Elena Fishman, MD

Great doctor in a group of great doctors. For us, quality of health care trumps optimal waiting room convenience.

Wonderful Doctor. Dr. Fishman has been a doctor to my girls since birth. She came to the Hospital after they were born for their first check ups as newborns. She is very easy to talk to and always goes above and beyond in care of my girls. I highly recommend her!

Love her. Such a sweet lady. I also love this location. Yes, it is close to home but also easy to get in and out of. Big parking lot, not too busy and open late. Dr. Fishman is easy to talk to, puts my son at ease. He had his first big boy appointment which was a bit uncomfortable. Having to put on a gown for the first time, I thought it was hilarious but she made it light and easy. He did fine. Until they had to have a nurse come in and bear hug him to get a shot! The nurse was kind and patient and made it as good as it could have gotten considering the circumstances. Love this group.

I highly recommend doctor Elena Fishman, she has been our son’s pediatrician for 2,5 years. We never had to wait for an appointment more than 5 – 10 min. so I am really surprised to read other reviews about delays. And our appointment usually takes about 15 min only, doctor Fishman answers all of my questions and we are done. She is very knowledgable and sometimes I think she knows our son better than we do :)

Dr. Elena Fishman has been our pediatrician for more than 3 years. We love Elena for her kindness and care. She is knowledgeable, professional, and very effective in making diagnosis and prescribing the medicine. She follows up on the problem and you don’t feel alone facing the sickness. In most cases, it is possible to getthe same day appointment. I recommend her as a pediatrician.

Love this doctor, best pediatrician I ever encountered. Thank god for her.

Dr. Fishman is an exceptional doctor. Very knowledgable, caring, attentive and professional.
She addresses all of your questions and puts your mind at ease when your kids are sick. I highly recommend her if you are looking for a pediatrician who is detail oriented and caring!!!

Dr. Fishman is great. She is really attentive, calm and pro-​active when needed. Her attention to detail is incredible, especially given the great number of patients she sees every day. She is amazing, very dedicated and extremely knowledgeable doctor and I highly recommend her to all my friends with children.

We chose Dr Fishman because she speaks Russian, but I could not be happier with the level of care. She is very attentive, non-​alarmist, caring, and thorough. We’ve never had any problems with long waits, either on the phone or in the office. I plan for my child to keep seeing her as long as it’s feasible.

I have no doubts Dr. Fishman is a knowledgeable pediatrician, but unfortunately all the other reviews are true.
First of all, that clinic is understaffed and a big mess. They almost never answer the phonecalls, and if they do, they first keep you on hold for AT LEAST 40 minutes. They keep you on the line waiting forever even when you are calling for urgent care or even to pay a bill, which is absolute ridiculous and extremely frustrating.
Appointments take way too long, AT LEAST 2 hours. First, they keep you in the waiting room for at least 10 minutes. Then, they transfer you to the actual examination room, where they keep you waiting again for at least 20 – 30 minutes. Then a student-​intern arrives and wastes 30 more minutes of your time by examining the baby and asking you the routine questions. Then they leave you alone in the room again waiting for another 20 minutes. Then Dr. Fishman arrives and does the whole examination to your baby AGAIN. Then they leave you alone in the room again waiting for another 20 – 30 minutes. Then the nurse arrives and pokes your baby. This is specially inconvenient when you have a newborn and have to take care of feedings, naps and diaper changing. And when you have a high-​energy toddler who can not stay quiet, you can imagine what happens when you lock him for two hours in such a small room; by the time the nurse arrives for the immunizations your toddler is already extremely fussy and moody.
Regarding Dr. Fishman, I used to like her until she started encouraging us to do questionable practices to our year-​old baby, including locking him alone in a dark room for 12 hours a day, no matters what happens inside the room. For my standards and mother instinct, I consider that cruelty and child abuse.
Staff in that clinic look unhappy, specially the unkind nurse who puts the immunizations to the children. She has a very delicate job and in my opinion she should make an effort to be a little sweet to children, since the experience is already traumatic enough for all of us. Instead, she is rude and has no patience at all.
Talking about immunizations, this is the only clinic that I know that does NOT combine all the vaccinations in one or two shots. Instead, they poke your child four or five times every time you go there, which makes the experience even more painful and traumatic that it already is. Additionally, sometimes they run out of a specific shot and they ask you to come back another day specifically to inject that one to your child. Not fun at all.
And the stroke that broke the camel’s back is the following: last time we went there for a routine healthy-​child checkup, Dr. Fishman mailed us a $ 25 bill for answering us some general questions about our child’s health (the kind of questions that we always ask about our baby’s sleeping, feeding, etc). How can she be so miserable? No doubts we are changing to somewhere else.

I’ve been taking my children to Dr. Fishman for the past 4 years, and she’s wonderful. Always very professional, caring, and attentive. She listens to all of our concerns, examines the children very gently, and always does what she can to make the kids feel at ease. It also seems like she also goes out of her way not to be judgmental of the way I parent. Whenever I raise concerns about whether I’m doing something right or wrong, she always reassures me that I’m doing ok, that my children are healthy and thriving, and she has a way of putting things in context that I understand not to blow it out of proportion — all without her saying so explicitly and without sounding condescending.
I was pretty surprised to hear that other patients have had to wait for their appointments. My little one needed to go in every few months in the beginning, as is typical, and I don’t remember a single time that we had to wait beyond out appointment time. The office has also been very accommodating on the several occasions when my children got sick (ear infections, colds, etc.) and they were always able to fit us in that day.

I saw Dr. Fishman for my very ill child. She spent about 5 minutes with us and barely examined her. I brought her back the very next day and saw a different doctor who prescribed her medication and called us that night to check on her. I would never ever book an appt. with her again. The office is large, wait time is painful and phones are very busy. Some of the doctors are excellent. Just not this one.

The other reviews, all of them, are actually all correct. We all agree that Fishman is outstanding, love seeing her and the nurse that works with her. Nobody, even the 1-​star reviews, has anything negative to add. She’s wonderful.
As other reviewers noted, this place is understaffed and not well organized. I’m literally writing this review while waiting on the phone just to schedule an appointment. I’ve made 30 calls over 5 years and the average wait time is 10 minutes if you call off peak, 20 minutes if you call during peak hours. We work around this by scheduling appointments in-​house at the end of an existing appointment whenever possible. About ¼ of the time, I have to give up on a call because it exceeds 20 minutes so that I can call another day.
I think it’s more that they have too many patients than anything else, I’ve seen in person a lady frantically answer calls with a huge wait list and clearly she’s responsible for paperwork and has to switch between the two tasks.
Yes, as the other reviewers noted, when we can’t get Fishman and get Tolba, it’s always an odd experience. Put it this way we tell Tolba the prescription we think our son needs, and he writes it. If we can’t diagnose our son, we ask for a referral because he’s never sure either.
It’s worth going to Fishman despite this, and the clinic has several other pros that reviewers didn’t mention. First, the location is great and there’s always lots of free parking — that alone is pretty rare. Second, and most important, if your child is sick they always have a separate quarantined entrance and you DON’T need an appointment if you go at 8am. Really saves us time. In fact, this may have saved us almost as much time as we’ve spent on the phone waiting to make an appointment!
Therefore, I give Four stars.

Let me begin by saying: Dr. Fishman and I are in no way related! If Dr. Fishman went by any other name, I’d still give her 5 stars because I think she’s wonderful! I’ve been going to see her for 2 years now. Both of my children require special attention — my 6 y/​o has Aspergers and my youngest has a slight speech delay. Dr. Fishman always takes time to answer all of my questions and makes me feel at ease. She’s also great with my children… they LOVE going to see her! She really listens to my concerns and makes recommendations/​referrals promptly when needed.
The office staff and other physicians in the office are great. The first time we visited this office, however, we waited for around 45 min. to be seen. (Both of my kids were sick & they were able to squeeze us-​in last minute with another doctor in the office). While I was frustrated, I’m a believer in giving places second chances and I’m so glad I did. I obviously caught them on a busy/​off day because I’ve NEVER had to wait that long since then. As a matter of fact, I’m usually called to a room within 10 minutes (usually less) and seen shortly thereafter.
The office has two large waiting rooms, one for sick children and one for kids who are well. They are open on Saturdays AND have «walk-​in» hours on weekdays from 8 – 9 a.m. (Double check on times… I think they change sometimes). No appointment is needed during the «walk-​in», but it is first come, first served so you may need to wait a little longer than normal. Also, expect your child to be seen by the physician available at that time. For busy parents and kids who sometimes get sick overnight — this is really great!

My daughter is a first time patient. Imagine my surprise when a resident came in to take the history and examined my daughter. Dr. Fishman came in later and spent about 5 minutes with us. She said she has been briefed on my daughter’s history but she kept getting the information wrong. My daughter has a history of tight achilles tendon and will eventually need surgery. Meanwhile, I wanted my daughter to participate in PT that incorporates pilates machines, since we’ve had limited success with traditional PT and we could get a reformer at home. Dr. Fishman said she has no idea what it was, so she could not recommend it even though she agreed that my daughter’s tendon is still tight and stretching would benefit my daughter. She finally agreed to do some research as she walked out the door. What she really did was to call my daughter’s orthopedic surgeon and told them that we think pilates would resolve her tight tendon. Of course they did not recommend that in lieu of surgery. What a mess!
Dr. Fishman’s resident left the message but did not indicate Dr. Fishman’s treatment plan for the tight achilles tendon.
Incidentally, the medical practice has a checklist that each patient fills out. My son was also a new patient with a wonderful MD who took the time to go through each question with my son AND performed the history and examination himself. Neither Dr. Fishman nor her resident when through the checklist with my daughter even thought she took 15 minutes to complete it.
From the other two reviews it appears that Dr. Fishman routinely delegates her work to her resident or other physicians. So, she’s really not your child’s physician anyway, so why go to her in the first place?

I actually joined this review website just to respond to the only review that was listed here for Dr. Fishman. My daughter has been a patient here for 9 yrs. Dr. Fishman is a loving, caring, competent physician with the best bedside manner you could possibly want for your child. Although this is an extremely busy office, they always fit you in! I admit the phone system leaves something to be desired however this is partly because of their efforts to always see your child if they are sick. I would highly recommend Dr. Fishman to care for your child.

We liked Dr. Fishman alot when we saw her, but their office staff is ridiculous and rude. Like right now, I’ve been on hold for over 18 minutes and no one has yet answered the phone to schedule an appointment with us.
Dr. Tolba screwed up our prescription too. My 2 year old’s eardrum had burst from an ear infection so Dr. Tolba was going to write us two prescriptions. We walked out of there without looking carefully and gave it to the pharmacy. After a half hour of trying to keep my son and my 1 year old daughter busy during that time, the pharmacy only gave us 1 prescription. We had to go back upstairs and request the forgotten prescription and spend another 30 minutes waiting for the pharmacy to process this one. So stupid.

We scheduled an appointment here for a school physical. Even though the appointment was scheduled with this physician well in advance, we didn’t actually see Dr. Fishman (apparently she doesn’t work afternoons on the day we were scheduled??). We were never informed of this. We ended up seeing a different physician after a lot of hassle over insurance at the front desk (even though I called in advance to advise them that our insurance company had changed and presented an insurance card with Dr. Fishman’s name on it, they presented us with a stack of paperwork listing the old insurance — which took more than 40 minutes to sort out!?!).
We ended up seeing the resident (I think her name was Dr. Samadi) and Dr. Tolba. Neither physician made any real effort to interact with our son (age 6). Instead, they addressed all of their questions to me as if my son weren’t even in the room. We requested a prescription to have during a planned overseas trip, and ended up with one that would expire well before we planned to leave (even though I told them the days of the trip in advance). This created a lot of extra hassle at the pharmacy downstairs, especially after we were unable to reach Dr. Tolba to fix the problem and/​or re-​write the prescription to include «do not mix» instructions.
Overall, the appointment took way too long. We arrived at 3:00 for a 3:30 appointment and didn’t get out of there until after 5:00 (6:00 if you count time spent at the pharmacy trying to fix the flawed prescription).
The experience was such that I changed our pediatrician and office location the very next day. I can’t imagine having gone through this 3 hour ordeal with a sick child instead of a well one!