EvergreenHealth Primary Care – Canyon Park

It’s hard to review a place like this because most of my issues with the place are systematic of our entire medical system.
You end up spending hundreds of dollars for absolutely nothing. Let’s say you have a common biking injury. You figure «hey, I’ll just go to my family doctor and go from there». The problem with that is a place like this will charge you $ 250 just to see the doctor. It doesn’t matter if he/​she does absolutely nothing, and has no competency in what’s wrong with you. They’ll know enough to send you on to someone else, but they somehow feel as if they still deserve the $ 250 for booting you on. They won’t just tell you ahead of time that it’s not the right place for that injury.
The Dr. they send you to (within the evergreen system) will also charge you $ 250 for the appointment. Even if they don’t do anything either.
So you could potentially be down $ 500 like I was with absolutely nothing to show for it. The only person who did anything of value to me was the X-​Ray technician. That bill was separate, and in addition to the $ 500. So my bill was $ 500 for nothing, and around $ 300+ for what was useful. I still have no idea if my shoulder is healing properly (that would be another $ 250 plus $ 300 which I’m unwilling to pay).
It’s definitely not the old days where you could take a spill, get patched up and charged for what was done. Now it’s like getting tossed around with people grabbing your wallet at every turn. They don’t care as long as they find the right insurance code to bill it as. That’s what they spend the majority of the time doing. It’s a pretty sad state of affairs. I have a high deductible plan so insurance only really acts as price negotiator.
In the end I’m sorry I went, and apologize for wanting to make sure my fracture would heal properly.
This review isn’t about anything specific doctor, and I don’t remember who the doctor even was. They played no part in it other than taking $ 250 from me.
My primary care physician is/​was Dr. Martin Vatheuer. But, because of my previous experience with him I’ve been avoiding doctors, and I only made an exception because something was clearly wrong and I wanted it looked at.
He isn’t a bad doctor. He was absolutely the best till they changed things to make the place a patient assembly line. In doing that they disregarded the doctor/​patient foundation of trust. It’s not just you, and the doctor anymore. It’s you, the doctor, and the note taker of the day. In that situation I felt massively uncomfortable, and I wish I would have said something. I didn’t even have time to react before the doctor started talking about topics I didn’t wish to talk about in front of this other person. I have no idea why he felt that was appropriate and as a result I no longer felt comfortable telling him anything going on about my body. That defeats the entire point of having a doctor.
Everyone knows guys don’t like seeing doctors, but this place does things in ways that worsens the problem. It justifies the reasons to avoid a doctor.

I know many people follow medical doctors when they move to another practice group. I am one of those people. Dr. Steven Rittenberg has been my clinical medical doctor since 2004. He is serious yet humorous and he genuinely cares and knows me as a patient and a person.
The clinic runs well and I have found all the staff at this location to be helpful, efficient and friendly.
As for him being a Dodgers fan, go Yankees!

This place has the worst, incompetent doctors, I have seen 4 of them (Brown, Manuel, Morgenroth and Sheffield) the only good ones are Morgenroth and Sheffield.
Other than those two, they will disrespect your wishes and also instead of refilling a prescription over the phone for a pre existing condition (in my case Asthma) they insist I come in almost every other month constantly paying a copay.
In my case I used to have very bad asthma, it was caused by allergies, something I asked the doctor about, they said it had no connection. I took it upon myself to cut out anything I felt was worsening my asthma. I went from being in the ER constantly to using not more than 2 rescue inhalers for the next 2 years. This year my asthma acted up as I had been traveling for a humanitarian mission and for whatever reason I needed my inhaler again. I didn’t have a prescription anymore because it had been so long, I had to go in to see the doctor.
I went in to refill it, but because I declined the steroidal inhaler (according to a medical journal more than 50% of asthma patients do not fill the prescription for a steroidal inhaler) doctor (Looking up his name now he is not a doctor but a nurse) Seve Manuel, decided to give me less refills sarcastically commenting that since I’ve controlled my asthma so well I shouldn’t need more. This was my first time meeting this medical professional.
This affects me because I do travel a lot which makes it very hard to constantly have to come in every 3 months and refill a prescription in person. Being able to control my asthma without steroidal inhalers is fantastic but asthma isn’t curable and even when people do take steroids they still need their rescue inhaler. Also when you are traveling to underdeveloped countries sometimes you come back a little worse for the wear.
This clinic and their doctors have made me jump through hoops to get something that is in my right. The worst, inexperienced doctors I have ever seen. I have 5 doctors (1 at Stanford Medical and 1 at Johns Hopkins) in my family alone and I’ve yet to see any of them this disrespectful to any patient. I have my own reasons why I’m against steroids for myself and have done a great job controlling my asthma in a more sustainable way than paying 200 $ for a steroidal inhaler every 3 months.
If you do not mind being disrespected or being told that your own actions to lessen your afflictions do not matter then by all means, come… if you value yourself and want a doctor you can communicate with, find somewhere else like I will be doing. If I could give this place 0 stars I would. Save yourself the headache and find a different clinic.

Would NOT recommend this clinic to anyone. My son was diagnosed with a yeast/​fungil infection and was prescribed a steroid cream by Dr. V. The steroid cream caused inflammation and hurt terribly (it was on his bottom). We ended up going into the Group Health Hospital Urgent Care in Bellevue and they said you NEVER put steroids on a fungil infection! This was such a painful experience for our 5 year old and should have been an easy diagnosis and fix, but turned into a nightmare. Will never return to this clinic. The physician said to always call your healthcare provider and ask for referrals in your area rather than just pick one online or go to a side of the road urgent care… we will be much more careful in the future.

I had to give up my Primary Care Physican of two years because Evergreen had his (Rittenberg, MD) schedule, for annual physicals, totally booked 6 weeks in advance.
He is either too busy to be able to schedule existing patients; or the facility has arranged his schedule as to preclude the reasonable probablity of his existing patients being seen.
The staff attempted to assign me to a new physican, but I won’t go to just any physican tossed to me. I need to have a connection with my physican, this includes meeting them at least once, prior to critically important procedures.
I am now completely out of the Evergreen system — just too busy.

I have been coming to this Clinic for years and this weekend was absolutely unbelievable. I came in Saturday for a walk in at 11 am and was told a 90 min wait. 2 hours rolled by and I was told I had one person a head of me. Finally at 1:30 I was roomed. 60 min later after still not being seen by a doctor I peeped my head out and the nurse looked at me confused and said you are next dont worry. She told me I was before the family roomed next to me. 30 min rolls by and I hear the DR in the room next to me so I came out questioning why I still have not been seen. The new nurse told me the dr was seeing the family that I was supposed to be seen before. I told the nurse that I have been waiting since 11 am and that this is wrong. I am covered head to toe in hives with a high fever and nobody took me seriously. The nurse tried telling me that family came first but The nurse that was there previously assured me I was before them. So clearly I was skipped. The fact that it took them four hours to even SEE me is terrible. I was told 90 min wait not a 4 hour wait. If I am told there is only one patient a head of me then why did it take two full hours to see them and me? Clearly I was skipped and I told them that and nobody would admit it. Instead they tried telling me that I was wrong. If I didnt love my provider I would never ever come back.

Dr. Steven Rittenberg is an amazing doctor and I am very lucky to have found him.
He cares for my 89 year old grandmother and myself.
I have a cold at the moment and saw him yesterday. I was blown away that he called me this morning to find out how I am doing… Is this man for real? People still do that?
The best part is he’s a UCLA graduate and a lifelong fan of the Dodgers… What’s more to say? The guy is perfect!!!
On a side note the staff has always been polite and very helpful.

Even though I worked for surgeons for three years, I still cringe at the thought of going into that small room.
Dr. Pamela Sheffield is a GREAT doctor! I absolutely loved her! She got all my prescriptions in order and gave me additional information on options I had for certain treatments that I hadn’t considered before.
She made me feel comfortable and answered ALL my questions. I have no hesitation in going back to see her!
Also, she doesn’t rush!