Ashley S
2/5
TLDR: Office staff is severely over worked, and it greatly impacts the patient experience. I will seek another practice going forward.
I am surprised that the reviews are so high. I decided on this practice because I had been there before (10+ years ago and because of the reviews). My experience was solely at the Mesa Office. My experience dealt with getting new orthotics.
I saw Dr. Maling (again seen him before years ago). He is super nice. You can really tell he knows what he is doing. You can really tell that he enjoys what he is doing. However, you can feel and see how rushed he is. He is overbooked by staff.
Office staff is the main issue. The staff is mostly nice. However, as with the doctor, they are severely over worked. They simply cannot keep up. The patient is the one that suffers because of this.
Staff will immediately tell you if you have a balance the second you speak with them. I would recommend better positioning on this. The staff that brought my balance to my attention assumed I could not pay right off the back. She was rude about it. I paid in full. I just had not received notice of a balance. There was no balance in my patient portal, and I had not received any paper statements yet. The experience was really off putting.
For my initial follow up appointment, they severely over booked. I had waited almost an hour already when I overheard staff tell someone else that the doctor was another 1.5 hours behind. When I approached staff to ask if I heard correctly, I was told yes and that it was due to triple booking. The doctor was on vacation the week before, so they overbooked a ton. She kindly rescheduled my appointment without charging me. However, it was not right to do that to any of the patients.
For my rescheduled follow up appointment, I decided it wasn't needed anymore. At that point, I had the orthotics for 2 months and was happy with them. I have used orthotics since I was in single digits so I know how they should be. I called the office on Friday at 10:00AM. Nobody answered so I left a voicemail. The machine said I would get a response back in 3-4 hours. I did not receive anything on Friday. I called again Monday morning (I don't know the exact time since I called from my desk phone at work, but it was around opening). I left another voicemail. I ended up calling again in the later morning. I did not bother leaving a voicemail that time. I called again at 2:14PM and actually got someone on the phone. I was told that the appointment was already cancelled. When I advised that I didn't know because nobody had called me back, the staff member did apologize. I then received a call at 3:54PM from a staff member telling me that it was cancelled. Again, I think they are just over worked. However, you cannot simply not call patients back.
Now what really was the issue for me - trying to get my refund. When I ordered the orthotics, I had to make a deposit. No problem, I gladly did that. However, my EOB was published mid-September and reflected I was over charged on that deposit. When I initially called to cancel my appointment, part of my voicemail was to check on the status of the refund. That part of the voicemail was never addressed by staff. When staff finally called to verify that the appointment was cancelled, I was at work and simply did not have time to ask. However, I hoped it was looked into since I had asked about it. So, it was two months since the EOB and 18 days from the initial voicemail with no refund. I had to call their billing. I assume I would have never got a refund if I didn't ask for it. That is alarming to me. I wonder how many people simply forget and are owed refunds. I will be monitoring if the refund actually appears in my account.
