Juarez/Fang patients attention

Ok I am totally behind your guys about hip hip hooraying Nicole out of there but let me play devil's advocate for a minute.  Maybe she was just completely overwhelmed and had no support or back up. Think of how frustrating it is for to call and not get answers and get the run around then picture about 30 other people doing the same thing to her. There office is very busy and probably have a huge lack organization. If others aren't doing their part it may make it hard to do hers. We are just simply thinking all she has to do is send your paperwork to the insurance company and when they say yes schedule you. Maybe it's not that easy, I don't know. I can totally see the rudeness coming out of someone when you have many people pulling you in all different directions and you just feel trapped. Maybe she has asked for help and her bosses never accomodated. I have acutally spoken with a gastric bypass scheduler at a different office and the job can be a lot of work if your employed by a disorganized office. Personally when I was thinking of switching over to Dr Juarez Nicole was nice and helpful to me. But I know other people personally who have had tons of trouble with their office. I don't think she was a bad employee or even trying to be. When she did have time she gave her full attention. Anywho, I just thought I would add my .30 cents.

I think that you bring up some good points. I do agree in some ways. I realized as I went through my issues with Nicole that her perspective was far different from mine. She was doing a job, and I was trying to arrange a massive black hole in my teaching schedule where not only myself, but 150 students would be affected by the date of my surgery. Nicole was always polite to me on the phone. What frustrated me about her was that she took five weeks to submit to my insurance. She told me point blank three different times, "as soon as I hang up, I'll fax that to your insurance". After the last time she said that and it didn't happen, I faxed my own information to the insurance and got approval from them before she got around to doing it herself. I had to contact my insurance to tell them when, where, and with whom I was having the surgery, because Nicole never got around to doing that. I had to call her to ask what pre-op steps I was supposed to be taking, what tests I was supposed to be having, I had to hound her and hound her to get the pre-op testing forms to the pre-op testing people (and eventually the Pre-op testing people went to Dr. Juarez' office to physically GET the paperwork, since the five times it "was already sent" never worked out).  It was a marvel of inefficiency. If I hadn't been proactive and asked asked asked I would not have had any pre-op nutrition class, no pre-op exercise, no pre-op preparation, and I have no idea when she would have gotten my paperwork into the insurance. In my case the paperwork was as simple as sending in my six-month diet history, since everything had already been submitted before and I was told to do the six-month diet. It wasn't that difficult.  BUT, I do know that there are many things that are easy to complain about from the outside, and horrendously complex from the inside. It's easy to say it, but not easy to do it. I do realize this. The frustration of my pre-op time was exacerbated by the loss of my mother, and my own anxiety over the need for absolutely precise timing. In the end, I'm happy and contented with my date I got, and I have been more than happy with the post-op help I got from both Dr. J and Dr. Fang when I was having an allergic reaction. I think, in the end, that I have gotten ten times better service from that whole office after surgery than before, and frankly, if I had to have a doctor's office that could only do one or the other, I would have to say it's better to have a fumbling inefficient office for submitting to insurance before surgery and super-efficient for post-op needs than the other way around.  AND I have to say that I learned a lot  in being my own advocate... I learned how to work my way around the maze of insurance, and insurance submittal, etc. This gives me hope when I get ready to go have plastic surgery, that I will know how to approach the plastic surgeon and apply for coverage for needed procedures. So in the end, it's all good.  I hope Nicole has gone on to find a job position that brings her greater happiness.

If this makes me the bad guy so be it. Nicole took the job and should have performed her job in a professional manner. She caused unknown stress, not only to the patients but to other staff. This I know first hand from more than a few observations.  If she could not or would not perform her job efficently then she shoulsd have left sooner. There was apparently a similar situation in another surgeons office prior to Juarez/Fang.  Nicole delayed my surgery by five months...count them 5 months when there was no need to have done so. She admitted that to me herself. Simply by not going through the charts on a timely manner. Even my insurance company was amazed by her attitude and ineptness. Nicole was as sweet as she coud be to me the first time I met with her. That did not last long. As for all the phone calls she had to deal with? If she had done her job properly there would not have been so many of them or so many people pulling at her to do her job. I worked in a hospital department for 3 years scheduling procedures and not once did I generate the problem that Nicole did. I took pride in my work. All I can say is that their office is a much better office to deal with now.  So much for Nicole I am ready to move on. I simply posted so that others who had similar problems would be aware they no longer had to dread dealing with her.

Gena, I do not think that you are a bad guy at all. YOU know the heartache I suffered, during a time of my life when I was reeling from the loss of my mother, having to deal with her shenanigans was really upsetting. 

My brother had his surgery with Doctor J. He nearly walked on out his Surgery because of things that were supposed to have been coordinated by Nicole had not been taken care of. He had hand carried items across town that she had not taken care of in a timely fashion and still there were things that had not been done on the day of the surgery. I started looking for another surgery group even before my brother had his surgery based upon the lack of performance by Nicole in taking care of the office issues. I am sorry if she was overworked, but in the medical field, there is alot less room for error than many other fields.  DR J. should have either gotten her some  help or found a replacement because I am sure he has lost potential patients because of this situation. I just hope that my brothers follow-up care will be handled in a more efficient manner than his pre-op paperwork.  

My followup care has been amazing. 6 days after my surgery, I showed up at Dr. J's office without an appointment, needing to see him, and was able to see him without any problems whatsoever. I also had to call several times after hours and spoke with both Dr. J. and Dr. F. on the phone to help me to resolve my particular issues. While I've had no further need to contact his office with any sort of emergencies, I have a great deal of confidence that I will be taken care of if I have any issues, and that confidence has helped me a great deal.  Nicole would have lost Dr. J me as a client. If I hadn't already switched surgeons once, I would have left. In fact, due to her ineptitude, my prior surgeon was the office that got my approval from the insurance company. If they'd been able to provide me with an earlier surgery date, I might have switched back, so disaffected with Nicole's lack of attention to details was I! 

You are exactly right. There is virtually no room for error in the medical field. This was really ingrained in me during my classes and teaining and I was always  very cautious. I wanted no part of sending someone to surgery and having them get the wrong surgery for them. I had little confidence in Nicole for that very reason. And yes it is a shame that Juarez/Fang did not send her on her way sooner.  But she is gone now and hopefully the woman will not take another job in a physician's office. She does not belong in one.   I went to his office at Good Sam Thursday for my post-op check up and it was a delightful office. Everyone was smiling and happy. Gena

Doesn't make you the bad guy, just looking at the situation from a different perspective. My dealings with her were short and I also have a few close friends who have dealt with her whose surgery dates and experience were effected. No biggie. ~*HUGS*~ Julie

Jumping in late. (still waiting for my fair hearing and dont come here much) SO a couple months back i wrote that little post about being frustrated with nicole and the office. i didnt get calls back for a few days and finally i got Nicole on the phone and she gave me my info and then ended the conversation with, " i want you to know that i am a person and things written about me on the internet hurt me" I was shocked! she reads these. we then had a 30 min convo and she told me how she had worked for another office for ten years and never had a problem. but she got stuck in a position where she was doing the work of 10 people.once i saw where she was coming and gave her some compassion, she went out of her way to help me. i even sent her flowers after i was denied because i wanted her to know that i appreciated what she did. she just got overworked, ran over and unappreciated and she stopped caring. it is the best thing she is gone. hopefully she can move on and make her job, her job, not her life. It is very difficult when you are waiting daily for your surgery and you just want to get healthier, and you are halted by the surgeons office,BELIEVE me, it is and was a daily battle for me, this surgery is one of the biggest unexpected stress's i have ever experienced. and if it would help to blame someone i would, but in the end its just another trial. congrats to all the ladies on the losers bench, hopefully i will be there soon!

When I was having all of my issues I was frustrated that my main place to vent about those selfsame frustrations was also a public forum where the person causing me frustrations would be able to see what I had to say, and make things more difficult! I did try to be cir****pect and did not post my frustrations on this forum but kept them to the more generic RNY forum. I also did my best to keep negative words about my doctor's office generic, never mentioning the person by name, and my praises specific, always mentioning a person by name. When I really had to vent, I would PM Gena or someone else who already had surgery with Dr. J. to tell the specifics so that I could get my frustrations off my chest. I also understand that overworked/underpaid/understaffed can be very discouraging. I tend to believe that the issues I've seen on this site and that I have experienced with more than one surgeon's office here in the valley are indicative of a problem that goes deeper than the hard-to-believe coincidence that they can't get good help. It's a symptom of understaffing, penny-pinching, underpaying, etc. If a job pays well and has realistic expectations, then if the person is inept who occupies the job, they move on and a better candidate takes their place. But the high rate of turnover in the offices at these surgeon's office tells me that they either pay peanuts to their staff (and get what they pay for), or they pay well but overwork them (thus leaving them unable to do the job properly), or they have unrealistic expectations, or all three. I honestly and truly hope that Nicole has found herself a job that has brought her greater happiness. I also hope that Dr. J's office has made some interior changes to make sure that each person has good pay, realistic expectations, and a positive working environment.  Another aspect of this entire issue is the increasing popularity of bariatric surgery. From what I understand it's on the rise across the nation, but there are only so many surgeons in our area. With the increasing demand, each surgeon in the valley sees a higher number of patients each month, and I'm guessing they're getting overwhelmed.