Lekshmi Venugopal, MD

Dr. Venugopal is a very good doctor who is very knowledgeable. I also think she is conservative with medication, which makes her a good doctor (in my opinion); however, her staff is HORRIBLE. I find her receptionist to be rude and lazy most of the time. She refuses to call in scripts and makes me call my pharmacy and make the pharmacist call in ALL requests to the doctor. I’ve never dealt with an office who won’t give the doctor a script request. I find the receptionist lazy and very inefficient. Often, I have to keep calling the office and asking if the refill was called in. I’ve been told by the receptionist that she will NOT contact me when the script is called into the pharmacy, and I can just «keep calling your pharmacy until it gets there.» HUH!!! When I tried to explain to the receptionist that this is a very inefficient way to know when I can pickup my daughter’s meds, she replied, «it’s the only way, because I don’t know when or IF scripts are refilled.» Then, «sleepy sounding receptionist» hangs up, and I spend the next 5+ hours trying to guess when to pickup my daughter’s meds, and if they’ve even been called in at all. The receptionist also blames ME when she never returns my calls. When I finally get upset because I can’t get the office to call me back, the receptionist says, «I left you a message. You must not have gotten it.» This excuse worked the first and second times, but by the 3^rd time, it’s just annoying. Even when I explain that I don’t have any missed calls from the office and NO messages, the receptionist than blames my phone and says «something must’ve happened.» Huh??! No, nothing «happened» other than I can’t seem to get returned calls from this office. Today, after waiting for 2 days for a return call, I was told «sorry, the doctor already left for the day, so you will need to wait another day before she can call in medicine for your daughter.» So, tomorrow will be DAY THREE that we wait, when this should really take 5 minutes. It might be time to search for other options in St. Charles. As I mentioned, Dr. Venugopal is a great doctor, but if you want to see her, be prepared to fight with her receptionist to get refills, appointments or returned calls (and be prepared to be blamed too). I’ve had experience with other psychiatrists’ offices with my daughter (in different places we’ve lived), and this office is definitely one of the worst to deal with (because of the staff).