Dr. Jacob Nicholas Hall

I brought my wife to see this Neurologist for a very serious condition. During our visit, we were very pleased with his care. He prescribed a new medication and we scheduled a follow-up appointment. I felt relived that we had a plan to manage my wife’s condition. After taking this medication for two days, my wife started to complain of a tingling chest pain over her sternum. Upon review of this medication on the internet, chest pain shows up as a side effect with “Incidence not known” (in other words it has been reported but not counted). Some web sites stated that you should let your doctor know immediately if chest pain occurs. So on the morning of the second day after our initial appointment, I called the office of Dr. Jacob Hall to report our concern. I left a message with a person telling them that my wife was started on a new medication two days before and that she is now complaining of a tingling chest pain around her sternum. I did not get a call back. At 4:30 pm that same… day, I called again hoping to catch them before they left for the day. This time it went to the human answering service. I again gave them the same information as above and again asked for a call back. I was told the on-call MD would be calling me. At 6:45 pm, I still had not received a call back. So I called again and again got the human answering service. I asked if she could see my prior message and she said she was not able to access prior messages. I was very frustrated with their poor service so I asked her if she has any follow up when paging an on-call MD to make sure the return call is placed. She told me she does not. So I told her to tell Dr. Hall that we will not be coming back if this is how they treat their pts. I did not give my wife the medication again (and so far her symptom has not recurred). The next day, I had still not received a call back from this office. So I called again and spoke with Jennifer, the Office Manager. I told her what happened and asked for a call back from Dr. Hall. She apologized and said she would have him call me. She was pleasant. But they still never called me back. It has now been 4 days since I reported our concerns about my wife’s chest pain and the new medication. They still have not called me. I have been in the medical field for over 30 years and I have placed many calls to doctor’s after hours. Although it does happen periodically that an MD will not return a call promptly, I have never experienced this level of disregard from a medical office. My wife is an 82 year old, overweight female with obvious risk factors for heart disease. Fortunately there does not seem to be any actual harm caused by this medication but clearly this office should have been more reactive. Although I liked Dr. Hall and felt good about our office visit, I cannot recommend an office that is this unresponsive to their patients.