Rufael Gebreye W

I really wanted to give this doctor the benefit of the doubt. I really wish I hadn’t. His waiting room and office are completely outdated (chairs look to be from the 70s and there was a sanka ad on the wall and a VERY outdated EKG machine in the exam room), and as I was giving him my medical history he didn’t seem to be listening to me at all. When I corrected his understanding, he accused me of «changing the story.» He doesn’t seem to understand some of the medications I’m on, or even the metabolic disorder I’m trying to get help with. The patient definitely should NOT know more about the medication or disorder than the doctor. Never again.

UPDATE 12÷15÷14: His office billed insurance for the visit, and billed me the co-​pay. This is despite the fact that he told me he would not be my doctor any more, refused to provide me with a prescription for the insulin I clearly medically need, yelled my lab values in a public space (HIPAA violation), and had errors in his notes from my chart (evidenced by the fact he did not recall a long discussion we had on the first visit about why I could not take oral medications; he noted that I was on Januvia and questioned me). I felt I lost some dignity that day… how would anyone feel being kicked out of a doctor’s office? I am a professional and a gentleman, but he made me feel like a child, a moron, or an animal. And I did not have any other options to get the insulin I needed without scrambling or waiting a long time for a new doctor. His behavior was unethical, both in terms of how he treated me and the fact that he wanted me to pay for this abuse.
REVIEW: Got kicked out of his office, literally. He said he’s not interested in being my doctor. I was polite and professional, and open to his guidance, but he gets irritated easily when you cannot meet his expectations. The trouble is that his expectations are not very clear and he’s not accepting that if your life is busy it may not be possible to get every possible blood sugar time point. He was criticizing me (it felt demeaning, like he was talking down to me/​yelling) for the way I was recording my blood sugars for him, but he couldn’t understand simple notation (like «after,» for a measurement taken after meal). Early on I gave him a graph of my blood sugar measurements, and he looked at it incredulously and asked, «what is this?» He either did not review or did not remember my chart and history, because he was asking me about medications that I had already explained that I was not on. It would be one thing if he asked about them nicely/​politely, but his question was, «what? you’re on januvia?» Then later, despite the fact this was a topic of our initial visit, he asked «why are you not on any oral medications?» (And by the way, it was his suggestion not to be on them anyway.) He criticized me for the length of time between visits this time, but at our second visit he told me I should maintain my insulin dosage for a few months and give everything time before I see him again (in 2 – 3 months). He is full of mixed messages like this, and then when you try to discuss it with him — even carefully in a non-​confrontational way — he looks at you and speaks to you as if you’re being a jerk. Blame, blame, blame but no effort to work together to help improve my health. He also said that I was «drug seeking,» just coming to him for a prescription, and — again yelled at me — during the last visit. I diffused the situation by suggesting a resolution. I had to be the bigger person in the room. My feeling is that he had a hard time processing information, based on my need to explain simple things I had written out for him, and he got irritated WAY too easily. He literally told me not to come back, even though it’s not like I was arguing with him or being at all inappropriate. He must want only to see healthy people, which is odd for someone in endocrinology. His demeanor with patients would explain why his office always looked empty.