Ansari is an arrogant clinician who did not listen to our medical concerns, which resulted in substandard medical care and wasted insurance coverage, and the Sutter Health Palo Alto Medical Foundation (PAMF) Sleep Center in Capitola, where he practices, is a poor quality clinic because of him.
During our post-sleep study consultation with Ansari he said that because we had previously often pulled off our full face CPAP mask in our sleep, a smaller and less invasive nose only mask would be better. However, we clearly told him that due to our having been punched in the nose as a teen and having not receiving proper treatment for this, our nasal passages are chronically swollen and narrow, and we thus cannot breathe freely through our nose, so we strongly doubted that we could breathe through a nose only mask. To emphasize the seriousness of our difficulty breathing through our nose, we told him that an ear, nose, and throat surgeon had previously suggested that we could have a balloon sinuplasty --a procedure in which a balloon is inserted into the nose, blown up, and removed, in order to permanently expand the sinuses-- or even more invasive surgery, in order to correct the problem, but we had not had such procedures, hence our nasal passages are still swollen, and our nasal breathing is restricted. We asked if he wanted to examine our nasal passages to see the swelling and narrowness himself, but he declined to examine us.
We explained to Ansari that because of our difficulty breathing through our nose, we wanted to use the full face type of mask that we had previously used, and that we had been getting used to it over time and having more success keeping it on while asleep. Ansari continued to dismiss our concerns, insisted that a nose only mask would be best, and prescribed one.
We picked up our CPAP with the nose only mask on a Friday. Just as we expected, we could not breathe through the mask. Our insurance requires us to use the CPAP for at least 4 hours a night for 21 days in a consecutive 30 days period within the first 90 days that we have it. If we fail to meet this criteria, our insurance will not pay for the CPAP. For reasons outside the scope of this review, we previously had difficulty meeting this criteria. So, because CPAPs are expensive machines and our income is low, it is imperative that we are prepared ahead of time as best as possible --including having the right type of mask that we can breathe through-- in order to get our nightly insurance hours in.
However, since we got the CPAP on a Friday, and the CPAP device supplier was closed during the weekend, because of Ansari's failure to listen to us, and his pretentious insistence that he knew more about our own nose than we do, he wasted at least 3 days of our 90 days insurance trial period --Friday, Saturday, and Sunday-- during which we could not use the CPAP.
We plan to file a complaint against Ansari and the Sutter Health PAMF Sleep Center with the California Medical Board, and are now looking for a different sleep disorders clinic that employs clinicians who actually *listen* to their patients.
Note that as of the date of this review, two of the previous three reviews describe Ansari as "condescending," which is a close synonym to our description of him as "arrogant" and "pretentious." Ansari clearly has a major ego problem. read more
