Greg Martin

Review of SC Internal Medicine

My most recent visit to SC Internal Medicine eas...

My most recent visit to SC Internal Medicine easily the worst one I've had since I starting going there for sleep apnea in 2011. I called and made an appointment to have a new CPAP machine set up. I met with my doctor, Dr. Strange, and confirmed the settings that needed to be programmed in the machine. As it turned out, there was not a respiratory therapist available at that time to program it and they asked me at first if I mind waiting a short time until one arrived and I said ok. Shortly after, they asked if I minded taking the machine offsite to get it programmed and I said ok. Should have been a 5 minute task. When I was checking out, the doctor's assistant told me I needed to take it "down the street" and get it programmed. I asked if it was in the building they used to be in and she told me to go down to the stop sign and take a turn instead of just giving me the business name and address.

I found the business with no problem and on the way up to the door I noticed that the script was wrong for one of the settings to be programmed into the machine. Disappointing in that there were only two settings that had to be programmed. When I met the therapist, I told him I noticed that one of the values was wrong and he did email and confirm that was the case and got the correct value. I thought everything was fine until the next day I get a box of CPAP supplies that I did not need or request as the CPAP programming was the only thing I needed. Upon inspection of the script, I found that in addition to the wrong programming value, it appears that they reused an old script that had boxes checked for different supplies instead of making a new one just for the CPAP programming.

At this point I reached out to SC Internal Medicine first through the patient portal, then phone calls and finally to the email they sent requesting this review using a link they provided to let them know if there were any problems. Weeks later I have still not received any reply. I did call the medical supply company and arrange to return the supplies, which I did a couple of weeks back with a label provided by them.

Today I got a bill for the supplies I returned and upon calling them, they said they haven't yet received the supplies, but will let me know when they do. Since they have already filed the insurance, it will take 40-60 days before everything get processed. Again, this should have been a 5 minute task and it would seem to me you would have to try to mess things up this badly. What has amazed me more though is that even with multiple communication attempts, I've not received any response either by phone or email. None of my other providers, vision, dental or my personal physician have ever just ignored communication. Also, while I was there for that appointment I changed an upcoming appointment I had and they didn't bother to change it in the patient portal, so I went ahead and cancelled it. If a simple task like I went in for can't be handled any better than this, how am I supposed to have any confidence that something more serious would be handled at all?