I had a great relationship with my psychologist for the last ten years, who did his best to accommodate my disabilities. He retired, and one of his recommendations for me was Dr. Satten. Even though I was 10 minutes late for our appointment (because I got lost thanks to duplicate street names), it was still another 15 minutes until he came out and brought me to the back, and then I was told our session would be about 15 minutes since I was so late. Um....WTF?
There's much he asked me and said that I didn't think was appropriate to my problem -- he'd had a conversation with my previous doctor, who told me he went into great detail, and suggested "treatments" no one has ever suggested to me in my life. In short, I didn't care much for his personal style, but felt I'd give it a whirl just the same. I usually give them three sessions before I drop them if I'm not comfortable.
I am also neurologically severely disabled and had just been put on a new medication that was causing me to have constant absence seizures. This causes me to often miss appointments, because I can't drive then, and have to call my husband to leave work and come take me if it's too much. I realize this isn't fair to my doctors. I suggested my usual solution of paying not only my co-pay, but also what the doctor is reimbursed by my insurance company. This way they lose no money if I'm a no-show, and have that time free to catch up on other work.
This didn't work for him. Our data conflicted on how many sessions I'd missed (two to emergency, as in actually in a bed in the ER) and he declined to treat me.
I have no problems with his decision to not treat me. Obviously, it was clear to him that I wasn't the right patient for him, and I'd rather not work with someone who wasn't on my side, too.
My biggest complaint is their front desk. If you actually reach someone, they're very pleasant and helpful. However, the odds of your reaching a human being rather than the answering machine are about 2%. If you leave a message on the machine, the odds of someone returning your call are about 45%. This office clearly needs at least one more person on front desk duty. It took me over a month of calling twice a day and leaving messages once a day to reach a live person to schedule what turned out to be my last appointment.
Frankly, it was all too damn much hard work.
As far as Dr. Satten himself goes, I'm not impressed, but that may just be because we're not compatible personalities. I'm sure someone else would have great success with him.
That is, if this person can get a live person on the front desk to make an appointment. read more