Pima Heart

Every time I had something scheduled, the office called to change my appointment times. They also rescheduled a procedure. Each time they said it was because «emergencies» came up.
I can understand that there’s a lot of need for vascular doctors, but to make the same patient feel unimportant every single time they have something scheduled leaves a very bad impression. My time is important too and you’d like your doctor to care, just a little.
I often wait 10 minutes or longer on hold just for someone to initially answer the phone and transfer my call to the person I actually need to speak to (or just leave a message for, because their medical assistants are usually not available to take calls either).
The surgeons may know their stuff (I’m not a doctor — so I can’t judge), but the office staff and customer service leave something to be desired. I should have cancelled the first appointment after being called to see if I could come in earlier so the doctor could leave 30 minutes earlier. I work 45 minutes away from the office.
I was kept waiting for over 40 minutes after an ultrasound for the doctor to come in and discuss options for an outpatient procedure.
They tried to schedule the surgery 3 different times before actually having it pre-​authorized by my insurance carrier. The pre-​auth took about two weeks just on its own. All three of the surgery dates originally offered/​attempted would not have had time for a pre-​auth to be processed. Once finally scheduled, they had to reschedule because something more urgent had to be scheduled on my date. (I question the «urgency» of something that can be scheduled 3 or more weeks in advance.) If it wasn’t at the end of the year, I would have tried to find a different doctor rather than put up with this treatment.
Icing on the cake — The doctor left me after the surgery to go to another patient/​procedure without physically writing the controlled-​substance prescription that the pharmacy requires. Certain drugs cannot be faxed or called in. You would think the doctors or at least the people discharging patients would know certain drugs require a physical prescription to be hand delivered to the pharmacy. I knew this, but I was not of a state of mind at the time to refuse being discharged without a prescription in my hand. You cannot reasonably expect someone that cannot drive after anesthesia to run around town to chase down a doctor for a hand written prescription a couple of hours after the surgery ended.
If you want to feel cared about and not just a cog in a wheel, then go someplace else.