Dr. Michelle Xu, MD

I am not one to complain or reach out to an institution regarding any uncomfortable situation. I give great allegiance to everyone, as I know that trusted doctors are human too and are dealing with their own personal stressors. However, the experience with Dr. Michelle Xu was so bad that I could not in good conscience not relay this. The in office visit with Dr. Xu was fine. She took two biopsies from my body, and then sent them off to be tested. After a week I messaged to find out if she had heard anything. She replied to wait another few days. Then another week went by. I responded again as it was a vulnerable place to be waiting to hear what they may have found. She messaged that it was probably fine and to wait. I waited some more and then, as you can imagine, was anxious and beginning to become stressed. So, I messaged her again and out of what I can only call as clear agitation, she said 'Here is the lab's number, call them yourself." I thought this was strange, but did… as I was told. When I called the lab I was told that I should have NEVER called the lab. Due to HIPPA they would not give me any details over the phone and the woman said, your doctor should have known this -- tell her office to please call us so we can make sure this doesn't happen again. *All of this is in mychart messages. I left a message with Xu's office and her response in a message was 'the number was public' basically trying to say, I didn't do anything wrong, you could have googled this. As if she had not instructed me. I left it alone and waited another entire week (3 weeks in all) to get my results. I saw them hit and again messaged Xu to call me as I was too worried to look myself and go to the googles to try and define whatever it said. She did not call me back and days went by with my results sitting in my chart. I finally messaged my primary care doctor, Dr. Dao--who called me the SAME DAY to go over it. My primary care said please call her tho and get on the phone to go over them as she can talk about the nuances. I called 3 X and left messages for Xu to call me. Not only did she NOT call me, she would only text me responses to my questions. It was apparent she did not want to get on the phone with me. All in all, quite unprofessional and very immature handling of a situation that required more humanity, less ego, and an abidance of the Doctor's code: "A physician shall be dedicated to providing competent medical service with compassion and respect for human dignity." The above was not even factoring into the equation of her care of me, and as you can imagine, I am never going back to her again. Her immaturity was so surprising and level of care was nonexistent. Thank you for reading this email and hopefully counseling her to not encourage patients to take on the burden of calling labs to get results and then icing them out of any conversations regarding their health.