I've been meaning to write this for a while now. This practice is BY FAR the WORST place you could ever take your child for pediatric care. Take this as a warning from someone who used to work there. Dr. Beckman is nothing short of a money hungry, terrible person. I watched in horror as she turned away a patient who showed up at our office with an emergency as her child was going into anaphylaxis shock from a bee sting. Dr. Beckman's reasoning was that this mother has recently left our office due to the annual fee increase to bring her child to the practice. That's right, Dr. Beckman charges you an annual fee, PER CHILD, to come to the office and every year that fee goes up. Another Dr. tried to step in a take the mother and her child into a treatment room and Dr. Beckman stopped them telling the mother she could go to Greenwich Hospital for assistance. You would think one would become a pediatrician because of their love for children and their well being, not for each dollar that comes rolling their way.
Wait..there's more. She DEMANDS that each patient leave a credit card on file, which I'm pretty sure is illegal in some way. Once a month she would give us a list of all the patients that held a balance and we would have to go through each account and if there was a card on file, we were instructed to charge the card for any balance on that account. There was no requirement to call the parents ahead of time to discuss the charge or payment procedure. She made it into a contest between me and my co-worker, whoever collected the larger amount from patients on our listing would receive a $20 visa gift card. Now mind you, sometimes codes are billed incorrectly or your insurance company takes a little longer to process the claim, etc, none of that mattered to her. If you had a pending balance by the time she printed the next listing, your card was being charged.
This practice was run so poorly, than every single staff member that worked there has since left to pursue other employment. This includes doctors, nurses, office manager and front desk staff. NO EXAGGERATION!!
The practice is/was open for walk in sick hours from 8:00am-9:00am before regularly scheduled appointments began for the day. Often times she would be late getting to the office and patients would be stuck waiting to see a Dr. She would come in around 8:30 and if there were more than 5 patients waiting she would tell us to have everyone else leave and come back for a scheduled appointment during the day. So if you arrived for a sick visit and you were the 6th person in line, EVEN IF YOU ARRIVED AT 8:05am DURING WALK IN HOURS, she would have you rescheduled to come back later.
Once, there was a distraught mother trying to make appointments for her newborn twins. She became frustrated when she couldn't get an appointment with Dr. Beckman and Dr. Beckman was not returning her calls. The mother, rightfully, voiced why did she decide on this practice if she couldn't see or speak with HER doctor and Dr. Beckman's response was to end the call with the mother, turn around and call with the father, told him that his wife was suffering from postpartum depression and that they were banned from coming to the practice. She instructed the front staff to lock the front door in case the mother tried to come to the office to collect any records as "her children are so young that she can start over at a new pediatrician without our records."
As a mother (of an infant at the time) myself, I was horrified by her actions. I could no longer remain a part of this monstrosity. I walked out on them following an incident where a child and distressed mother were driven away from the practice in an ambulance.
There are countless instances, I could go on and on. She's just a horrible human being who is after nothing but your money. Stay away!! Find another pediatrician that actually cares about the well-being of your child. read more
