PsyCare Associates Inc.

I was seeing Dr. Chavez (psychiatrist) in the Eastlake, Chula Vista office for anxiety, stress, and panic disorder. He would not respond to prescription refills in a timely manner, nor return my phone calls. I waited and waited for him to authorize my refills and soon enough was going through withdrawal symptoms from trying to make the few pills I had last me until we could straighten out the problem.



After calling the pharmacy AGAIN, and having them tell me they were still waiting for Dr. Chavez's approval to refill my prescription, I left him a voice mail telling him I was upset, irritated, and dissatisfied with his lack of service. The next thing I know, I get a letter in the mail from Dr. Chavez and the PsyCare Quality Management team stating that Dr. Chavez had terminated his association with me and based that decision on many crazy and untrue facts about my refill. The letter stated that I needed to contact my insurance company to get another psychiatrist. I found out later that there is another psychiatrist in the Eastlake office that they could have switched me to, but instead, I had to do a lot of unnecessary legwork to get another psychiatrist. I felt tossed aside like a piece of trash tossed out of a car window by a person driving down the freeway at high speed!



On top of that, when I took this problem before my PsyCare Psychologist, Danielle Pinson, she seemed to have already made up her mind to defend the decisions and actions of the PsyCare Quality Management team and Dr. Chavez. (After all, she gets her paycheck from PsyCare.) Danielle seemed uninterested and unbending about my problem, argued with me about why I should see it from their point of view, kept interrupting me and seemed uninterested and uncaring about my side of the story, and told me not to raise my voice at her! So, in other words, Danielle Pinson wants her patients to act a certain way or she can't handle giving them proper therapy!??? I feel it is the therapist's moral and ethical duty to be approachable and wise in helping a patient through a situation like this one and not make the patient go home feeling worse! I also feel a psychologist should show some concern about how his (or her) employer is treating a patient (in this case PsyCare), and acknowledge the validity of a patient's feelings by listening to the problem and accepting constructive criticism about how they can improve on customer service! Danielle Pinson's harsh and argumentative approach to psychology in defense of PsyCare is definitely not an approach my nerves can tolerate!



As a result, PsyCare and their team of managers and doctors ended up causing me more stress and anxiety than they alleviated it, based on the following:



(1) the lack of return phone calls and prescription refills by Dr. Chavez,



(2) the unprofessional and uncaring way in which the PsyCare Quality Management team terminated my doctor/patient relationship with Dr. Chavez without ever giving me the time of day (or a return phone call to even find out from me what was really going on concerning refills!), and



(3) the biased judgments of Danielle Pinson concerning my situation based on PsyCare's erroneous facts.



Therefore, I would never refer anyone to seek their help for anything,

Biggest mistake I've made in awhile