Smith Walter A,MD

I went to this doctor for major wrist pain. This past year has been a painful one for me between this and car accident. The first time I saw him he wasn’t friendly but wasn’t rude. I kind of had to force him to shake my hand & look up at me as it feels odd when a doctor you’ve never met, walks in, won’t look at you, no introduction, and they just immediately start talking about your case while staring at their paperwork. He referred me to physical therapy. Unfortunately, his office and the PT office, didn’t communicate that well. Neither office was willing to call the other office so I was constantly the middle woman. Did you get the fax? No. Did you send the fax? Yes. Gah. I’d rather be focused on getting better.
I ended up just asking for it to be faxed to another place that turned out to be closer to work and it finally worked out. When I went back for my 1 month follow up, Dr. Smith asked me why I only had a couple weeks of PT rather than a month. I diplomatically said that the other office didn’t receive the paperwork for a long time. I didn’t pin any blame on either office. He then really sternly said that I should have come to his office and taken the referral myself to the PT office. Considering how far his office is from my work, considering the location of the first PT office, since I work till later than most, I would have had to ask for 2+ hours of leave. And how long does it take to fax something? He went on about this for several minutes, how I should have been more responsible, it’s not his offices duty to ensure faxes are received etc… Finally I said, can we please talk about the 2 weeks of treatment I *did* have?
He frustratedly told me that I should have told him at the first appt that I had had an MRI. I told him that I had told his assistant after my 1^st appt with him since I had forgotten to at the appt. He acted as if I was trying to hide something. Silly since I would be happy if he would look at my MRI but now he said he wasn’t interested, he only looked at my regular x-​day. What the heck!!! Power Trip!
He then sternly went on to say that he wasn’t going to see me anymore since I was not a decent surgery candidate. His tone was belittling, like I obviously had no place there and that I was done wasting his time type of tone. He then got up and just walked out. He was further annoyed that there wasn’t a primary at the time to send his precious notes to. He kept asking why she wasn’t my primary, (see my Dr Lewis review of her). He sent his notes to her despite my telling him she was NO LONGER MY DOCTOR! Hippa violation anyone?