Dr Doshi may be wonderful, or terrible, or anything in between, I have no idea because the…read morebureaucracy around him is such a disaster that I never got to see him. I will go find someone else.
(Karla G's review below is interesting, it shows how a team around a doctor can make the whole experience terrible. Dr Doshi needs to move somewhere else than "Pacific Heart Institute"/Providence where he currently is)
So here's my experience:
* A doctor I trust recommended Dr Doshi because I have some possible arrhythmia as an extreme athlete. These things may or may not be serious, so just in case it's a good idea to go find out.
* I called and his secretary gave me a time to call him just to determine if it's worth for us to meet.
* So we called, I explained what I measured on my body as a non-doctor, he listened carefully and asked 2-3 key questions, then concluded "Sure we should meet to put you an EKG for a week so we can see from there".
* They give me this appointment to put the EKG.
* I show up exactly on time and someone asks me "Do you have your *** form" (or whatever vaccination thing that I don't know about). Realizing that I don't know what that is she then asked "Do you have a recent COVID test?" and as I said No (since no one told me I needed one) she started rolling her eyes and shouted "Please step back make sure you stay in the corridor" (by the elevators).
Different hospitals have different rules, I had just come from a surgeon's office for a broken collarbone and they did not request any test for non-surgical appointments). These rules also change all the time, so I can't guess what the rules are at each moment.
The funny thing is that she was actually... FAT, in a heart doctors office! And making judgments on my health choices as probably the fittest guy she's seen in years with a quality of nutrition she's probably never even heard of in her lifetime. She's used to seeing sick people all day, probably ends up making it her norm, and when she sees someone who hasn't been sick a single time in a decade she rolls her eyes with judgments (when she should be working out and eating correctly instead).
* Someone else comes in the corridor and finally explains me the rules nicely. They required at that time a 48-hour COVID test for every appointment. which means I would basically have to go to 7 appointments to make this happen... Here's how it would go:
1. The appointment I just wasted because no one told me I needed a COVID test.
2. Going to make a COVID test valid for 48 hours
3. Within 48 hours going to put the device on my chest
4. ~6 days later going for another COVID test
5. Within 48 hours going to remove the device
6. Going for a third COVID test (valid for 48h)
7. Within 48-hours going to Dr Doshi appointment for interpretation of the results.
hahaha...
You would think that would be the end of the story? Nope.
Obviously I called his secretary to explain all this. She said "Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you..." and we cancelled the appointment (to which I was perfectly on time).
A few weeks later I received an invoice ($850 if I remember correctly).
I called to explain their billing department what happened, saying that the appointment never actually happened. They said the most amazing thing of this story: "Oh, it's not the appointment it's the phone call" that is classified as a "phone consultation".
I cracked up and explained that this was about 5 minutes with screaming kids in the background that made it very difficult to hear, that no diagnostic has ever been made in this phone call but that the goal was only to find out if it's worth meeting or not.
To be clear, I DO NOT MIND THE SCREAMING KIDS, it's important to understand that some doctors like this may be very busy and I instead appreciate that he took some of his personal time for this. IF HOWEVER we were calling this a consultation it would be not only completely unprofessional but a total rip off considering the amount (for actually doing nothing).
I asked them to contact Dr Doshi's office to ask them, saying "I am sure they would tell you the same thing, that this was absolutely not a consultation" (and no one even talked about a price, nor COVID test indeed).
They got back to me telling me that the office maintained that this was a "virtual consultation" and they continued to harass me with invoices.
I wanted to call their billing department to tell them to go F*** themselves, that they will never see that rip-off money and I will never go to that place in my lifetime, but I figured that this is such a terrible experience (that should never happen in any office with a minimum of decency of service) that it would be a good idea to just let others know using a review.
But again, I want to make it clear that I do not know if Dr Doshi himself is a great doctor, and that is because the bureaucracy around him did not let me find out, and I now have no intention to find out.
Hopefully these harassing invoices don't kill me from a heart attack.
