I've struggled with deciding whether or not to write this review for quite some time, but the chaos I experienced leading up to receiving my care honestly calls for this.
I was first referred to Brownstein and Crane Surgical Services by my Primary Care Physician in August 2017 for a bilateral double mastectomy with male reconstruction. I was finally provided a callback following my referral by my doctor after a month's wait, in September 2017. I was at work, and unfortunately missed this call, however when I called back the next day during their business hours, I was informed that due to me missing my phonecall and not calling back in a timely fashion, that I was therefore unable to confirm the consultation date they were going to provide me that day, and I will have to be provided with a new one. Understandable. I asked when my consult would have been; they said April 2018. I asked when my consult would be now that I called; December 2018. Over a year, simply for a consultation.
I begged the receptionist/Scheduler/Whomever to please add me to whatever wait list they had, as my ribcage was (and still is) deformed from binding, and this was a surgery that I needed as soon as possible.
Come December 2017, I was given a call back, and was provided a consult with Doctor Satterwhite in February 2018.
My consultation went fine, Doctor Satterwhite seemed trustworthy and very knowledgeable about what he was doing, and I was also assured that not only were his results for cases like mine consistently phenomenal and symmetrical, that their office would be able to schedule me around my school schedule so I would not miss too many days.
I then waited 8 weeks to receive my surgery date, which was scheduled for October 2018. Definitely not within the time frame I requested, smack in the middle of my college semester, but still doable.
Fast forward to September 2018. I was called by their scheduler, who informed me that my letter of support provided by my therapist was invalid, as it did not follow their guidelines and 'had expired', and they were going to give me until the end of September to remedy the situation. I had provided this document months in advance. I scrambled to find a therapist to write me a new letter within their specifications, and was able to do this within several weeks.
Situation after situation like this continued, such as; not faxing my doctor the correct documentation they needed him to sign, not providing my insurance proper documentation to cover my surgery, and at one point had sent my insurance a request for a completely different patient's surgery on accident.
Finally, I received a letter in the mail at the very end of September 2018, less than a month before my surgery; I was informed that Doctor Satterwhite was announcing his departure from BCSS, and his final day in practice there would be October 16th, 2018. He had scheduled my surgery for October 18th, 2018, effectively cancelling my surgery as, once I called BCSS, they were unable to find another surgeon to fill my date.
Eventually, after I called BCSS copious amounts of times, I was finally able to locate contact information for Align Surgical Services, Doctor Satterwhite's new practice. Unfortunately, his receptionist bore the brunt of my anger and frustration as I actually screamed my message for her to deliver to Doctor Satterwhite (that I did not appreciate being left in this situation at such short notice, and just how unprofessional I thought this was), but to my knowledge my message was delivered to him.
I am unsure if it was a result of my complaining, or more likely many other of his patients calling as well, but Doctor Satterwhite remained on staff at BCSS for an additional two weeks, and was able to complete my surgery on the date scheduled.
I thought this would be the end of my nightmare, but it unfortunately was not.One of my incisions was not stitched closed properly, despite me mentioning during my follow up to have my bandages removed that it seemed to be open. I was informed that this was normal, and not to worry about it. I ended up developing a severe infection in this site, which lasted almost a month, and has permanently affected the appearance and sense of feeling of my scar and skin in that area.
Overall, even discounting the affect the infection had on the appearance of my scars, the results were... adequate at best. I can certainly live with the results (as I have no other choice to), but they are certainly not the phenomenal results I was promised, and definitely not worth the absolute nightmare I had to endure to get this final result. read more