I cannot say this doctor is not good. She's nice. But...
My son had ears surgery about 2 years ago, and now he still has some ear problems from time to time. My wife usually gets him to the doctor. He recently started complaining about ear pain, and so we made an appointment. Doctor didn't advice much, saying that the pain should go away by itself soon. About 3-4 weeks later he still complained about this pain, and I emailed to the doctor. She said we should come back for her to see him again. This time I brought him to the doctor and she said the same, that she doesn't see problems other than his running nose, and maybe that's allergy. So she referred him to the allergy test. That was pretty much it.
Then I received bill and found it's even higher than before. I compared and found that before she charged for service level 3, but this time it was service level 4. I called to the office to ask why the service level increased - that was follow-up visit, and there was no much information gotten. They first sent me to the billing, who told me that level 4 means more care and it's more expensive. That was obvious, but not helpful. Then I called them again and talked to the office manager, who told me that the doctor sets levels, and she cannot do anything about it.
So what I can say - I feel like that was not fair, and I feel like it was a punishment for returning to her with the same question. I feel like it's waste of money ($224 for this kind of visit after insurance), and I don't know what to expect if we return to her with allergy results. She previously sent us to ENT, even though we only wanted hearing test, i.e. she didn't refer us directly to the test, but made ENT doing so (and that ENT visit costed a lot of money too). I understand that doctor supposed to know what she's doing, and I didn't complain about that ENT visit, and just paid my bills, but this time it was too obvious to me that we were overcharged for the service we received, and I'm going to find another doctor, who would either know how to stop my son's ear aches or at least would not charge us for some highest level of service. read more