What is up with Duke?

Don't get me wrong, I had a great no a fantastic surgery!!!! I had no problems at all (knock on wood). However, I remember when I was walking through my journey to surgery I had the worst time getting a return call from the people at Duke. Dr Pryor was wonderful and the staff was great when I was there for an appointment, however, to get a return call was like pulling teeth!!!
The reason I bring this up is, I recommended Duke to a friend of mine. She told me she waited approx a month for her first call (which she expected) to set up an appointment. Unfortunately, she was not at home when the call came in and had to return the call. Well, she told me that she has left 5 messages and no one has called back. She told me that she was very frustrated. I let her know what I went through hoping that she understood that it wasn't just her. I just can't understand how Duke allows this to happen. I heard about this prior to my surgery and went through it myself and now my friend is going through it. What gives?

While I originally had my surgery at Duke Durham, since I live in Raleigh about 5 minutes from I Duke Raleigh, I use them now and I LOVE them! They are really very patient focused. While the programs are associated with one another, they seem to run them somewhat differently. I have found the Duke Raleigh office to be very warm and accessible. I really like the format of their support groups which have 30 mins of information presentation and then 30 minutes of Q&A and peer to peer discussion. 

I agree that it is a shame that the Duke Durham 'program' as a whole gets such a black eye because of the administrative stuff. I'm hoping that this will get better because as you say they really do have a wonderful, robust program. 

I'd love to meet you too! Maybe I'll see you at an upcoming event in the future.