Julie A Griffith, MD, MS, CMT

This «Dr» is quite frankly the worst doctor I have ever in my life encountered. She has a number of court claims against her. Please do your research before going to see her. Take a look at a few of these links to start with.
She is at best unethical, at worst fraudulent.
She insisted I passed lyme disease onto my son while pregnant. I was living in an Asian country with NO cases of lyme disease. She would not consider any other diagnosis. I do not have lyme disease, do not appreciate being incorrectly told I am responsible for my 7yr olds difficulties. The consultation was a complete waste of time.
I was blatantly overcharged ($ 950!) and then threatened when I confronted her over it. If she asks you to complete a questionnaire when you get to her office please do not do it — you will be charged $ 250 for her time to do it.
My GP and several others in Marin have advised me against seeing this woman. Their feedback is that her medical knowledge is very questionable. I would wholeheartedly agree with this view.

Dr. Griffith has been my neurologist for five years now, perhaps longer. I have lost track. In any case, I find her to be very smart, caring, nonjudgmental and open to suggestion about directions of treatment. When I have a meeting with her we put our heads together, look at the lab test results, look at the latest research, and so on, in order to come up with a treatment plan.
I have a very complex case of chronic Lyme disease and parkinsonism. She really lets me, as a patient, help steer the direction of treatment. That means a lot to me, because so many doctors don’t even want to hear what their patients might have discovered by researching things on the Internet, reading books, or talking to other patients outside of the clinic. They usually have some kind of superiority complex. I never feel this with Dr. Griffith. It has always been a collaborative effort with her.
She is also very fast, working efficiently while I am in her office. There’s no sitting around and scratching one’s head wondering whether the doctor is hearing what you say, or is awake. She calls her assistant in several times during a typical session, asking for information about some drug, a particular report in my chart, or to call a pharmacy or get some doctor on the line. As I am giving her my update, she’s typing what I say, so we can refer back to the notes. If she has a question that she doesn’t know the answer to, she might take a stab at it on the web. (She has two notebook computers on her desk for two different purposes.) I bring my own iPad and I might be surfing for something as well. Then we will compare notes.
But even better, she has a large network of experts, some of whom are friends of hers in the medical community. Many times in the middle of a session with her (which might last an hour or sometimes longer), she’ll pick up the phone and call a specialist for some advice on dosing, which approach is better, which drug, etc. It could be another Lyme disease doctor or a pharmacist, for example. She will do a spontaneous conference call right on the spot, so I can hear what the specialist is saying and I can even ask my own questions. In one case, I had the idea of having my two Lyme disease doctors on the phone at the same time while Dr. Griffith and I were listening, so it was a four-​way conversation. It was very productive. By the end of the conversation, we had come up with a game plan that all of the doctors were on board for. I don’t think that could’ve been arrived at through any other approach.
She does not hesitate to call a laboratory to check on the results of the lab test that might be delayed, or to confirm the results. She will even argue with the laboratory if they’ve replicated a test for me and charged me twice, for example. In other words, she will go to bat for her patients.
Unlike many doctors I have been to, she actually puts me on the examining table and checks out things such as my reflexes, has me walk across the room and back, palpates to see if there’s something strange in my gut, listens to my heart, and so forth. If I complain about an ache or a pain she will look into it, and sometimes has even sent me off to Marin General Hospital to get a blood culture or an x-​ray if she fears that something serious is going on.
She will admit it if she’s a little fuzzy on some topic. That is actually reassuring for me. How can any doctor know everything? When is the last time you saw a doctor turn to his or her library and pull some book off of the top shelf and look up something s/​he couldn’t quite remember?
Finally, I’ll say that she is open to alternative treatments. So few MDs are. I know that from experience, unfortunately. Doctor Griffith is open to allopathic treatments (of course, having gone through a traditional Western medical education) but also naturopathic, homeopathic, and even fringier approaches, such as ‘energy’ work.
I am happy to say, also, that she is within the Blue Shield network. So this means that I have a relatively small co-​pay.
To end I will say that I feel like I have an advocate who will fight for me and actually cares about me and my case, as complicated as it has been. She has also been reachable by email and telephone when I was having some kind of emergency, even if I were out of the country.