Ward John W MD Marin Medical Group

Dr. Ward has been my primary care physician for more than a decade. He is a better than average doctor and is very knowledgeable about numerous ailments. He manages his time very well, allowing sufficient time to communicate with patients while keeping waiting times to a minimum.
However, due to the tedious bureaucracy in his office, I cannot award him more than three stars. It seems like the people who answer the phones are not around about half the time and the phone line is kicked over to an answering service, which is a guy who does not take messages and simply tells you that the staff is on a two-​hour lunch break.
Even when they are in the office, it is still hard to communicate. After you go through their phone tree and speak to a live person, requesting to leave a voice mail with your physician’s assistant, you have to answer several questions before being transferred to voice mail. On more than one occasion, I have had to leave a message with the desk person that was misinterpreted before it reached the doctor.
This may be changing as they have just started a patient portal, which is supposed to expedite communications. I just signed up for it but I’m not very optimistic. It looks much more amateurish than most modern web portals — more like the ones from 10 to 15 years ago when web portals were in their infancy. When I signed up, there were a couple buttons that didn’t work and I could find no technology support for clients. I still haven’t figured out how to reach my doctor or his assistant through the portal.
If they get the bugs out of the portal and communication improves through this venue, I may have a future update.