No response from Noreen and Dr B's office...

I got approved on the 16th and have left 3 messages for her, and haven't heard anything back at all. Should I be concerned at this point?!?!??!? Alli

Call again... I know last week the office was slim staffed due to the holiday.

As much as I am impressed with Dr. Blackstone as a surgeon I have to say I have not been impressed with the staff within her office. My experience with Noreen has been a continued negative one where I feel I am a "bother" to her. Currently I have 2 calls in to her with intensive messages over the last 2 days with no reply. Stella my "case manager" is not real good at returning the messages within 24 hours but eventually she does get back to me. WendyJo would take 3 or 4 days to respond to an email or voice mail. My insurance company CIGNA finally gave up trying to deal with Dr. Blackstones office due to the disrespect they were shown and channeled everything through me which may it hard on me. I did not play middleman very well. Due to a number of "dropped balls" on both CIGNA and Dr. Blackstones part my surgery was cancelled 12 hours before it was to begin and is now on hold until February 7th unless I can get in through a cancellation of some sort. All of this could have been avoided if the people in Dr. Blackstones office had returned phone calls or emails in a timely manner. I have heard that about 3 or 4 months ago an office manager was hired to help alleviate this issue (it has been a problem for longer than we have all known) but as far as I see it is not remedied yet. Dr. Blackstone is the best, by far...so maybe that is why we put up with the sloppy service her office offers. It just seems that during this time in our lives when we are struggling to stay on the positive side of everything a little more support from SBC staff would be welcome.

I too had some fustrations with the staff yesterday... as it takes forever for a call back. Especially with the nursing staff, for simple paperwork or appointments. They are really good about calling back with medical concerns but not the other stuff that is important to us... I do not know how to approach it to Dr. Blackstone that her office staff is lacking or if even to do so, since the practice is so large and they probably do have a billion patients. Maybe a letter... I am not sure. But yesterday after I waited all day for a phone call regarding whether or not I needed to return to work today and still not call back, I called every 5 minutes until I got who I wanted to talk to on the phone! It worked... hehe!