Bay Area Foot Care — Attraction in Pleasanton

In short: This 3-star rating does not reflect the care I have received from Dr. Jessica Jaswal, who is wonderful. This is a caveat: the medical assistant (Jennifer*) and receptionist (Selena) will try to bully you into changing your appointment time if it is in the afternoon. Caveat emptor.

Details: I had an appointment with Dr. Jaswal this week in an afternoon slot. The receptionist, Selena, left me a voicemail to ask me to change my appointment time to earlier in the afternoon. I could not take her call because I was busy. A decision was then made to call my emergency contact to ask me to move my appointment time. No real reason was given for why they wanted me to come in earlier - it wasn't as though Dr. Jaswal would not be available. Changing an appointment time is not an emergency. An emergency would be if I was at BAFC and needed to be transferred to a hospital.

When I checked in for my appointment, the receptionist informed me that the medical assistant, Jennifer*, directed her to contact my emergency contact. The medical assistant proceeded not to take accountability and tried to pass this situation to Dr. Jaswal in a manner suggestive of a blame game. Dr. Jaswal had no knowledge that the medical assistant and receptionist tried to bully me to change my appointment time, so she escalated this situation to the office manager. The office manager called me the same day to discuss the situation, agreed that calling my emergency contact was inappropriate and unprofessional, and assured me that actions would be taken to address this. Neither she nor Dr. Jaswal okayed their actions.

Regarding the rationale for calling me and my emergency contact, it was my impression they wanted to go home early. It did seem that I was the last patient of the day.

Unfortunately from my notes of all 3 appointments I've had with Dr. Jaswal, I can see that the medical assistant and/or receptionist tried to bully me into rescheduling my appointment times once before, so 2 of my total 3 appointments. I have to wonder if they do this to all patients with afternoon times. Or, do they only do this to some patients and not others? If so, how are they discriminating?

This situation was extremely distressing. Excuse me if I didn't realize that patients' schedules revolved around the personal schedules of office staff, not the office scheduling availability. Is that a good standard of patient care? Do patients dealing with painful medical situations also need to deal with this behavior?

I want to reiterate that I appreciate how Dr. Jaswal and the office manager handled this situation. I am confident that they are addressing this. In the meantime, caveat emptor. Don't let the medical assistant and receptionist bully you. Their personal schedules are not your responsibility. It is their job to help you during your scheduled appointment times.

*edited to add medical...

I came in for custom insoles to correct over pronation in my ankles. Prior to the appointment I paid a $300 dollar deposit that I was told would be refunded if the insoles were covered by my insurance. I spent a lot of time on the phone with my insurance company before this appointment to ensure that they were, so seemed like no problem. I worked with Dr Alvarez who was lovely, and whom I would recommend if not for my horrible experience at this office. The insoles I received did not correct the pronation and Dr Alvarez sent them back to be remade, but they are still not correct, but I have been unable to schedule an appointment because the last appointment I had scheduled that was strictly to pick up a new modified pair of insoles, during which I was in the room with doctor Alvarez for less than 5 minutes. I was charged an 80$ copay. I called the billing department to inquire about my $300 refund as the insoles had been covered by my insurance and was told they would not be refunding me, and that all of my $300 had been used for covering copays. I let them know that I believed this to be a mistake and that the last visit for which I was charged an $80 copay was literally just a pick up of the new insoles. In a follow up call the billing department, said that the office manager said there was no mistake and they had intentionally charged me for a follow up visit where the copay alone was $80 for me to simply pick up the new insoles. I had waited in a room and was handed the new pair by an assistant and the doctor Alvarez was in the room for less than 5 minutes to tell me to try them out and let her know if they didn’t work. My next step was to call the office and request to speak with the office manager about the what I still assumed was a mistaken charge and could be cleared up with a discussion. However after multiple (6+) calls left multiple voicemails for the office to request a call back from the office manager. I was never contacted. For this reason, I postponed and then canceled my follow up appointment as I had not been contacted by the office manager and was uncomfortable coming to an appointment not knowing if I would be again billed an $80 copay to tell the doctor that again the insoles were not correcting the pronation, (and no longer had faith that they would be able to). Now I am out $300 and have an unusable pair of insoles, and my only recourse is to post a review in hopes that the office managers might care more for a poor public review than they do about...

. My daughter had an appointment with her podiatrist at 10:30 am. After we arrived to the offices , I’ve been told the her doctor isn’t in office today. But I just received the confirmation message yesterday which I confirmed with it. Then she told if I want to wait another five minutes she can squeeze my daughter in with another doctor. I agreed to wait. After 15 minutes I checked with her when my daughter can actually see the doctor. She said the doctor will be ready at 11:00 am. I wait and wait. After 40 minutes I asked her if she could honest tell the actual waiting time. She told me there were still several patients before us. I don’t know why she chose to lie to me at beginning. It’s bad enough she made the mistake at first place and then decided to lie to me to make us waited that long for nothing. I told her we couldn’t wait any longer, we have to leave. Asked for a doctor note for my daughter school. She told me we have to wait until the doctor is available which is might be for hours. I would definitely never want go back to the office ever again. This is worst...