Swedish Heart & Vascular

This medical facility only gets two stars because of Ronnie. I am not sure of her position here but she is a superstar She went above and beyond the call of duty to try and make sure I had good medical care. She was a very gracious person who accepted my frustration with grace and aplomb while helping me see a doctor.
Now, the bad news. The two doctors from this place that I interacted with were horrible. I went to Swedish Hospital Edmonds at about 4:00 AM on Sunday morning with sever chest pains. The doctor on call was a Ralph Althouse. Me being the person I am, apologized when he showed up for getting him out of bed. Instead of being at all gracious, he snarled «Too late for that». My next interaction with him was a hurried explanation that they were going to do something. It was rushed and I probably should have pushed further. The took me away and did their thing. When it was done he gave a very quick, 30 second description of what they did and basically disappeared. At some point he also talked to my family. They said that they got feeling he didn’t want to waste time with them. That was the last time I saw him. The nurses kept telling me he would be up at some point during the day but he never appeared. They kept getting instructions from him but he didn’t care enough to stop by at all to explain anything. and some of them seemed to have the nursing staff (who were very good) confused. The next morning I was laying in bed and heard the staff complaining that this guy was’t doing his job and discharging patients. From what I could tell, I could have been there forever before this guy ever showed up. I gave up and left the hospital. (Again the nurses and all were fantastic.) Research on this guy after I got home show he consistently gets bad reviews because he has no communication skills. I also talked to a woman from the hospital’s vascular rehab program who said that this guy has major problems with patient satisfaction. Let’s face it, a big part of being a doctor is communicating with your patients. If you can’t, you need to find another profession.
Ronnie, super wonderful woman, insisted I needed to see one of their doctors so she arranged for me to see an Eric Grassman. I explained to him that I have had too man really bad medical experiences and don’t have a lot of faith in doctors. Unfortunately, instead of trying to understand me as a person and deal with me, he took this uppity attitude that was basically «I’m a doctor so I am right.» He came off as arrogant and uncaring. I tried to say good things when he explained what they actually did. When I tried to ask about research I have done on the medications they wanted to give me in the hospital (and he wanted to give me) he said «We are doctors and we know what is best». (Like doctors are somehow just superior to everybody else.) He vaguely explained why I needed to take one medication (though he did not explain why so many articles say it is bad, or why it shouldn’t be mixed — again just «I’m a doctor — you have no right to question what I say».) He prescribed a second medication with no explanation at all. The second medication turned out to be rather expensive for my budget and since I have no idea why it was needed I am skipping it. Oh, and his other line was «If you don’t take the medications I say you have to you will die». That is an exact quote. A bit melodramatic, a bit over the top, and I am pretty sure a line every medical care provider has used since the first shaman said «Take two roots and call me in the morning.»
If you have any choice whatsoever, do not go to this clinic. The non-​doctor staff is wonderful, but that doesn’t help when the folks that should know better are total jerks.