Miner Dorothy K PA

Our mother, who has dementia, sees Dorothy. She likes her a lot and has had some improvement in some of her symptoms such as depression. My low rating is more about the practice’s policies than Dorothy per se. But here is what happened: At the last visit, no cognitive test was performed. Dorothy asked our mother how her memory has been, our mother lied and said it was better. (The caregiver with our mom did not feel it was right to correct our mother in front of her, understandably, as this enrages her, and anyone working with dementia knows that it isn’t helpful to contradict her version of reality).
My sister and I scheduled a meeting with Dorothy to give her a reality check about our mom, and we were told that since our mother won’t be present and her insurance won’t cover that (understandable) we’d have to pay $ 240 for a half an hour of Dorothy’s time. That seems unreasonable, I mean, how many people can afford that much out of pocket? (Dementia is already a very expensive disease to manage without extra costs like this.) We asked if we could email her instead and were told there would be a charge for that, too.
I’ve never heard of charging that much for a nurse practitioner to meet about a patient, especially one with diminished capacities. There must be a way to foster important communications about incapacitated patients without charging high fees, but this practice doesn’t seem interested enough in making that happen. We are only trying to get information about our mom to her medical team so she can get better care. A different medical practitioner of our mom’s in Medford met with me and my sister for an hour and didn’t charge us. I know of many doctors nowadays who include emails between them and their patients at no extra charge. I’ve been interviewed for 2 hours about my mom by her homeopath, and rather than charge me, he thanked me profusely for taking the time to help him do a better job.

Dorothy Miner is a wonderful physician’s assistant: she’s smart, intuitive, a great listener, genuinely sympathetic, and terribly funny. One feels a little better just to have her walk in to the room. I can’t say enough good things about Dorothy. Ashland is so lucky to have her here.