I transferred to Dr Sebestyen midway through my second pregnancy. I was looking for a naturalistic birth experience and was excited by the prospect of a midwife-assisted birth. Dr. Sebestyen was nice and supportive, as were the midwives in the practice. I delivered my daughter, unmedicated, and with very little intervention. The birth was everything I wanted. My overall experience was so frustrating, however, that I will not be returning to her office for my routine care.
Over the 14 weeks that I was her patient I had two appointments ""lost."" I showed up at the time I was told and was mysteriously not scheduled on that day ... or any other day that week. I never had this problem with my previous doctor and I do know how to make and keep an appointment. As I had left work to drive to far North Austin, I was quite frustrated. This was exacerbated by the fact that the administrative staff was rude and unhelpful.
Standard pregnancy-related tests (glucose tolerance and group B strep) were overlooked, forgotten, and/or late. On one appointment I was reprimanded by a nurse because I had not taken my glucose screen test. I had not been told I NEEDED to take the test! She said, ""Oh. Well this is the last day you can take it so you need to go right now!"" Well, it's a good thing my job was so understanding, because I ended up spending 4 hours running all over Austin to get to my appointment and then tested.
I went for my 6-week, post-delivery checkup with the delivering midwife. She and I chatted for a few minutes and then she asked who had performed the delivery and how the experience was. I looked at her for a moment and responded that SHE had, and I thought the experience was fine. Now I don't expect someone to remember every person in their practice, but at least glance at your patient's chart before walking in the exam room. Talk about lack of customer service. I know this is their job and delivering babies is mundane to them, but it was a pretty big deal to me and it would have been nice if she at least pretended to remember.
The fact that I generally had to wait 20-30 minutes past my appointment time to be seen was the final deciding factor. I will not be returning to Dr Sebestyen or her associates. I had virtually the same birth experience with my first daughter and I used a ""mainstream"" practice - Women Partners in Health. The key difference their is that my doctor knew me by name, on sight, and the office was a well-oiled machine. I felt like a valued patient as opposed to a cog in the wheel.
Pros: Doctor committed to naturalistic birth options
Cons: Staff - rude, disorganized, scattered
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