Dr. Alani was the only orthopedist that didn't have over a month long waitlist for new patients, but turns out it's because he doesn't spend longer than 10 minutes per visit. Dr. Alani is eager to schedule elective surgeries (performing up to 10 from 7AM-12PM in a single day). Dr. Alani does not listen to the concerns of his patients and does not even check his charts before/during appointments. I had 3 procedures scheduled successively with Dr. Alani- during the last, a cortisone shot, Dr. Alani asked me in the pre-op room where he should put the shot (as if I should know better than him, when he was the one who recommended the shot and I am not a doctor). Dr. Alani checked my progress on shoulder surgery 2 months down the road by asking me to raise my arm, which I was able to do in the appointment I had 2 weeks after the surgery. That was the extent of the check in. Also though the surgery was minimally invasive, the doctor did a horrible job with the sutures leaving large scarring- which the doctor never even looked at in my office follow up visits. The doctor routinely rushed me out of visits, trying to give succinct overly broad explanations to my questions which often involved the use of circling anatomical parts on a brochure. While this might be reassuring to some patients who have no medical knowledge at all, I was not impressed- and Dr. Alani's drawings never told me anything I didn't know. At the same time, after explaining and reiterating my high pain tolerance to Dr. Alani at least 3 times in successive appointments, he waited until after performing an elective procedure to ask me what I meant when I said that. In fact he asked, "does that mean I feel pain easily or I never feel pain"- 2 completely opposite interpretations which would have incredibly different consequences. This is evidence not only of a failure to listen and communicate effectively, but a complete lack of desire to understand my unique problems as a patient. All in all I think he's greedy and money hungry with no dedication to the healing profession. Also the appointment staff is incompetent. I would have to follow up at least 3 times to get anything scheduled. Also I had to space my calls out over a period of 2 weeks. The first call is always sent to voicemail. In one instance, my voicemail was not returned, and I called back 2 days later- at which point the staff member implored me to wait at least 24 hours before following up (apparently unable to count days and mad at me for asking the office to get back to me when I'm the one in pain). She was so angry that I was afraid that calling back too early would result in them ignoring my request. The process was usually- call once, leave a voicemail message, call back 3 days later, leave another voicemail message, receive callback a week later if lucky. Also, during my last procedure, I called the office the day after my procedure to request sending over a PT order immediately (which Dr. Alani assured me at the hospital that he would forget and it was entirely my responsibility to request the order from the office). I followed up the next week as I received no response, and I also asked my PT provider to contact the office directly- they also didn't receive a response. 3 days later I received a call from the office impatient to confirm that I had not died after the procedure, and they had no idea that I had already called in twice. Also, at that time they had still not sent over the PT order. Lastly, the office was always behind on billing.
