Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic is a disastrous patient experience
Tallahassee Orthopedic Clinic is a "mill" meaning, one that produces or processes people or things mechanically or in large numbers. They manage so many patients in their huge facility that they do not return phone calls, lose records of doctor referrals, and employ "work from home" call center operators who put you in a queue of 25 or more, causing wait time to exceed 40 minutes; then you often as not are hung up on. They require patients to sign THREE different docs saying you understand that you might not see an actual doctor, but will see a physician's assistant. This is clearly in response to complaints they have received. The PA I did finally see - after numerous calls on my part to follow up on my doctor's referral - did not answer my questions about source of the shoulder pain, the pain medication he prescribed, or whether I could get a refill, or whether physical therapy was indicated. Instead, after 5 minutes conversation, he said he would refer me to another doctor (Physician's assistant, I'm certain) who would look at my neck. The pain is in the shoulder muscle, not the neck. When I phoned back to ask for advice about further medication after the first ones didn't work (25 in the queue, again), I was referred to the first doctor's (PA) nurses, who didn't call me back. I drove one hour to the center itself, demanding to get advice or a refill, and was met by defensive nurses, including Diane, who said they would not talk to me because I had been referred to another doctor (in their system) and was therefore out of their hands. They could make no comment about my previous experience with the PA, but said "his tests" indicated I needed to see another doctor. He performed no tests, and never actually touched my pain center. I have never worked with a physician center which didn't treat patients as a "whole experience" within their system. Their advertising, much heard while waiting for the call center to answer, says they value physician-patient communication as a way of achieving individualized pain management and range-of-motion recovery. Instead, when I insisted on getting some advice, Diane told me to calm down. Believe me, I was calm, but insistent. What she meant was "shut up." Instead of offering any advice, she told me she was scrubbing me from the system, deleted my upcoming appointment, and had me taken from the building by a security officer. I have read numerous one-star Yelp reviews on the same issues of non-callbacks, etc. Apparently TOC is a monopoly in this region, so they feel they can get away with poor customer service; "get them in the door and see patients for a minimum amount of time, using PA's instead of doctors." How many actual doctors do they have as a ratio of the patients they see? I already found out they save money on phone call center, by not really having one. Instead, individual people answer phones from their own homes; there is no accountability there either. I will be filing a complaint with the medical review board.
By Camilla B.