South Island Medical Associates, P.C.

Full disclosure: This review is part of my «Crappy Clinics, Hospitals and Doctors Tour», where – after several hellish years of service from various places – I’ve finally had enough and have decided to start hitting every rotten, stinking place I’ve been to and alert the general public about the pathetic excuse for places they call clinics and hospital.
So let’s start with South Island. I had to go to this place in 2012 because this is where my newly-​assigned PCP was working – well, supposedly working, I should say, because SI has multiple locations and he was working at the Avenue L at the time. Because the Ralph Avenue location was closest to my house, I was asked to see the resident MD there. I thought, «A doctor’s a doctor, so what’s the difference? No harm, no foul.»
Big mistake. I was seen by a female doctor who couldn’t have been more incompetent, lazy or apathetic. At the time (I didn’t know it), I was suffering symptoms from early stages of an iron anemia deficiency and had developed a heart murmur. She prescribed me vitamin B12 pills. When I came back two weeks later to say that things weren’t getting any better, she proceeded to treat me as a head case and kept asking me about my psychiatric history. She then kept scheduling me for new appointments once every three weeks, promising to «proceed from there» but never did.
Just to show you how incompetent she was, it took both her and the nurse a full half hour of digging a huge butterfly needle into both arms to take a simple blood sample. After finally realizing they were supposed to use a smaller needle, she laughed sheepishly and went, «You have thick blood.»
It gets worse. She referred me to an OBGYN who was affiliated with South Island, one with a bad, condescending attitude. This OBGYN gave me a clean bill of health when a year later I would be diagnosed with the most aggressive form of fibroids the MD had ever seen. She also dismissed my complaints about possible PCOS with a wave of the hand and a scoffing explanation that I was «probably just hairy.»
Several months after my horrible experiences at SI, I wanted no part of this clinic and decided to call my insurance to switch PCPs. But then I remembered that I had never seen my real PCP to begin with and decided it was better to just finally meet up with him than to go through the hassle of trying to find a brand new MD and switch over.
I finally was able to catch my actual PCP at the Avenue L location. This is when the fun began. After four visits, he informed me that he could no longer be my doctor anymore, because he was finally dumping the clinic for greener pastures and leaving NYC. Oh, wonderful!
Before he left the practice, he had ordered many tests, including a monitor that I had to wear for 24 hours straight. When it came time for the cardiologist at SI to pick up where my ex-​PCP had left off, my folder/​chart with all the results of these tests suddenly went missing. The problem? It had somehow been sent to the Ralph Avenue location (or so they claimed). Just to show you how unprofessional this clinic is, when the receptionist was asked where my folder the first time it went missing, she adamantly DENIED that my folder had ever been at Avenue L, then started an ARGUMENT with me, belligerently demanding to know «what clinic I was from, whether I was from Avenue L or Ralph Avenue.»
Things went from bad to worse. Time and time again, SI would keep asking me to come in for a visit with the cardiologist. I’d go out there, only to be told by him that he couldn’t progress any further without my folder. Then reception would inform me that my entire folder was at the Ralph Avenue location but would be at Avenue L upon my next visit.
This was done to me FOUR TIMES throughout May 2013-​August 2013. After months of this, I filed a complaint against SI with my insurance, who promptly investigated. Much to my anger and disgust, the office manager then told my insurance a big, honking, huge fat LIE – that there had been a «misunderstanding», that South Island had had my tests all along.
NO. South Island had the initial bloodwork/​urine tests, but it dumped ALL of my other tests – the nerve conduction tests, a bladder ultrasound and a series of cardiology tests, including the damned Holter monitor. Isn’t that great? Dozens of hours wasted taking tests in which the results would magically disappear, thousands of dollars billed to my insurance for a boatload of tests that I never got the results for – and for a heart murmur that was never investigated.
So now you guys know what kind of place you’re dealing with. Don’t even THINK of coming here. They don’t care about their patients or of providing good service and will lie to your insurance like three year olds when you file a complaint against them.
This marks the end of my «Crappy Clinics, Hospitals and Doctors Tour.» Stay tuned for the next stop on my tour – Brookdale ER.