I'm an autoimmune patient who has had 7 oral and maxillofacial surgeries to remove my teeth and reconstruct my dentition. But even before these surgeries, I already had chronic sinusitis, for which I began consulting Dr Farid two years ago.
Sadly, she was very negligent with my care (e.g., she failed to request for necessary tests and didn't recommend proactive measures that might have prevented the necessity of sinus surgery, which she eventually recommended as a matter of urgency) and repeatedly failed to get back to me in a timely fashion (sometimes making me wait as much as two to three weeks for a response). This disrupted and delayed my surgical schedule, inconveniencing my other providers and causing me a great deal of stress and anxiety.
Why not suggest antibiotics, steroid nasal rinses and a conservative treatment protocol first? Why was "everything fine" until one day I suddenly required immediate surgery? Can the doctor even argue that she was actually monitoring me in an appropriate way?
Her staff also had trouble converting my Cone Beam CTs (CBCTs, which are used by dental professionals to get a panoramic view of a patient's mouth) into the Optum-Washington system, and thus had difficulty accessing some of their diagnostic images. But this happened THREE TIMES over the course of two years. The first snafu was excusable and understandable. But by the 2nd and 3rd times, should the doctor not: a.) find a way/someone to convert the files so they are readable; or b.) simply inform the patient that it couldn't be done and that an additional CT scan would be necessary instead? I would have complied immediately, regardless of the time and cost, because I needed to know if it was safe to proceed with my surgical schedule.
Each time, I had to deliver the CBCTs from my dental radiologist's office to Dr Farid's. But patients shouldn't have to deliver scans from one provider to another, should they? Isn't it the job of her staff to call outside providers to request for patient files and assist the doctor in converting them? What does this suggest about her learning curve and that of her staff's? After all, this was not a new problem, and some effort could have been made early on to address it.
Dr Farid then asked my oral surgeon to take numerous (and time-consuming) screenshots of a large CBCT file for her. Why should my oral surgeon be saddled with what was clearly Dr Farid's responsibility?
When I pointed these issues out, her staff accused me of "abuse." Worse, Dr Farid automatically believed them WITHOUT ONCE ATTEMPTING TO HEAR MY SIDE. So: a patient is not allowed to give feedback or expect her medical provider to give her the benefit of the doubt? Instead, the doctor exhibits a blind (and unempirical) loyalty to her staff even when they are clearly underperforming?
Claiming that a patient is "rude" is a way of deflecting attention away from the fact that they routinely failed to do their jobs and clearly had very little interest in (or sense of responsibility for) the well-being of a patient who had already had six oral surgeries and was understandably anxious about the upcoming two. Instead, I was scheduled to have a major oral procedure without an ENT clearance from her until the very last minute.
I can only conclude that Dr Farid's work ethic is substantially different from that of other providers at Optum-Washington. As I understand it, 3-5 business days is an acceptable wait time for a doctor's response - not over two weeks. This continued to happen over time. Small wonder that this laziness (and that of her staff's) became a source of stress for me. Patients are after all only human.
Sadly, my written complaint about this to Optum-Washington's patient feedback center led nowhere. But if this type of medical care is acceptable to this facility, perhaps I should take my business (and patient needs) elsewhere. read more
