My adult children recently visited this dermatology office for the first time. While the front desk staff was pleasant and helpful, each of their appointments lasted 10 minutes or less. They both were new patients being seen for skin conditions, acne, and general skin cancer/mole check. I was amazed that all of these things could be checked and thoroughly discussed with them within this very short time frame. I waited in the waiting room for my son's appointment (my daughter went alone on her visit) to give him privacy as they are both learning to manage their own health care appointments, and are new to it.
My son's appointment was very quick and he left with three prescriptions, one of which was $160 and the other approximately $90. No one mentioned to me that these were expensive medications, or offered me any alternatives until I found out at CVS what the bill would be!
My daughter's appointment was worse. She left with some of the same expensive medications (again with no warning from the staff about the possible cost) and was incorrectly diagnosed with a fungal infection. She used the topical prescription-strength anti-fungal medicine for almost 4 weeks as directed, and saw no result. Her condition even worsened. She was so uncomfortable that we decided on a weekend to take her to the Minute Clinic in a nearby CVS. The N.P. there was fantastic! She asked if a skin scraping had been done to determine definitively that it was a fungal infection, and my daughter said no, that the doctor just looked at it visually. The N.P. said it didn't look at all fungal to her, and said it was textbook eczema, even showing us pictures from a medical book she had as a reference. She prescribed a brief course of oral prednisone to calm it down, and a different topical medication, appropriate for eczema. My daughter's skin healed very quickly and the condition has been at bay with this new topical medication.
That alone was enough to make me not return to Northeast Dermatology. But when we got the bill, we noticed that my son's appointment was about $60 more than my daughter's, so my husband called to ask why, since they had the same new-patient visit with no extra tests or procedures. They couldn't explain why, and he asked if someone from the billing department could call him back, as they were gone for the day. We have never received a call back.
I feel like the doctor appointments were too quick, and clearly not thorough enough in my daughter's case, since the doctor at the CVS Minute Clinic spent much more time and was extremely thorough in comparison. There was no attempt to discuss the exorbitant cost of the medications, and no satisfactory response when we had billing questions. It's possible we just got them on a bad day, but considering the overall experience I will not be returning there. read more
