Dr. Costantino may be a good surgeon, but he is a terrible doctor. Here is what happened:
My first appointment with him and our only actual meeting was extremely frustrating and upsetting. He only saw patients on Mondays and his waiting room was crowded and I assumed a long wait, which is fine. Specialists are in demand and I understand that and never resent waiting. I always bring work with me or I use the time to rest. I was on disability and still in the middle of recovering from the dizziness and nausea of labyrinthitis and was still pretty sick, so I just sat quietly. After two hours, I was shown into an examination room, where his intern greeted me and asked me the preliminary questions. He did a quick exam and made a few notes in my chart. Dr. Costantino zoomed in, sat down with me for five minutes, told me I would need a biopsy because there was a chance that I had a cancerous salivary gland, made a rather crass joke about it being OK for me not to have studied for "this exam" (my doctor's visit) and departed.
He left it up to his intern to find someone to do the biopsy, and the intern sent me to Park Avenue Radiology, to Dr. Neil Goldberg, who refused to do the biopsy because the radiology tech could not locate the mass. I called Dr. Costantino's office to determine my next step and my message got lost. I called repeatedly, with poor results. When I finally got the scheduling assistant on the phone, I told her that I was very frustrated by the lack of communication from her office and she told me I could find another place to have the biopsy done, perhaps in New Jersey. I told her I was not well enough to drive and furthermore, I did not appreciate being dumped to find my own doctor and that I wanted to speak to Dr. Costantino on the phone. The assistant did not or would not ask him to call me and she made another appointment, which Dr. Costantino later canceled (a family illness). I rescheduled, and my next appointment followed two weeks later, but Dr. Costantino also canceled that one: he had decided to extend his vacation. It was determined that I would see his associate Dr. David Hiltzig, who was helpful (and apologetic) and found the correct doctor to do the biopsy.
Costantino is not a healer nor a gentleman. If he had spent even three minutes looking at the paperwork I filled out as part of my chart, he would have noticed that I have three close relatives who have died of cancer before age 62, one of them being my mother, and dropping the word "cancer" in my lap and then running out of the room was both irresponsible and cruel. He stuck me with a $400 bill and a lot of wasted time and a great deal of anxiety. read more
