Rheumatic Disease Center

04/14/08

Excellent and compassionate care

by floann at Citysearch

I have been a patient at the Rheumatic Disease Center for about 4 years. I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis 20 years ago, I have been treated by numerous physicians before I settled on the Rheumatic Disease Center. My wonderful physician is Dr. Stephen Hinkle. He goes out of his way to make sure I receive the care I need regardless of my circumstances. If you a looking for physicians that are knowledgeable, compassionate and professional, this would be my recommendation.

• Pros: Convenient Parking and location, fast and reliable on site lab & xray

07/14/08

Compassionate Care -- Terrific Support Staff

by travling1 at Citysearch

I've been a patient of RDC for more than five years. Dr. Bergquist is my physician and I can easily recommend him highly. He is on time 99% of the time, and in the very rare instance where he was about 15 minutes late, he apologized, and explained the situation. He explains things thoroughly, makes you feel like he has all the time in the world for your questions, and has made a big difference in the quality of my life because of the medications/treatments he has prescribed.

He is just a piece of the successful equation at RDC. The office staff, including his assistant Joan and the billing areas have consistently gone above and beyond. Joan fights with insurance companies, and does an excellent job of relaying phone messages to the doctor. The X-ray guy (I think his name is Bob), is very gentle and understands the pain an x-ray can have for a rheumatoid patient. Both of these people seem to know the patient as well as the doctor.

The convenience of the on-site lab, as well as the easy in and out, especially compared to when they were house at Columbia make regular visits to this facility as close as one can get to enjoyable, considering it is for medical treatment.

I would highly recommend this team of professionals to anyone suffering with arthritis.

• Pros: Caring doctors, highly capable support staff, easy in-and-out, timely appointments
• Cons: None observed

01/05/08

Good care, horrendous service

by dlarkin42 at Citysearch

My wife has been a patient at RDC for more than 1 year now. She started there as a patient of Dr. Justina Tseng, who has since left the practice. She receives monthly treatments there. Dr John Alberts took over "caring" (notice I wrote "Caring" in quotes) for her after. He has seen her once in the past six months.

Unfortunately, we had to make several changes to our health plan carriers in 2007, causing us to go through our deductibles and out-of-pocket expenses several times over. This caused us to amass a large balance due.

1 week prior to her first treatment of 2008, she has been notified that she is not welcomed for treatment unless we agree to make payments equalling $500/month! Dr. Albert told her that our bill is the highest ever for the clinic and he "Can not prescribe any medication" until we agree to remedy the bill.

If you like having the Hippocratic Oath thrown out the window in favor of you health care, I strongly encourage anyone to come here for treatments. Otherwise, there are other clinics who will listen to your problems first and then work with you. We will find one.

11/13/07

Highly Recommended!

by chezmember at Citysearch

The care I've received from the Rheumatic Disease Center is the best care that I've received anywhere. My doctor, Steven Hinkle, is the most caring, compassionate physician I've ever dealt with in the last 20 years since being diagnosed with arthritis. The staff is kind and the doctor is very knowledgeable and I'm always treated with the utmost respect and compassion. I highly recommend the clinic and my doctor.

08/07/06

I would recommend someone else

by kjensen11 at Citysearch

He appeared very unorganized and it seemed that he was more of a resident than a specialist. Their office requests paperwork to be filled out and sent in prior to office visit. When I walked in he spent several minutes looking thru the chart and my medical record (new patient). I even had to point out previous test results I had that he completely missed while reading my record (and it was circled). He then left the room to take a personal phone call. After coming back into the room he had to leave again to answer more questions from his MA. When he finally came back he didn't seem to care about my main concerns and stepped around the questions I had.

He explained things in detail, which was good....however he knew I also worked in the medical field and talked to me like I was stupid. He went on to explain treatment options before I even completed the xrays and MRI. My diagnosis wasn't what he said, he was just guessing. Luckily for me he was wrong.

If you do decide to go to him I would be prepared to ask questions and CHECK your bill/coding. Keep track of the time he spent with you versus the time you spend in the room waiting for him. Try to get the first appointment of the day because mine was scheduled for early morning and I still had to wait one hour before getting back into a room.

• Pros: Parking
• Cons: professionalism, knowledge, experience