I was forced to leave my PCP of some 12 years because Emerald Physician's Services couldn't handle simple requests like filling prescriptions and getting prescriptions sent from on satellite office to another.
Their bureaucracy is stifling and insulting to their patients.
And when you challenge their bureaucracy and its mindlessness, you receive nothing but self-serving BS that bears no relation to reality.
Examples:
1. It took 12 days, 4 e-mails and 2 telephone calls to get a prescription sent to a mail-order pharmacy in a way that it could be filled. Their response, of course, that it should not have happened that way; it was all the pharmacy's fault; people were out; and that there is always a covering team. To the question as to what use a covering team was if it didn't cover, I was greeted with stony silence and an attempt to change the subject. No apology for the mix up. Not even a concern about me, the patient, being without the needed medicine.
2, I requested a prescription refill and asked if the script could be sent to a more local office. I received a telephone call stating that the script was at the front desk and available for pick up. I went to the local office only to find out that the script had NOT be sent as requested, and was in an office some 30-miles away. The front desk made some phone calls...3 to be exact...and stated that it would be sent. However...
3. When I called the practice number, it was intercepted by a phone drone who, not being at the local office, couldn't tell me whether or not the script had been sent. It took her a few minutes with me on hold to tell me that it was available for pick-up. I asked which office she had called, and the drone couldn't remember and had to call all over again. I had to ask her to confirm that it was in the correct office. It was not. And it had to be sent to the correct office because the originating office had not transmitted it. And, no one would give me the phone number of the local office so I had to keep going through the practice's phone drones and play the old childhood game of telephone.
4. When I was discussing the phone problem with the managing nurse, I was told that they had a working group addressing the telephone issues that had the objective of having each call answered by a live person. When I pointed out that having a live person answer wasn't so much the problem as was having it answered by someone who a) knew what the were doing, and b) could do something to address/correct the problem. Again, stoney silence.
5. I was later informed that they would no longer allow my physician to write scripts to be picked up at a more local office. It was "their policy", of course, having done it for four months already had no bearing on the topic. I either had to travel 30-miles each way to pick up my script or get a new PCP.
Because I was without personal transportation for a few months, I was forced to seek a new physician, and for continuity of care, I selected one from their local office. The kicker was that that office was only open two days a week, something I didn't find out until after I switched, and it suffers as much, if not more, from the bureaucratic idiocies that I have experienced with them elsewhere.
My recommendation: If you have a choice find another practice for your medical needs.
Emerald Physician's Services treats their patients with a degree of disdain and arrogance that makes the whole experience as unpleasant as a root canal.
This is a bureaucracy run amok in denial that they systems stink. If I could give them zero stars, I would.
Follow-Up Note: From the state filings on corporations, this "practice" is owned and operated by a single physician, either hiring or leasing-out space to doctors in the practice. It would appear that the doctors themselves have little to say about how the "Services" is run, and it would appear that the owner is more interested in skimming his take than he is in providing the "concierge-level" medical care that his advertising brochure claims. read more