Mayo Clinic

I went in to the urgent care because I was having severa muscle spams and all over body uncomfort. The doctor did not listen to me and immefiatly assumed I was dehydrated and started treating me for that and ordered a torradol shot. After an hr or so I told the nurse I was still in alot of pain, all she said was the dr says he will come talk to you. He came back telling I was not dehydrated and said he did not know what was wrong with me discharged me the same way I went in with horrible pain. All this time i told them numerous time i didnt believe i was not suffering from dehydration but something else. They never listen.

Operated on 10/01/2018 for a lumbar fusion in which the Dr. put a interbody cage around the L5 & S1 nerve causing permanent nerve damage to my left leg and foot. The Dr. knew about this and did nothing. I have since been operated on again and they took out the interbody cage and relieved the sciatic pain but the left leg and foot are permanently damaged.
Thank you Mayo your Doctor made a cripple out of me.
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Dr. Mathew Neal is a top rate doctor.
The Mayo Clinic billing department is either inept or bordering on fraudulent practices.
Due to severe back problems, Dr. Neal ordered an MRI and a C-Scan.
For some reason the MRI Dr, Neal ordered, required me to sign a Notice of Non Coverage in the event the MRI was a frivolous procedure. This protects Medicare from being billed inappropriately. I have had numerous MRI'S over the past six (6) years and have never had a bill declined.
When I contacted Mayo billing dept regarding the wrong Medicare code on the billing, i was told to contact the coding dept. The coding department would not provide me with the Medicare code that was placed on Dr. Neal's order. Coding department told me I had to contact Accounting Services to obtain the billing code. Account Services (Ms. Bridgette Hulzel was very helpful, but stated I need to contact the Billing Department. I informed her the Billing Department (that I had an appointment with just 30 minutes before) was the department to obtain Dr. Neal's coding. Basically, this was a run-a-round in order to defeat me from getting the $1, 946.00 re-billed through Medicare. I understand this is a practice used by Mayo in order to make more money by billing me full price, rather than settle for the Medicare scheduled payment amount.
As far as I'm concerned, this is a scam used for people on Medicare.
The advanced beneficiary notice of noncoverage that I signed was contradictory to the options that were available. I would hate to think that Dr. Neil was aware of this seemingly fraudulent practice in order to make more money for Mayo

While we have had many exceptional experiences at Mayo Clinic both with their physicians, surgical skills and professionalism, this incident at Mayo Phoenix was appalling and left us scared to work with Dr. Mohamed Sonbol in support of our lives in the Medical Oncology department.

My husband was diagnosed with a horrible disease that has high levels of morbidity - Pancreatic Cancer. This diagnoses has been very difficult to deal with from the start for the whole family.

From the start, this fellow MD treated us respectfully and we felt he gave us his support as an MD. My husbands FDA approved 1st line treatment appeared to be working where over time it failed "Folfirinox".

After this, my husbands CA19-9 had sky rocketed from 112 at the time of initial diagnosis at Mayo to 900 after this first line concluded. Also, the FDG uptake levels increased by over 25%.

We were offered a second line treatment of Gemcitibine, Abraxane and Cisplatin. The success rate of this treatment is roughly 15% positive outcomes. We expressed our concerns with the chosen treatment and in fact after only one week of administration, the tumor began to spread to the bowel and the CA19-9 marker reached 1000. An alternate regiment was not given.

We sought out alternative care and my husband completed a line of SBRT treatment elsewhere. Afterwards, our goal was to allow Mayo to monitor results month to month and allow us the opportunity to meet with an esteemed surgeon at Mayo Rochester named Dr Truty. He has altered the lives of so many people and given them years to live and provided his patients with the hope of long term survival. We were hoping that perhaps my husbands tumor would be deemed resectable and if not, live to enjoy life without constant chemo treatments that prevented him from any form of quality of life and then move into a clinical trial with an immunotherapy drug that would give us hope or moved to a new line of treatment after perhaps up to 2 years that got approved simply as a timing factor of evolution of medicine.

We returned to Dr Sonbol for observation post the radiation therapy and the visit was just horrifying. He indicated that he "would no longer act as the quarterback on our behalf" between the surgeon at the Rochester location and Phoenix location. We asked how this spoke to quality of care as a wholistic approach in the best interest of the patient? We were happy to meet with Dr Truty to discuss his assessment on resectability, but the way we were spoken to raised the hair on our necks and we would have expected a wholistic patient approach between the two sister locations.

He continued to chastise us about having "too many cooks in the kitchen" and going to the other institution which met our needs and completed the SBRT treatment. He insinuated that we should leave Mayo Phoenix and get further treatment elsewhere. We as patients have the right to seek multiple opinions and use other avenues which may lead to life changing events with this horrible disease. His tone and demeanor left us trembling and very uncomfortable.

While we have no desire to leave Mayo and choose to remain in AZ, we expect the highest quality of care and hope this new attending physician is reprimanded and a new Medical oncologist assigned to our critical care.

We cannot guarantee that we will not travel to other institutions as they all have varying clinical trials and may serve our purpose to save the life of my husband. We do however, expect the physician at Mayo researching trials on clinicaltrials.gov and working with us to save a life.

Yury and Renee A.