I have good and bad things to say about this practice. I've always had good experiences with the receptionists and with customer service over the phone. When I have a question about my daughter if she is sick, they are very responsive and let me know what I need to do or if I need to bring her in. I've also had good experiences with Dr. Granados and NP, Kelly Welstead. They are both caring and informative.
I have not had the greatest experiences with Dr. Flynn or Dr. Ault. We saw Dr. Flynn when my daughter was a baby/toddler and she made me feel rather ignorant. She was pretty condescending most of the time, whether or not that was her intention. She asked me how many ounces of milk my daughter was drinking - I didn't really know because we just gave milk to her in a cup, so I estimated. She said I could be causing her to become anemic and made me feel bad about it...she ran a test but it of course came back negative.
We had a couple of bad experiences with Dr. Ault. The first was when my daughter was 2 and suddenly stopped walking (she'd been walking since she was 10 months old and was very active). She started crawling and saying it hurt to walk. It was very odd behavior for her. Dr. Ault chalked it up to typical toddler behavior - that she was basically doing it for attention - and dismissed our claims that it was VERY unlike our daughter. Thankfully, a younger doctor diagnosed it as a side effect of the antibiotic she was on - apparently in rare cases, it can cause hip pain. She told us to give her Tylenol, and within a few hours, our daughter was back to normal! One good thing though - the next day, someone from the office called to ask about her condition to see if it had improved, so I definitely appreciated that.
Another time, our daughter had an ear infection and an eye infection at the same time. She was crying in the bathroom before Dr. Ault arrived because the pain in her ear was so bad. Dr. Ault assumed she was just being difficult on purpose or something and said, "If she keeps this up, I won't be able to check her at all!" Our daughter normally loves going to the doctor, so the crying was from the pain, not from being at the doctor's...but of course Dr. Ault didn't know this because she barely knew her. Finally, Dr. Ault realized she was crying for real - from the pain- and changed her position completely, saying she might have a very serious eye infection and that we would have to go to the hospital (all the way in Fairfax because apparently the PW hospital ER wasn't receiving children...???). We trusted her because well, we're not doctors, so we took her. The ER doctor couldn't believe our ped. had sent us there because it was just a simple eye infection and simple ear infection. She said our daughter wasn't even presenting symptoms of the severe eye infection. A couple of weeks later, we get a $900 bill in the mail from the hospital, not to mention the $90 for the regular doctor's visit!!! We had to split it up into 4 installments because we couldn't afford to pay it all at once. This one incident makes me so angry. I know that she was just trying to be cautious, but had she been more knowledgeable and been more willing to listen to us, this wouldn't have happened. What bothers me most is that both times, she seemed to think she knew our daughter better than we did and that she had a very cynical view of children's behavior. Sure, kids can act up, but if a parent is telling you it is very atypical for their child, shouldn't you give them the benefit of the doubt?
All in all, this practice is not bad but I will definitely be more selective about which doctors we go to in the future. read more