Dr. Brode may be a fine pediatrician and family doctor, but if you are an HIV+ gay man who still has some self-esteem, you may want to choose someone else. I was not impressed with Dr. Brode, his staff, or the clinic where he works. His manner during our appointment felt rushed, rude, and careless.
It took over two months for me to get an appointment with Dr. Brode after i declined his clinic's first match, their most available (read: unpopular) doctor.
When switching my treatment regimen to lower my pill burden and cholesterol level, which i was grateful for, Dr. Brode gave me three drugs to pick from, telling me they were all the same, although there were slight differences in pill burden and side-effects. He seemed to want to get through the appointment as quickly as possible right at the outset.
During our appointment, Dr. Brode held up his Body Mass Index machine that read "Obese". 5'7" and 185 pounds is a bit overweight, but not obese. I told him that his machine was wrong and that the BMI machine failed to account for the muscle mass in my legs. His response was to hold up the machine not once but two more times in front of my face so that i could read "Obese"! We wasted a fair amount of time going round and round on this when i had more important issues to discuss.
I appealed to Dr. Brode for help healing the undiagnosed foot pain I had been experiencing off and on for a few years. Dr. Brode wrote me a referral to a podiatrist who then got paid by Medicaid to inform me that Medicaid does not pay for peripheral neuropathy tests. A total waste of time. I ended up solving the problem myself with New Balance shoes, stretching, swimming, and medical marijuana after i moved away from Texas.
Dr. Brode's nurse responded to the simple question i left on her voicemail about whether or not i could get my blood drawn at a lab closer to my home in South Austin by mailing a letter to my home address (!), not answering my question, but informing me how important it was to get my blood drawn before my next appointment.
Unlike private clinics, the clinic where Dr. Brode works absolutely refuses to release patients' T-cell counts and viral road results to them over the phone. The paternalistic reason they give is that their patients can't be trusted to make their appointments if they get this information ahead of time and that it is essential that patients have their complete lab results explained to them by a doctor. Unfortunately, the clinic staff can't seem to comprehend that their policy prevents patients and their partner's from immediate access to critical health information that may affect their behavior and risk; not to mention that it is not always possible for their patients to make immediate follow-up appointments... After i had had to write to their medical records department (twice, because they lost the first request) to obtain my lab results, Dr. Brode reiterated that my test results had been mailed to me as if they were doing me some kind of special favor. I would have been much more impressed if he had listened to me and then offered to discuss this with the Clinic Director in charge of this policy (who has since been replaced).
As i'm sure Dr. Brode knows, patients who wish to change doctors at this clinic must make an appointment with a social worker first, which relegates their issues to "social work" issue instead of a clinic management issue, which makes more work for their patients and, of course, more money for the clinic. There is only one other major clinic for HIV+ patients in Austin. And this is how patients in Austin get trapped with mediocre doctors in bad clinics.
For stable HIV+ patients in Austin, I recommend finding a good Internal Medicine Doctor who will write your prescriptions for you - or even better, leaving Texas and moving to one of the many states that has a long tradition of respect for LBGTQI people and that has expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont...)
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ADDRESSES FOR REPORTING PROBLEMS WITH DOCTOR BRODE OR ANY DOCTOR WHO WORKS FOR COMMUNITYCARE
Attention: Chief Operating Officer
CommUnityCare
RBJ Building
15 Waller Street, 5th Floor
Austin, TX 78702
Texas Health and Human Services
Provider Complaints
Health Plan Operations
Office #320
PO box 85200
Austin, Texas 78708
Texas Medical Board
Investigations Department - MC 263
PO Box 2018
Austin, Texas 78768-2018 read more
