Orthopedic Institute of Pennsylvania

My mom went to the OIP clinic in Hershey to see Dr. Hanks about severe knee pain. We had been to the Express urgent care facility at the Harrisburg Hospital the Friday before, where they spent 2 hours helping her and evaluating her knee before providing her with some pain medicine and referring her to OIP for a «specialist». As it turns out, Dr. Hanks at OIP cares much less about his patients that Harrisburg Hospital — he barely spent a half an hour with my mom, never checked her charts or asked her about existing medicines, just bluntly said it’s arthritis and told her she needed a cortisone shot even though it explicitly states that she is allergic to cortisone on her chart. Most of the half hour of their appointment was my mom telling him that she is in fact allergic to cortisone, and Dr. Hanks essentially calling her a liar and telling her it’s not possible to be allergic to cortisone. She was in severe pain and he pressured her to take the shot, while also asserting that her pain can’t be that bad, so she should just suck it up and go back to work and just take the hundreds of steps she has to climb in a night for her job «one at a time».
Sure enough, she had a severe reaction — pain shooting up her leg, the entire leg swollen and sore, extreme sweating for over 16 hours, and numbness in her lips that spread across her face. She called her primary care physician who said, yes, that is an allergic reaction and that she should take benedryl immediately, and go to the ER if things didn’t improve. All of this because the doctor was too stubborn to listen to his patient and not give her a shot she told him she was allergic to OVER and OVER again. Very arrogant, reckless, and rude doctor. She is going for a second opinion elsewhere, where hopefully the doctors treat their patients with respect.

Got a diagnoses for my back and it’s not good/​Need an epidural to start. Here’s the kicker, they cannot do it for 18 days. They will let me sit in AGONY because of their scheduling issues. Orthopedic Institute of PA… do NOT recommend.
They get two stars with having no problem feeding me painkillers while their appointments are dragged out without regard for your quality of life.
I am in so much pain… why did I come here? Why did I trust them?

Reception is very friendly, as is x-​ray, after that it is all down hill. Very un-​professional. It was like a zoo. Hard to get anyone on the phone. I had t I had a fall with pain. The doctor told me I didn’t know what I was talking about several times during the visit. He was very condescending. Rude. Thought a lot of himself. I had problems with pain and he prescribed something that didn’t work. When I called to say they didn’t work, I was only allowed to speak with the secretary. I was told by the doctor’s secretary that due to DEA regulations they could only give pain meds and treat people if they had a fracture or surgery. Then why did they send me for an MRI? If I had something that didn’t require surgery or wasn’t a fracture, did this mean they wouldn’t treat me? She couldn’t tell me, she could only tell me that they couldn’t give me meds. What? They only prescribe anti-​inflamatories. It is my belief that they only want to treat people that will bring in large fees. I called another doctor.

Stay away from that place, specially if you are on workers Comp… if you don’t improve because they don’t know what they are doing, they will blame you and tell your workers comp insurance that it is your fault and you did not follow instruction/​treatment…
the place is like a zoo… your dignity is important, go somewhere else
I am glad I moved and I don’t have to deal with them anymore…

This is the WORST orthopedic facility in Harrisburg. Service is so poor I’m starting to think they are trying to rip-​off the health care industry. I have repeatedly been booked at the wrong location, they have made my appts for the wrong days, they have given me and my family VERY poor and inappropriate advice regarding x-​rays, etc. This last time was the nail in the coffin. We had taken my son there for therapy with a PA named PAT, beside them being over ½ late getting us in for the first therapy session, when they finally did take us in, we had to sit another 20 minutes waiting for PAT to finish up with other customer. The music was so loud and they were playing ZEPPELIN… weird and when several people asked for it to be turned down and/​or change they did nothing. The other staff that were present were obviously bored (there were over 5 people just standing around doing nothing… one older man was bitching and complaining about how the Yankees sucked, which I thought was inappropriate in that environment, especially with such a mix of customer. Another guys was pacing back and forth so loud taking about his wife going into the labor; another guy was taking a tennis ball and thoroughly it Repeatedly against the back wall laughing and horsing around and the another guys was just taking the HUGE exercise ball and bouncing it around the room acting like he was playing basketball, SOOOO Unprofessional, I couldn’t believe it and I couldn’t believe Grader would pay for their employees to do nothing like this.
As for PAT she was horrible, she never even read my son’s chart to find out why we were there, she knew nothing about him and/​or the goals the doctor already laid out. NO prep-​work in advance of this appt. what so ever. She went on to suggest repeatedly that my son simply quit playing baseball and perhaps that would solve his problems and the nail in her coffin was when she said my son needed an EMG… beyond unprofessional and completely outside of what she, with a one year degree as PA should ever consider recommending and/​or suggesting to any customer. We cancelled all of our appts. The next day and I reported all of this to the doctor.