I just returned home 40 minutes ago at 3:15pm from an appointment I had at Brandywine Valley Pain Control scheduled at 1pm. I was ten minutes late but because the office I went to at 105 Vineyard Way in Jennersville, PA is not actually their office (apparently it’s one they *borrow* once a month from Delaware Valley Pain and Rehab), I was unable to locate their phone number on the web anywhere to contact them (and neither for that matter, could Siri). By the time I contacted my primary care physician’s office and they tracked down the only number they had, the one for Brandywine Valley Pain Control’s Exton, PA office (located at 460 Creamery Way), I was pulling into the parking lot.

Mind you, when I first attempted to make an appointment with Brandywine Valley Pain Control I was told they would “get back to me in 10 days to 2 weeks and offer me an available appointment.”  Two weeks later they did that, for an appointment another month later.  That should have been my first clue.

After arriving today for my long-awaited scheduled appointment the receptionist proceeded to read all my credit card information OUT LOUD to charge my copay. When I said I didn’t think that was very secure she assured me she “knew the people in the waiting room” and I didn’t “have anything to worry about.”  Yes, I’m sure she knew them extremely well.  Of course if she hadn’t known them extremely well, she wouldn’t have read my credit card info out loud, right? I might add $1000 was stolen from my business checking account five days ago when my check card was compromised, how I have no idea.  You’ll have to excuse me if I’m not as trusting as this inept receptionist apparently is.

Anyway, four hours later I’ve finally stopped sobbing now that my second round of pain meds have kicked in and I’ve drunk some coffee (which seems to help for some reason). Yes, she with the pain tolerance level that has allowed her have a root canal (and every filling in her adult life) without Novocain and suffer with daily gallbladder attacks for two years while doctors repeatedly attempted (and repeatedly failed) to remove a stone from her bile duct in an effort to avoid open surgery, came home sobbing in agony because she was forced to sit on a rock hard chair with intolerable back pain and nerve pain in her legs for *two hours* at a PAIN CLINIC. The pain level ultimately forced me to leave WITHOUT SEEING THE DOCTOR.  Apparently the doctor was too busy dictating notes to come see me, even though he’d been told by the nurse some time earlier that I had reached the end of my pain tolerance when my distraught husband inquired of her if the doctor was ever going to make an appearance.  Is Brandywine Valley Pain Control completely ignorant of why patients come to see them or are they just heartless? I suspect a bit of both. Either one is unacceptable.

In summary, the *last* place anyone should go for patient care in Chester County is Brandywine Valley Pain Control.  They are intolerably incompetent, unprofessional and uncaring.  Unfortunately I don’t know the name of the doctor I was supposed to see but I intend to find out… and Aetna is next in line to hear my story.

With that my dear reader, I hope your day is infinitely better than mine has been.

UPDATE 1.31.13: I was just told by my husband ten minutes ago that the receptionist/nurse actually *refused* to tell the doctor about my agony because she “wouldn’t interrupt him while he was dictating.”  My husband decided it would be best not to inform me of this while we were there because I was already extremely upset, so I was under the impression the doctor had been apprised of the situation. Apparently other than the doctor choosing to make dictations when he knew he had a patient who had been waiting for two hours, he was apparently unaware of my agony and therein the majority of the fault lies with the aforementioned totally inept receptionist.

Filed under: Angst

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