1 /5 James Phelps: This place is astonishing for achieving a rare, almost supernatural combination of being rude, incompetent, and expensive.
Platos Theory of Forms posited that there is a higher plain, a realm of ideas, where perfect versions of abstracted ideas exist, called Ideal Forms. If Plato was right, then Palomar Health Medical Group is like an Ideal Form for the worst doctors office possible. It is a perfectly awful practice.
You know somethings wrong when your doctors office makes the DMV look like a paragon of efficiency and high performance. PHMG offers patients an experience so absurdly bad that it would be funny, if your health wasnt hanging in the balance, and it wasnt so overpriced.
It was common for me call the place, leave messages, wait on hold for 25 minutes, and they just dont answer or call back. Ive had them fail to fill critical prescriptions on time. Ive had them intentionally not fill critical prescriptions, and not tell me why as weeks sail by (I needed a new appointment). They dont follow up with lab results. Ive shown up for an annual physical, only to be told my appointment has to be rescheduled. I need them to send medical records to another provider, they just dont do it (this is before the hack). Ive had them send out erroneous invoices, erroneously too low!
I wouldnt be able to get any help for days and weeks at a time, that was typical. One of these times, after playing phone tag for half a month, I finally got ahold of the receptionist. Im finally speaking with a human. I tell her I urgently need my critical prescription refilled, the pharmacy says theyve been calling for three weeks and they get no response from PHMG, and Ive been stretching my supply to the limit. She told me that the next appointment is like 3 months out, and there are absolutely no exceptions. She gives me grief about patient responsibility and tells me that I should just go to urgent care if I want my prescription that bad.
So I called customer service at the parent company to complain about how I cant get my I-need-this-to-function prescription filled. Within 24 hrs, the same receptionist calls back, still audibly irritated, and she makes an appointment for me the same day! My prescription gets refilled right away. What was all that talk about being booked for three months? How am I supposed to respond to this? What do they think this looks like?
I kept coming to PHMG because I loved my doctor here, they are a specialist for a unusual combination of diagnoses I have, and they accepted my insurance plan. But my Dr. has since left PMHG, and I fortunately will never have to deal with this place again. Anytime I feel down, I can recall this fact, that I never have to deal with this place again, and ai feel good everytime I think about it.
It is no surprise to me seeing PMHG are in the headlines for their bad behavior. Theyre owned by a private equity company, who, from the looks of it, has basically destroyed the existing medical practice, and made it impossible for the place to function. No doubt the private equity fund has somehow managed to make a lot of money off the company while at the same time causing it to fail, sucking money and sustenance from the practice like a parasitic lemprey eel. If any of you are reading this, you guys should be ashamed of how you conduct yourselves, the way you treat both your patients and your providers.
