Dr. Susan E. Bates, MD

I have been seeing Dr. Bates for almost a year. She listens carefully to the patient, reviews the data, and presents options clearly; often thinking "outside the box". She is compassionate and follows up with phone calls well beyond office hours. Her office staff is very professional, available for questions, and keyed in closely with the doctor. So far, I have had a very positive experience.

My family and I are very satisfied with the care Dr. Bates extends to my mother. Cancer is a very difficult disease to treat and a debilitating one but this doctor is so caring and loving that makes us feel at ease even in our most difficult times. We cannot thank enough Dr. Bates for all she did for us.

Dr. Bates is very thorough and thoughtful. She considers all of my options carefully and presents them to me clearly. She looks for trials that may be accessible to me so that I can have the best options. Her obvious caring nature puts me at ease as I go through these difficult treatments. She is open and welcoming to my questions and concerns and will call me during important times of my therapy. Having cancer is the worst thing to have to go through but having Dr. Bates makes this more manageable and helps me to cope better with my situation.

We came to Dr Bates after a male colleague of hers diagnosed our mom with stage 4 bile duct cancer and basically told us that we should do a third line protocol as our mom was 85 years old and would succumb quickly to this disease. Dr Bates took time to assess our mom and advised us that in her opinion she was strong and that we should do everything we could do extend her time with first line treatment. We moved ahead. When first line chemo stopped working after 8 months, Dr Bates encouraged us to keep moving forward with other treatments including experimental protocols. Throughout our mom’s two year journey with this horrible disease, Dr Bates guided us and our mom and partnered with other doctors at other hospitals who had trials that we had found. All along she and her wonderful team of nurse practitioners treated our mom and us with the utmost respect. She became our partner. Dr Bates has a background from NIH and brings that unique lens to her practice. She worked well with… other Drs who ran trials (MSKCC and Univ of Penn) our mom was on WITHOUT ego. It was always about our mom. These trials and treatments extended our mom’s life for over a year. While the first doctor we met with at Columbia ( we nicknamed “dr hospice”) written our mom off, Dr. Bates did not. She balanced taking advantage of any and all treatments that could extend our mom’s life including radiation and targeted therapies as well as connected is to other doctors who could help (palliative, psychological, etc)while also tended to side effects to make sure our mom was comfortable as much as she could be. Dr Bates deals with the terminal cancer and does so with grace- it was always about our mom and about us. We are grateful that we had Dr Bates with us during this difficult journey.

Not recommended ,very cold personality ,didn’t care about patient

Our experience was sad and frustrating. The doctor's focus is not comfort nor the medical facts. She never wants to give up on treatment even though the prognosis is terminal. I wish she emphasized comfort and dying with dignity and was direct with her patients that they are dying. The first tenet of medicine is do no harm which was not practiced here. She had never discussed code status with us until I brought it up meaning a 94 pound elderly man with late advanced terminal cancer would have been full code and experienced a painful death.