The office experience was bad. There's a theme here. Others have made similar comments on Google…read moreand Yelp. Here's mine:
I made an appointment online and received both email and text confirmations. I go to my appointment, the woman says that she has nothing showing for me. I respond that I made an appointment for 8:30 with Advantage. She looks up at me and says, "This is orthopedics, where are you supposed to be?" I reply that I'm supposed to be here. Again, "No, this is orthopedics, where are you supposed to be?" So I give the doctors name, who is an orthopedist, which stops her from repeating the condescending implication that I'm in the wrong location a third time, she then asks my first name and birthdate. Looks at the screen and says, I see that there was an appointment and you canceled it. I tell her that I never cancelled it.
Anywho, she brings out what I assume is an office manager or combo manager and nurse, who tells me that I would have received a text to respond to for confirming the appointment, and if I hit a 2 rather than a 1 then it would be cancelled. I say that I didn't get a text. She repeats her statement again, to which I repeat my answer. After I search my phone and find the original email and text confirming my appointment, I tell her I see no other messages asking for a 1 or 2. During the ensuing discussion she says not once, not twice, but three times that she's never seen that before - implying that she's never seen a cancellation occur without the patient doing it - clearly implying it's my mistake.
After I adamantly respond that there is no text as she describes in my phone, she says sorry but fortunately she has an opening in two hours. I say I can't wait that long. To which she says that she'd take me in sooner but that would put the doctor behind. Well, I guess if he has an opening in a couple hours then he wouldn't be behind after that but I guess that thought never reoccurred to her and by that time I had enough and left.
So I get back home and call the main line. Very nice and competent lady doesn't give me implications that I went to the wrong location or it's my error that the appointments been canceled. She just LISTENS. She checks and finds no record that I canceled the appointment. She sees an explanation that implies a problem with an upgrade by their third party scheduling service. Well there's the answer then, thank you. Can you please tell the ladies at the office that despite them not having seen it before, there is a situation where the system, not the patient, cancelled an appointment. Yes, she will do that.
But it doesn't end there unfortunately. Despite how nice and helpful this lady is in trying to get me in asap, there is a policy that all appointments require a doctor referral. My insurance doesn't require this, and after a wasted trip plus 25 minutes on the phone, I'm not inclined to make yet another call and be on hold for god knows how long to get a referral. The nice helpful lady says let me ask somebody.... After a while on hold she comes back and explains that it's their policy not because my insurance requires it, but because they've had billing problems when they don't have a referral. Hmm, I've never had that with any other of the numerous specialists I'd seen in the past ten years without a referral. Sorry, but the higher up person says that's the way it is.... so no appointment for me since I refuse to do business with nonsense.
In case Advantage reads this, a couple pieces of advice from a guy who worked 25 years in insurance companies, primarily working on claims compliance audits. First, you may want to consider a different third party scheduler. If their upgrades cause appointments to be cancelled, then they do not do adequate testing before release. I can't tell you how many similar glitches I've seen in my career by software companies cutting corners.
Second, if you're having a billing issue when other medical providers in the same situations don't, then you might want to look at that too. Many claims examiners in insurance companies have told me of their frustrations with some billing services never getting things right. If your appointment scheduling system is from the same entity providing your billing services, then that should tell you something. Anyway, finding a good doctor is of little relevance if you cannot even get in to see them because of lousy admin.
