Children's National Friendship Heights — Local services in Washington

This was our first time visiting the Friendship Heights location- we’ve successfully been seen at the Montgomery County location twice, as well as the main campus on Michigan Ave. All of these visits were for blood draws, ordered by the exact same private practice doctor each time, for my son. At no point was this doctor within the Children's National system of doctors- he’s an outside, private practice pediatrician.

Imagine my surprise/annoyance/disbelief when we arrive at the Friendship Heights location for a blood draw and they turn us away, saying they can’t because their specific location doesn’t accept lab orders from non-Children’s National doctors. How is it that their other locations we’ve visited accepted the doctor’s lab orders without issue, yet Friendship Heights magically cannot? I’m not buying it- he could’ve and SHOULD’VE been seen today, no matter the lab location.

Now imagine that my son, who is on the autism spectrum and also suffers from severe anxiety, is the one who was getting the blood draw. Also, he had to fast beforehand, so he’s had nothing to eat or drink besides plain water. He’s anxious and terrified, hates having his blood drawn - and he’s hungry. Then imagine the staff tells us nope, sorry, our location doesn’t do blood draws for non-Children’s doctors, you need to drive 40 min to the main hospital campus instead. That was us this morning. All of it. Oh, and when I offered to call the doctor himself to get this clarified/fixed, the Children’s staff member told me “you can do that but it’s not going to change anything.” Wow- thanks for going the extra mile to help us out…

To say I’m annoyed and frustrated is a complete understatement. Children’s - you’re a world-renowned medical center. This is completely ridiculous and unnecessary, this whole situation. You’re bigger and better than this.

Now I have to make my son go through the anxiety and the fasting all over again on another morning and take him to another Children’s location for his blood draw (because there was no way he had it in him to get back in the car for another 40 min this morning to get to the main campus for the blood draw). A whole lot of unnecessary stress and anxiety on my son. Thanks a ton, Children’s…...

It's a nightmare coming into the city to get to this place. It's not bad enough my child is super sick, but I have to navigate a rats nest to get to her specialist. When you do finally arrive, I find that they have their own parking lot that they charge you 15 bucks to park in. You have to go down the street, then down ANOTHER street to find it. It's not obvious on maps how to get there, and there is no signage.

Once inside the office, the desk ladies are kinda rude and didn't seem like they wanted to help. Made us feel like we were an inconvenience to them. Dealt with it and waited about an hour past our appointment to meet our child's new specialist for the first time.

She was very vague on the information on our child and didn't make us feel any better. We left with more questions than we arrived with as the doc didn't seem to be that interested. She acted like we should already know all the details about my kids newly diagnosed sickness and that we were an inconvenience as well. The doctor made me and my wife both feel like she just wanted to move on to the next patient.. I left not knowing when I'm supposed to be making another appointment to come back. My child will need bloodwork done every 2 weeks or so and I won't see the doctor again for 6 weeks?things just don't make sense and this place didn't nothing to help. Finding your newborn has a lifelong illness is one of the hardest things for a parent and you'd think a business like this would know how to have some compassion.

My child will have this sickness for her entire life and I pray that we don't have a bad experience every couple weeks when we have to take her 3 hours away to a...

WOW!! I’m a huge children’s advocate, nothing but love for them as I’m on my third child, and all three of them have been with children’s at some point. Today my little one was seen for a cardiology appointment at this location (first time for us here) and I must say, the care we received was top notch! Front desk was friendly, the in-take nurse was a sweetheart! The lady who performed his echo was nothing but patient! We both worked together to try to calm him down as she was having a very hard time with his fussiness, but she patiently waited for me to get him to go to sleep and did wonders afterwards! Last but not least, Dr. Finkelstein is just amazing! It’s so hard to find doctors now-a-days with the same level of compassion and care that he has! He was so thorough and calm with his explanation, even when there was nothing to worry about, he made sure that all scenarios were laid out. Truly one of a kind, even with how behind they were running, he was nothing but grateful for the patience we...