Snyder E Robert, MD

So sorry to hear Dr. Bob recently retired. I was a patient of his throughout my adult life including babies, misc. illness, a life threatening disease for my spouse… over thirty years. I continued to drive over two hours to see him after I moved. My entire family had Dr. Bob from childhood through adulthood… there is not a better Dr. around. I say three cheers for Dr. Bob and enjoy your fishing trips…

After reading some of the less flattering reviews, I have to wonder who the hell these people were seeing. Dr. Snyder is a wonderful doctor. He spends so much time with his patients that his nurses have to hurry him along. He has never refused a legitimate request, and listens to what I have to say. After discussing my problem, he will outline several treatment options, and let me choose the course of action that suits me the best. I feel enormous control over my health care… something I NEVER felt when I was with Kaiser. If he was such a horrible doctor, why is it so hard to get an appointment with him? He is the most popular doctor on staff at Alliance.

I am writing this review because I didn’t like the other reviews. I have been a patient of Dr. Snyder for the past 15 years. He is one of the kindest and most thorough doctors I’ve ever met, he cares about his patients, and he’s reasonable. He says, «let’s try this out, if it doesn’t work let me know, we’ll try something else.» He doesn’t give up. And his diagnosis/​treatment plan are usually spot on. I’ve never been denied treatment or referrals, and I’ve needed many. Two of his nurses that I’ve come to know, Heather and Rocio, are friendly and always helpful. It feels good to know if I need anything I can just call them up and it’s taken care of. They make an Excellent Team.
Most of the office staff at Pinole Medical Group are friendly and helpful. There have been some in the past that were just plain rude. And, it’s true, I have had to wait what feels like way too long for my appointment as he is running behind quite often. But this has since much improved, so far this year all of my appointments have gone smoothly. Little to no wait in the lobby and patient room. Good job Dr. Bob! I will be very sad when he retires.

I’ve been to Alliance Medical Group twice now, the first time I saw a nurse practitioner who ordered the basic blood work to get me started, then I rescheduled an appointment for their next available slot with Dr. Snyder 3 weeks later. They called me after a week and a half saying they’d had a cancellation and would I like to take the earlier appointment and I jumped at the idea.
I’m the kind of person who always arrives early… sometimes ridiculously so, but I’d rather be 30 min early than 5 min late. So, as usual I was there about 20 min before my appointment time, and I did have to wait a bit before I was taken back. Once I was taken back they did the basic vitals checks and then I waited about another 10 min for the Dr. He immediately apologized for his tardiness stating that he has a bad habit of talking too much with patients (something I highly value in a doctor!) He got right to the point about why I was there, went through the medical history I’d given the nurse, and asked me a slew of other questions, all the while answering all of my questions along the way. He asked about more than my blood work and my medical conditions too which I thought was nice, he genuinely wanted to get to know me. He also took me seriously when being a 20-​something female, with high cholesterol, despite my good diet and regular exercise, I have a genetic predisposition to it (my last doctor basically told me I must be lieing because no one my age and gender has levels as high as mine).
After another long list of questions about one problem I’d been having most of my life, he suggested that he thought I might be misdiagnosed. He basically gave me 2 options and said we can do either one or both. He could give me 2 prescriptions which would effectively treat my symptoms and help me lead a normal life again; or he could refer me to a specialist who could do further tests to see if his guess at a misdiagnosis is accurate and possibly treat me for that disease instead which hopefully would eliminate the symptoms I’ve suffered from for so many years, I’ve elected to see the specialist and have an appt scheduled for next week, and if that doesn’t pan out, I will go for the meds to manage my symptoms.
Basically, the long wait times are a bit of a bummer (hence ⁴⁄₅), but at the same time, he was probably late for his next appointment because he spent so much time talking to me and working on MY medical issues, so as someone else said– you might have to wait, but it’s definitely worth it.

I have been seeing Dr. Snyder for a number of years.
He is a very caring and dedicated physician who takes the time to know his patients.
I have seen the best and brightest at Stanford but they are more interested in getting a cool illness or something that requires surgery.
Doc Snyder takes the time to listen and offer sage advice. Sometimes it works and other times not.
I rather have someone tell me they don’t know than make something up.
Please note that I am rating Dr. Snyder and not the Pinole Medical Center.
they would get 1 star. The scheduling is a problem for the insane wait times.
I fell asleep once in a waiting room. They put me in there at 7:30 pm and never returned until 8:45 pm.

I had a bad back injury which was causing debilitating pain and really bad sciatica.
I went in to see Doctor Snyder several times about it, and it continued to get worse.
I told Doctor Snyder that I believed it was a herniated and blown disc, because that is something that runs in my family. It was in my L-​4, and you could touch it and FEEL that something was very not right.
I’m also an overweight female.
I told Dr. Snyder that I needed an MRI, and he said, in his most condescending, patronizing, «there there dear, don’t try to THINK,» voice, «oh, it’s just a fatty deposit. I’ve seen this HUNDREDS of times! You don’t need an MRI. You need to eat less and work out harder.»
The same thing, basically, he had told me the first few times. I didn’t have a REAL back injury! I was just fat and lazy and not TRYING hard enough.
I was eating probably about 500 to 600 calories at day at the time. I have PCOS and thyroid issues, but of course he had given me the typical «obviously you are too dumb and lazy to figure this out on your own» work out more and eat less speech. I HAD been working out hard, too hard, as it happened, as per his advice, which had exacerbated the injury. I’d cut that down quite a bit because of the pain, but I was still trying to do what I could.
Anyway, he refused to refer me for an MRI. Maybe the insurance company penalizes doctors who refer expensive tests very often, or maybe he just saw «fat woman» and assumed that he knew everything about me. Because a fat woman doesn’t actually get injured or sick, right? All of her problems are just because she’s fat, and they will all go away if she just stops sitting on the couch all day stuffing her face with twinkies, right?
The injury got worse, way worse, and the next time I got in to see him I could barely walk, and I couldn’t sit in a chair any longer. I had to really fight to get an MRI, but this time I wouldn’t back down until he gave me a referral. I was in too much pain to. I had begun to miss a lot of work because of this.
I got the MRI, and the technician said that he couldn’t tell me the results, but he taught me how to sit up in a much safer manner when one has a back injury. That, and having to ride in a car by kneeling and hugging the back of the seat, was kind of a hint that yes, they found something.
Dr Snyder, however, refused to refer me to a specialist or give a doctor’s note to my work about why I was unable to come in (I couldn’t walk without assistance, let alone do my job with involved manual labor) until I made another appointment with him. But of course, he couldn’t see me right away. I had to wait. I was in agony, and every day it got worse.
I was finally able to go and get a referral. When I went to the specialist, he said that my disc was severely herniated, one of the worst he had seen, and that he was shocked that someone as young as myself (27 at the time) would have an injury this bad. The first thing he asked me was if I would consider surgery. I was under the knife three days later.
Because it took so long for me to get the treatment I needed, the injury got way worse than it would have been. I lost my job– they fired me while I was in the hospital. It has been years now, and I am still suffering because of it. I have worked hard, VERY VERY hard, to overcome this injury as much as possible… but I think that if Dr Snyder had taken me seriously and LISTENED instead of just assuming I was a stupid lazy fat woman who didn’t know anything about her own body or what was best for her, it would have never gotten as bad as it did. I could have gotten the MRI while I was still mostly functional. I could have had the surgery I needed, or maybe even just undergone physical therapy and avoided surgery entirely. I feel that his attitude was flat-​out negligent, and if I hadn’t been so severely disabled by the injury for as long as I was, I may well have gone after him.
So Doctor Snyder, if you’re out there reading this, your lazy judgmental attitude? It didn’t really cost you much of anything to be dismissive, I’m sure.
But I suffered. I suffered badly. I lay in that hospital bed, soaked in blood and piss and sweat, screaming with night terrors (I have PTSD, and gosh this didn’t help) and maybe that could have been avoided if you had only given enough of a shit to LISTEN to me instead of dismiss me as another dumb fat chick. You refused to send me for necessary tests, and the careless advice that you gave me, which I followed? It did HARM. YOU DID HARM.
Not a day goes by when I don’t have at least a little pain in my back. Some days I still have to grab the railing and pull myself upright while the pain cuts into me.
I’m not a vindictive person, but I do hope you read this and never forget it. I don’t have the luxury of ever forgetting it. I have a lovely scar and missing bone and shooting pains that will ensure that I always remember.
This is what your arrogance has wrought.

I felt compelled to write a brief review after seeing the other 2 reviews for Dr Snyder.
I have only seen him 1x and I felt he was extremely thorough.
He went over my medical history in great detail.
Although I haven’t needed to see him again (a good thing) I will update my post when I do.
For now… I’m a fan!

My partner visited this office to obtain a referral to see a specialist, and THEY DIDN’T GIVE IT TO HIM!!! I had to call FIVE TIMES to demand that they do.
He can barely walk or feel anything and they were telling him that no, he did not have nerve damage. I was livid. A terrible, terrible experience.

I had a bad experience, and ended up only going once for the initial appointment… never coming back, finding a new doctor to be my Primary Care Physician! Mr. Snyder seemed to be very friendly, nice, easy to talk to… but thats pretty much the only positive! I waited in the waiting room (which was occupied by me and only one other person) for around 45 minutes… FINALLY got shown into the exam room. Waited THERE for ANOTHER 30 – 45 minutes and was told he was running late but would be in soon. After talking to him and sharing my medical history, he plainly tells me that he tends to talk with patients a lot and usually goes over the appointment time!!! So I guess I was supposed to deal with that kind of wait every time I come in? He did have good evening hours for us working people but MAN it took SO MUCH TIME and I never returned to do the blood tests he requested. He didn’t give me a time or deadline just said come in whenever for blood tests, so I put it off for a while, eventually going somewhere else! Wouldn’t recommend.