Dr. Pain: Still Waiting 18 Days Later...

Last week I went in for an appointment with Dr. Pain in order for him to dictate information for MA regarding my failure on Neurontin and a request for Lyrica.

I will post about that appointment in a separate post, but here are where things stand as of now.

This office--the entire staff, not just Dr. Pain--have to be the most disorganized, rude and incompetent group of medical staff I have encountered. (And that's saying a lot).

Wednesday last week: Appointment with Dr. Pain. He was to dictate immediately after the appointment. Nurse Pain was to fax dictation to Toni, my case manager with Medical Assistance.

Yesterday: I call Toni and she has not yet received dictation. She suggests calling Dr. Pain's office again. I leave a message.

At 3:45 pm yesterday afternoon Nurse Pain (one of them) calls to say they have the dictation ready to send to MA but they need the fax number.

Please note: Toni spoke with Nurse Pain on Friday August 10Th when Dr. Pain first prescribed the Lyrica. Nurse Pain (I am using this term for all nurses there) gets Toni's fax number and tells Toni that the dictation will be there early the following week. When I went in for my appointment last week (as the dictation had not been taken care of), I said to Nurse Pain that I wanted to make sure that she had the phone number and name of my MA nurse case worker. I watched her write down the name and number as I read it from my cell phone.

Yesterday, I say to Nurse Pain that I had made sure at my last appointment to give Toni's name and number, but that I did not have her fax number. Nurse Pain grumps at me, "Well, it's not in your chart. I don't see it here, so just give it to me again."

I noted that it was already 3:45 in the afternoon and Toni leaves the office at 4 (and the Pain Clinic also closes at 4).

Toni is on the other line when they call, so they leave a message. She calls back a couple minutes after 4 and they are closed for the day.

Today: Toni calls early this morning to give them her fax number. She receives the dictation from them. However, it includes NO information that she can use to file a claim regarding the Lyrica. She reads me the dictation--which fails to explain what happened to me on the Neurontin (they never asked), and rambles on about how Dr. Pain was out of town for 10 days and hasn't called Dr. ANS, but patient wants Lyrica for ANS problems. Toni says, "Does he have a language problem because this doesn't make any sense?"

I explain that he does not speak English well.

I spend the afternoon cutting and pasting from email exchanges with Dr. ANS describing my experiences with Neurontin, failure on other medications for neuropathic pain, etc. I email both Dr. ANS and Toni with each other's contact information. Dr. ANS had emailed me this morning saying that he would be more than willing to talk to MA about the Lyrica if they would accept his request.

I decide that after all of this emotional and physical exhaustion from interactions with Dr. Pain, that my best bet is to go to see Dr. ANS so that he can take care of all medication requests from now on (as long as I have seen him in the past year, MA will 'count' his input).

So, it is now 18 days since Dr. Pain wrote an Rx for Lyrica, yet he has provided NO documentation of use for MA and it took him 18 days to get the documentation to MA in the first place.

A couple of other side notes: When I was in for my appointment with Dr. Pain last week, Nurse Pain gave me a coupon for 7 free Lyrica pills. She told me that it was for 14 free pills. When Mom and I read the coupon and took it to the pharmacy, we realized the coupon was only valid for 7 pills. I told Nurse Pain yesterday that I only had 7 pills to get me through, not 14 and she sharply replied, "Well, you should have been given 14. What pharmacy did you go to? That's not right. I'll call the pharmacy and talk to them and straighten that out." Needless to say, I haven't heard back that the pharmacy 'made an error'!

Also, when I was in on Wednesday last week and my records had 'disappeared' I later realized that they are probably sitting somewhere in Dr. Pain's house because at my first appointment he said to the nurse, "I'm not going to dictate this now. It's too complicated. I will do it tonight at home." So, I told Nurse Pain that I thought this might be why my records were 'missing' and she retorted, "Well I have your dictation right here from August 23rd. I have your records." I said I was referring to records from my first appointment that I had brought in. She said she didn't know what I was talking about, needed to call Toni and hung up.


The bottom line is that this office and the way it is run scares me. I have never felt so concerned for myself and other patients well being, because this is a doctor who is prescribing pain medications--narcotics, etc. I have been told by a reputable source that the office had been called about patients abusing prescriptions for narcotics and they shrugged off this person's phone call and said they didn't care.

The lack of communication is staggering. The fact that the nurses and doctor never take personal responsibility for anything is scary. The fact that he doesn't speak English well enough to talk to patients on the phone, to talk to them without a nurse in the room or to dictate a request to MA is downright unacceptable. It is also, again, scary. In order to be a doctor you must be able to communicate effectively in English with your patients, your staff, other doctors and insurance companies. I fear that saying this comes off as if I am prejudiced. But, I am not. I believe, however, if you are dealing with people's lives and those people speak English, you as a doctor must be able to speak English well enough to communicate.

I keep thinking that after all of these years nothing will surprise me. But this staff has outdone itself! Bravo to them for being one of the most poorly run medical clinics I have been to. How many lives have they endangered today?

I have already called our local hospital to report him (as the clinic is run by the hospital), however, I haven't received a call back yet. I will continue to call. I have never reported a doctor or staff person before (although others have surely deserved being reported). This time though the consistency of the clinic's attitude, poor communication, lack of timeliness, etc. show that the interactions I have had with them are the rule, not the exception.

Emily