Considered changing to this provider late in my pregnancy. The doctor was nice, affable, and did a decent exam, but was distracted looking for information in my medical records that didn't seem to require an immediate answer.
I wanted to switch doctors and hospitals due to a recent move, so I asked my provider to print out my medical records and fax them to this office. Then I made the appointment. I was told that I needed to do the 1 hour initial visit with a midwife, and there was no availability on initial appointments until Sept. 11, 3 or 4 weeks away, and a week before my due date. I finally got an appt. with one of the doctors on the Simmonds, Helmbrecht side for 2 weeks hence, but being late in my pregnancy and an older mother, was annoyed and concerned about the lack of availability and this rediculous policy to schedule a 1-hour appointment, when clearly, in my third trimester, I didn't need the initial run-through that you need at you first appointment of pregnancy. I also needed a weekly non-stress test and sonogram due to my risk factors. When I got there, they didn't have my records. Not sure which office, old or new, dropped the ball, but the MD didn't review them before my visit. I gave them my hard copy to copy. He then spent a good portion of the visit looking for an HIV test result. While I'm sure that there's a good reason to look for that, while seeing a patient, I'd think it would be the best use of time to look for that info later and focus on the patient. Or, since he had an hour booked for my appt., spend some minutes alone going through the records. He then, as he should, told me to book another weekly appt for the next week and for the non-stress test and sono. Sounded fine, but when I went to the front desk, there were no midwife or doctor appointments available the next week, but one early the following week. I booked it, but later thought twice, realizing that they didn't do the NST or sono at that visit, didn't schedule me to come back later for one, and couldn't do one the following week. End result, I went back to the original practice because this practice's' lack of availability resulted in my missing two weeks of checkups, which are critical in a high-risk pregnancy, and driving far for care is better than no care due to no appointments. And the final end result was that the following sono revealed that my baby had flipped to breech position at some point during those weeks and couldn't be turned, which utterly altered his delivery to a C-section from a planned natural birth with a midwife. It would have been good to have known about the breech 3 or 4 weeks before. Maybe I could have done something to turn him earlier, but I'll never know for sure. Just would have been good if they had their scheduling and new patient intake processes better under control. My first job was in medical records at an HMO and I remember that we always pulled records (back in the days before electronic records) for scheduled appointments days ahead of time for review, and if I couldn't find the record for some reason, searched the entire facility and network of clinics until I found it so the MD would be able to review the cases ahead of time. So I'm not sure why no one called me to ask me to send over my records if they didn't have them. For women who go here from the start and schedule every appointment at the outset, this practice may be fine, I don't know. But my advice to anyone else transferring over is to go somewhere else where your care won't get lost in the shuffle. They just seem too busy here.
