First off, I'd like to say that the OB/GYN who works with Intown Midwifery, SeeBaby, is an admirable practice. Dr. Brad Bootstaylor knows his stuff, and with him we were completely happy. Also, Atlanta Medical Center did a supurb job with our delivery and our son's critical care. The nurses, doctors and anesthesiologists were respectful, perceptive and kind from beginning to end.
In all honesty, Intown Midwifery did a fairly good job, too, leading up to and including the delivery, with a few kinks. It was afterwards that they dropped the ball. Specifically, they did not execute our son's circumcision well or even according to their own contract, and then they ignored our request to correct their error.
I'll get to that in a minute. Before the delivery we noticed a few customer service issues. First of all, who out there likes to have the new midwife in the practice 'trained' on them? It really made us feel less than special, and to make things worse, the rookie didn't have good listening skills and was often arrogant, impatient and cold.
Secondly, the wait times were long and we often got stuck in 5 o'clock traffic for a 2 o'clock appointment. Furthermore, the practice did not bill our insurance properly, causing headaches months after the fact. These are both signs of unprofessionalism, disorganization and sloth on the part of the practice. In fact, one test they charged us for was never even performed.
But these are all three star complaints. Now for the real reason we've given Intown one star. Intown offered to do our son's circumcision, saying that they would use anesthesia. We agreed, and a week or so after the delivery we brought our son to be circumcised.
We signed a contract that stated only Margaret would perform the circumcision, as she was (at the time) the only person in the practice qualified by the State of Georgia to do so. As it turned out, Linda performed the circumcision. We were kicked out of the room in which they circumcised our son, and when they brought him out to us, he had what looked to be a small blister on his torso that we were told was due to his diaper being too tight. Later that night, the circular-shaped blister turned bright red, looking more like a burn.
Five days later, the Plastibell fell off of our son's penis, revealing a strip of skin still linking the foreskin to the shaft. Concerned, we asked our pediatrician about it and he referred us to a pediatric urologist. We took our son to the pediatric urologist who confirmed that the surgery had not been performed well and that our son might need corrective surgery (to be determined upon his first birthday). He also confirmed that there was absolutely no way the burn was due to an overly tight diaper, but more likely resulted from a carelessly affixed clamp during the circumcision procedure itself.
We approached Margaret at Intown Midwifery with these findings, asking that if our son did require surgery, Intown would cover the associated medical expenses. We did not demand damages beyond these expenses, as we are not like that. We simply wanted the error corrected (if need be) as an act of good faith towards us, their client.
The reaction from Margaret was tight-lipped and evasive; she claimed that we were apprised of the risks at the time we signed the contract, and thus had no recourse. We replied that since she herself did not perform the actual surgery as prescribed in the contract, it had already been voided the minute Linda performed the procedure. Margaret changed course and said they would consider our request for reparation and get back to us.
It has been over two months and we haven't heard anything from Margaret. We have been trying to get in touch with her without success. We are preparing to meet with legal counsel to consider our options. All we really want is for Intown to correct their mistake, as any honest business would do for an unhappy client. Instead, they have chosen to stonewall and shift blame away from themselves, hoping we will just give up and forget about it.
Every time we change our son's diaper we are sadly reminded of the poor decision to switch to Intown Midwifery from our more traditional OB/GYN. We wanted to have a more patient-focused natural birth and we ended up with a headache.
Intown Midwifery is great on marketing and low on performance, which is a shame, as the idea of a midwife-driven practice is solid. Save yourself the headache, bypass Intown Midwifery and go directly to Dr. Bootstaylor and his excellent practice, SeeBaby. read more