Jorge Lourenco
1/5
Optum needs to understand one crucially important factor: I am not loyal to a corporation. I am not loyal to a hospital. To these faceless and heartless entities, my wife, my children, and I are little more than statistics dragged into boardrooms to help impress investors. No. I am loyal to the doctors, nurses, and staff my family and I rely on for our health and well-being. Healthcare Partners didn't fight for my wife, her doctors did. They made it clear with whom they were arguing as well.
Once our doctor retired, my wife and I had great difficulty keeping a doctor for more than a year as they all seemed to leave suddenly. Then my daughter's pediatrician left, then my son's. My wife and I received letter after letter informing us a doctor we hadn't even seen yet was no longer with the group for one reason or another. Optum seemed to be having difficulty retaining its doctors and this was impacting our health negatively because each successive doctor knew nothing about us—it was like starting over each time and no one we ever saw seemed vested in our health concerns like the doctors at this location previously did. No one in my family has any relationship with any doctor now because of this constant churn.
Then things got really bad.
In the last few years, I have had every single one of my PCP's first meetings canceled by the provider. In each case, I had made the appointment 3 months in advance, and I received notice either the day of or a day before my scheduled appointment that the doctor wasn't able to see me or my family member. Sometimes it was because the doctor called in sick—which I understand and others, because the doctor was no longer at this location or with Optum. Each cancellation resulted in another 3-month wait to see that doctor or a substitute.
When anyone in our family gets sick, we cannot see our doctor. They tell us to go to urgent care regardless of the symptoms or COVID negative tests. My son had RADs as a child and intermittent asthma that put him in the hospital once. Because he was wheezing, they wouldn't make an appointment—back to urgent care and the revolving door of whatever nurse practitioner or doctor is available at the moment. No doctor at Optum ever followed up or maintained any awareness, connection, or knowledge of our health issues that we rushed to urgent care for.
Two years ago, I began having serious digestive issues that quite concerned me. I called to make an appointment and was only granted a phone conversation with a nurse who urged me to immediately go to a hospital ER. I was hesitant to go due to concerns I had over the costs, COVID, and plain uncertainty due to the intermittent and unpredictable nature of the issue. I made multiple appointments to see my doctor and to request a specialist. So far, nothing. I am suffering alone without the benefit of a doctor's guidance because Optum's scheduling and referral process is so broken, I can't even see a doctor.
Now, my wife's ophthalmology appointment was canceled due to major confusion regarding whether the ophthalmologist is in-network or not. With no resolution as we may need a new referral now. No one seems concerned that we waited almost six months for this too.
I can't take this horrendous treatment and abusive indifference anymore. Optum Glendora is a carnival of incompetent mismanagement and apathy. I feel for the good doctors and nurses that are hamstrung by inept, unfeeling corporate ogres, bent on squeezing every cent of profit from the very blood of my family at the expense of our health and sanity. I hope they lose every patient to their competition and the building gets condemned. They are an awful institution.
