We have been bringing our son to East Lake Pediatrics consistently since the day after he was born. He's two years old now and not always in control of his emotions. Sometimes it escalates into breath holding. After a recent breath holding experience, we decided to inform his doctors so they could establish a record of it.
Unfortunately, due to miscommunication between the triage nurses and doctors, it led to a very bad experience that put our family through a lot of heartache. Instead of clearly communicating to us that we needed to bring our son in for evaluation, they called Child Protection Services!
Unfortunately, once you've been reported, you have to go through with a whole investigation. We had to have our son evaluated by the CPS medical staff, who agreed with our assessment of breath holding, but wanted to differ treatment to his regular doctor, and so we scheduled a follow up examination with East Lake Pediatrics.
We met with Dr. Trudi Rash who was completely rude and unprofessional. She came into the room and introduced herself like she was a stranger who never met us before! She confirmed that she did receive the message about breath holding and that she was the one that directed the call to CPS be made. We questioned why she wouldn't have called us first, or why the practice would not have reached out to us, prior to taking such a drastic step. We have been going to this practice for two years and have a clear record of bringing our son into the office when needed and following the doctor's recommendations. Instead, Dr. Trudi continued insisting that they did contact us and that the medical note confirmed their version of events (she was unable to find the note, and it was omitted from the medical records when we later requested them).
After examination, Trudi agreed that it was indeed a breath holding spell and our son did not need to seek further medical treatment. We have since received clearance from a neurologist, who also confirmed that our son has breath holding episodes. According to the neurologist, there is nothing to be done at this time and he said that we demonstrated the knowledge and ability to handle these episodes.
We are appalled at how this was handled. We are NOT neglectful parents! We would certainly have brought him in. The practice took no ownership of the miscommunication, took no responsibility for casting aspersions on our parenting, and felt no remorse for failure to acknowledge the impact on our lives. Dr. Trudi was clueless about a patient she'd been seeing for two years, was defensive about how they handled it, rude and unprofessional, and uncaring about what we'd been through.
In addition to the frustration, humiliation, and time off work for CPS meetings/appointments and medical evaluations, my wife, who is a teacher, was unable to return to work until CPS satisfactorily closed the investigation because her school understandably has a strict policy regarding employees undergoing CPS investigation.
Our family has left this practice for another one where we receive more individualized care from a doctor who will is more communicative and personable with their patients. read more
