Dr. Melvin Jay Schwartz, MD

It's terrible when you're in so much pain, you call your doctor and get an answering machine. You leave a message and don't get a call back. When over a week goes by and you keep leaving messages, and you keep getting ignored. It's also terrible when you've had the same doctor for almost two years, and have never even met him. Not sure what he even looks like. When you find yourself getting told to call the specialists in the same group, and they can't understand why you are calling them instead of the primary. When you have to go to urgent care, because your doctor doesn't have to time to see you or talk to you or or acknowledge that you ask in need of assistance. And, when the person at the front desk doesn't seem to like people or want to do her job and assist the patient. It's all very terrible. I suppose, you don't have to take your job seriously when you're married to the doctor. It's probably not a good idea to go into a field where you have to work with people, when you don't… really like working with or helping people. It's all terrible. Too bad there isn't a way to make this review less than 1 star.

Let me preface this by saying I like and respect Dr. Schwartz. He seemed to care about me as a patient when I was on site for my appointments last year. Unfortunately his front office staff seems to lack this same compassion for their patients. Dr. Schwartz was my PCP and I called over a week ago to set up two appointments: one for my annual physical and one for my medical marijuana renewal (I got my card about a year ago with a recommendation from Dr. Schwartz; you can only get the renewal within 60 days of your expiration date). The front office staff on site could not answer my question (I asked if I could schedule these appointments to be on the same day or as a joint appointment). She took my information down and said that someone would call me back with an answer to my question. Today I called back as I had still not heard back from them and began to set up my appointments. We started with my physical which the first availability they had was about 2 weeks from today, which was… completely fine. When we started discussing my renewal for the medical marijuana license she would not allow for me to make an appointment as she said that she was worried that I “wouldn’t show up” even though Dr. Schwartz is my PCP and I got the original recommendation from him last year and had my physical done by him last year. I explained to her that if I was required to wait till my appointment for my annual physical to schedule the renewal for my medical marijuana card there would be a lapse in my license and I would go a number of days or weeks with an expired license. I was trying to explain that this puts me in an extremely unfortunate situation not only because I do not have access to medicine that I rely on, but I am also put in a risky situation with the products that I already have as they would become illegal on the date my license expires. She didn’t respond to any of these grievances but instead just repeated that she didn’t trust that I would come in and that I would have to wait until my appointment almost 2 weeks later to find a time even further in the future for my renewal recommendation. In short, I really like and respect Dr. Schwartz, but I would highly recommend searching out another establishment if you are looking to obtain or renew your medicinal marijuana card. From the first time I called over a year ago to the conversations I had recently I can tell the staff holds a negative stigma towards marijuana and the patients trying to make appointments for obtaining a license. While I am the type of person that can easily brush this type of behavior off, if you are already nervous/worried about obtaining it as it was not a pleasant process. In my brief time calling other doctors to try to get this situation ironed out I have only found very welcoming and knowledgeable staff that have made the process feel much more natural and comfortable.

How can you be a medical doctor and not vacccinate against diseases?