Medstar HealthReviews of medstarhealth.org

I was referred to a specialist who is at Medstar and she's great. But the administrative services are not good. Most recent example: I was at Medstar Georgetown University Hospital yesterday for a test. They will submit the charges to my insurance, great. But I want to submit the parking and mileage for reimbursement from my health savings account and I need some documentation that it was medical-related. The receipt for my copay was sparse, all codes and acronyms, nothing that said the name of the hospital or address. I asked for a receipt that had that basic information - letterhead, basically - and the very nice person at the desk said I had to call billing. I got home and called billing, sat on hold for 25 minutes and got a whole bunch of attitude once someone picked up. After having to repeat a couple of times I just wanted a receipt for a payment I made and then sitting on hold, they told me that the charge wasn't posted yet, I could call back in 24 hours. The person on the phone gave me my patient number so I could try to find it in the online billing portal. (I had tried looking at their online billing portal but it told me my password was wrong; when I tried to reset it said it didn't recognize the username, even though I've paid bills online multiple times in the last two years. To log in as guest, I need my patient number, which was not among the many codes on my receipt, nor is it in my patient portal, which is different from the billing portal.) The next day, I checked the online billing portal, no record of yesterday's payment, which is already showing up on my credit card. I called customer service again, this time she said it takes A WEEK for the charge to post in their system so they can send me a receipt. A week to get a receipt. This could all be resolved if they modified the receipts that print out at the office to have the name and address of the hospital. What a waste of their time and mine, plus one more thing that has to sit on my plate unfinished for a week. I'm giving two stars because the customer service people at the hospital and the second billing rep I talked to were professional and as helpful as Medstar's procedures allow them to be. But the admin staff in my doctor's office are not responsive to portal communications. If I didn't like my doctor so much, I would switch away from Medstar completely. Will never choose another doctor in that system.

At Washington Hospital Center MRI's center.. I went to the MRI department, after an hour they informed the waiting room that they were running late. After the nurse poked me three time trying to get the port in the MRI technician had to do the job. The Siemans Machine was ten years old, small, uncomfortable, and noisy as a construction site. After an hour in the MRI it was discovered that the contrast injection had malfunctioned. The place is tired and the service perfunctory, clearly most of the employees are not trained in service. If you have a choice of MRI locations this is one to avoid.