Dr Kieff seems like a pretty good ENT. The audiologist is very nice and (as far as I could tell)…read morevery competent & thorough.
The admin staff, however...
For some reason they use both MGB Patient Gateway and AthenaHealth, and it appears that they don't have either one set up properly. As a result, they besiege patients with reminders, confirmations, and early check-ins. Seven calls in less than a week. Text after text. (After STOP after STOP.) Emails upon emails.
I called to make an appointment. No sooner had I hung up than the phone rang with their number. Thinking they were calling back to let me know there was a problem or something, I rather foolishly answered. Nope. Automated reminder about the appointment I had literally just made. Productive!
And their response? Breathtaking lack of empathy, self-awareness, and responsibility. It's not their fault. Nothing's their fault. Never. Why are you even talking to us about this? Can't you see we're not interested?
Twice as frustrating as all the calls and messages combined.
"The computer did that, not me." Um, actually, only half the calls were from the computer. The rest were from two of them sitting five feet apart who didn't coordinate. Can't blame the computer for that!
"We don't control that." Really? Who do they think controls it? Because we're old enough to see a lot of doctors pretty often in this house, and they're the only ones with this problem.
And, as has been elsewhere observed, they have a bizarre obsession with having a credit card on file so they can bill the patient for whatever, whenever. On my first visit, I pulled out my Apple Card (which does not have any visible card information) and they just about lost their minds. They nearly refused to keep the appointment because they couldn't make a copy of it in case they needed to charge me later. (Spoiler alert: they didn't.) They had to get Dr Kieff to make a special exception to their policy. And, as with the notification problem, this appears to be entirely because they don't know and don't care how the technology the practice depends on actually works.
While I was in the waiting room, the person ahead of me checking out was complaining about the exact same thing. And they got the exact same dismissive response I eventually got, along with some very unnecessary sarcasm.
When my turn came, the minute I told them I was frustrated by this, they sternly told me to leave. (Which I did, never to return.) I think they knew I was going to ask to speak to the Doctor about it since they clearly didn't care.
They're also the ones that answer the phones and open the mail. My guess is that while they surely generate a lot of these types of complaints, they're also able to keep those complaints from ever making it to the doctor. So I suspect Dr. Kieff, who, again, seems like a pretty decent ENT, is not aware of much of this. Which is a shame.