Retief Skin Center

Friendly, helpful staff. It is worth the wait because the service is one of a kind and attentive. You feel like you are the only patient.

I recently was directed to Retief as a new patient seeking a skin check due to the high number of moles I have on my skin. I scheduled an appointment over the phone for a few days later and arrived on time. Upon arrival, I sat nearly 40 minutes before I was seen by the doctor’s assistant, who asked me a couple brief questions. The doctor then came in and asked what I was there for, to which I replied that I would like a skin check to look over my moles and there was one on my cheek I was particularly nervous about. The doctor responded that there wasn’t time for a full skin check today, but did take a quick look at my cheek and said that it wasn’t anything to be concerned about at this time. She left and her assistant took a picture of my cheek mole and they said I could go. The total time from when I entered the patient exam room to being dismissed was no more than 10 minutes; the time the doctor was actually in the room was closer to 90 seconds. Needless to say I was rather disappointed, as I couldn’t help but feel like the reason I could not have a more thorough exam was due to the delay in actually being seen despite arriving on time for my appointment.

Recently I received a bill for $100.00 for the visit. Apparently my insurance company covered about two-thirds of the visit, but $29.75 remained as “charges exceed your contracted/legislated fee agreement,” which then somehow inextricably came to total $35.12. I am attorney and I bill at $250.00 per hour. I get a lot of comments about how high my billing rate is, as do most attorneys. I therefore find it astounding that based on the amount of time I was seen, I was billed at $2000.00 per hour by the doctor. Then add the approximately $167.00 dollars for the 40 minutes I spent waiting and could have been billing clients, despite pre-filling out my new patient questionnaire online. Obviously this is absurd, and quite frankly shameful.

Nevertheless and despite my own moral outrage I have paid them as requested for the outstanding $35.13.