little about our experience was positive. We arrived for her appointment fifteen minutes early. There was no staff to be seen but we could hear them chatting somewhere out of view of the waiting room. A few minutes later, someone finally came to the desk, and my wife let her know that she was there for her appointment. She was asked to take a seat. Usual procedure, no big deal.
The doctor shares his office with some kind of permanent makeup artist. This lady has a TV set up in the waiting room, but instead of being able to watch TV, she has an advertisement for her permanent makeup business on a continuous ~3 minute loop, and it is LOUD, so you can't just ignore it. More on this later.
We waited for her appointment. Her appointment time came and went, and we waited. We waited some more. And then we waited some more. Finally, about 50 minutes past the time of her appointment, we were shown to the exam room. There was no apology for the wait, and during the wait, there was no communication from the staff, who were too busy chatting about their personal lives to give a damn about what was going on. Meanwhile, the entire time we were subjected to that continuous loop of advertisement over and over and over as though the purpose of the waiting room was to drive patients insane for the amusement of the unprofessional staff.
We were shown to the exam room, my wife's blood pressure, etc., were measured, and we waited. And waited some more. And waited a bit more. 15 minutes later, the good doctor finally made his way in the room. He seemed pleasant, but frazzled. He examined my wife's eyelid, made some recommendations, and based on those recommendations she elected to have another biopsy done.
The doctor left the room, and again we waited. And waited. Meanwhile, we heard the doctor and one of his staff getting into a loud argument right outside the door. My wife and I looked at each other in disbelief. Finally, 10 minutes later or so, the good doctor returned, performed the procedure on my wife and sent us on our way.
On our way out, we passed by the desk, unsure of what we needed to do for a copay. The staff ignored us, so we called for their attention. She looked at my wife and said,
"Oh, I have no idea what is going on with that."
And just left it hanging there as though it was our responsibility to figure it out for her. My wife said,
"Well, when you figure it out, send me a bill."
And we left.
A week or two later, my wife got a call from the office confirming that her growth was, in fact cancer, and that they would like schedule an appointment that week for a later date. My wife asked to talk with the doctor to go over a few things and the lady on the phone said he doesn't take phone calls, that she would have to set up an appointment for consultation to talk with him. My wife tried to ask the lady on the phone several questions and she couldn't answer any of them. My wife informed her that she was breastfeeding and either needed advise on whether or not the surgery medication was going to be harmful to our baby, or she needed to talk to our pediatrician to see what our options were, whether we needed to start weaning our child... you know, she need information so she could make an informed decision. The woman on the phone was unhelpful in that regard, so my wife responded that she had an upcoming appointment with our pediatrician and that she would schedule the appointment after she spoke to the pediatrician. The woman responded in the affirmative and ended the conversation. The woman on the phone was even rude because my wife didn't want to immediately set-up an appointment that instant because she wanted to talk to her family doctor first.
A week or so went by, and we got a certified letter from the doctor. Assuming it was the results of her biopsy, my wife opened it, and to her shock it was a letter from Dr. Berris informing her that he would no longer accept her as a patient because she had taken longer than a week to schedule her treatment.
NOWHERE AND AT NO TIME WAS MY WIFE INFORMED OF THIS URGENCY. They did not tell us that they would cancel everything if we didn't talk to them within a week's time. She has f***ing cancer for Christ's sake, and the best these idiots can do is send her this kind of a letter? I am so angry right now that I can hardly control myself.
I have never, in all my 35 years of life, experienced such disorganized, unprofessional, and frankly, incompetent treatment from any kind of medical staff. If this is how they behave with a life threatening condition, imagine how they'll treat you for something less important.
Avoid as though your life depends on it. read more
