Dr. Carey Jessica Field, MD

It's been two years since I came down with sort of rheumatic disease, and I've seen a handful of rheumatologists about it, all of them basically unhelpful. Dr Field was no exception. The visit was about twenty minutes, which is typical, and for most of it I found myself being talked over. I'm a grown man and don't normally allow this from anyone, but as a patient, you're so eager and grateful for professional attention that you submit to it, because if you object or anything, they'll put it in your medical record and bias all subsequent doctors against you. I'll give Dr Field points for admitting that doctors do this to patients when I raised the matter. But when it came time for the useless "range of movement" protocol, which utterly fails to account for all sorts of movements people make in the course of their day, and I pointed this out, she agreed while shuffling me onto the table to go through the same rigmarole. If you don't say "ow" at any point in this exercise, they won't believe anything to be wrong with you, if they do in the first place. In the end, what I got was a recommendation of physical therapy. This wasn't surprising, being a state Medicaid patient: PT is covered. The problem is that I've been worsening steadily for the past two years, and after a couple of months of PT, am now having trouble walking; a true professional could have seen this coming. I might have been spared a lot of time and grief and money if any of the rheumatologists I have seen just rolled the dice and prescribed a medication. But such is their fear of lawsuits, I suppose, and their prime directive of keeping costs down, that it's deemed better to let a man in his thirties suffer and be labeled a "malingerer", or however they euphemize their own complete lack of compassion. Also, zero follow-up. I mean not even the insulting automated message they send through their e-mail system. My advice: if they try to stick you with Field, hold out for Dr Orzechowski. Longer wait but better reputation.

Dr. Field is very intelligent, she spends lots of time with her patients, has a great bedside manner.