Dr. Annette Yung Kwon, MD

Similar to another post, she has poor communication and delays in care. I am a nurse and know the standard. I also thought it was suspicious that she was very quick to schedule an endoscopy (a money maker) and even more when I found out she had a financial stake in the center she referred me to, in the context of her subsequent silence. I explain the whole situation below, but if you read nothing else read this email she sent me that prompted this yelp review: She responded with this defensive, accusatory, retaliatory email that allowed her to call me names and disallowed me a chance to respond: "you are not my only patient. you were not harmed by this minor delay. this is completely unacceptable and i am surprised that you'd behave this way being a health care professional yourself. you brought this upon yourself. you may not accuse me of being neglectful or dishonest. you are very rude, disrespectful, mean spirited. i will print out this email as well and put it in your… records so that your attitude, and outlook on physicians is available for all to see. please do not respond to this email. if you do, it will immediately be deleted." I saw her for suspected celiac, and got an endoscopy on 10/14, she didn't give me my results, which confirmed a diagnosis of celiac, until 11/7, but not by phone with empathy of a new diagnosis and lifestyle adjustment, but with a 2 line email saying "how are you doing? the biopsy of the small intestines suggests that you do in fact have celiac disease." Period. No request to make an appointment or what the plan of care was, and creating email as a viable communication option. So I called her office, several times because it goes to voicemail, and when I got through left a message. She finally got back to me a week later to request that I make an appointment. So I sent her an email expressing my concern about her delays and trying to convey how many doctors I've seen at this point and how my quality of life is suffering, and that I need assistance. She responded with: "i am very sorry that you did not get answers from me in a timely manner but after what you have expressed in this email, i can no longer be your physician. as you might imagine, i have hundreds of patients who demand my attention...while your symptoms are severe, i felt it was a chronic and complicated issue that #1 did not require immediate conversation and #2 complicated enough that i could not just call in between patient appointments. i am not minimizing your disease or your problems in anyway but felt it was something that required more than a 2 minute phone call, hence the delay. i apologize again for not having provided what you feel was adequate care. however i stand by my actions as it was the best i could do and i do not feel i have caused you undue harm by having delayed this discussion." I responded with: "I agree that I am complicated enough to not warrant a 2 minute phone call, but that's exactly why you request that I schedule an appointment or refer me to someone else, which you could have done either in your initial email or at the endoscopy. At the endoscopy I asked you "what's the plan?" to which you responded, "I don't know." So it's not unreasonable that I contacted you asking what I should do. And your VM made it seem like there is still a work up to be done, indicating that I still need to be seeing a provider. Having no time is not an excuse for neglectful care, it means you should not accept new patients, or make it very clear what your time constraints are. It may not seem that I'm "harmed" but you just delayed me finding a specialist for over a month now. I also imagine that you have no idea what it's like to have "severe" symptoms that compromise your quality of life on a daily basis, otherwise you would have gotten back to me sooner (I never asked for an "immediate" response). Imagine being back in med school or working now and trying to deal with these issues; I have a life I need to attend to, and this could have easily been mitigated by better communication or honesty about what you could and could not provide. So don't pardon yourself so easily, especially since I know what an endoscopy brings in for you, which was not delayed in the least (by the way, I did not appreciate signing financial disclosure forms on the day of the endoscopy). Thank you for the answers you did provide, they were important, and for being kind the two times I did see you. I will terminate contact and let you get back to your busy patient load. I hope you use this as a learning opportunity for future patients." This was the email she deemed â??rude, disrespectful, and mean spirited.â?? I do admit that mentioning my suspicions about her financial stake may have been hitting below the belt, but I did feel it was true.