MedStar Health

MedStar makes it impossible to contact your doctor directly. You cannot message, email or call the doctor or their staff. Instead, all communication gets routed to middle level staff who are overwhelmed, don’t have access to necessary information and ultimately fail to relay communication in an effective or efficient way. It’s a failed process with the worst user experience you can imagine for a hospital system this large. I’ve been trying to call and message my primary care doctor for a week and nothing in return. Can’t even ask a question about prescriptions that weren’t sent. It’s unbelievable an organization that has this much money is so dysfunctional and fails its patients so royally.

Improved. Hardly ideal. Serves 2 functions: 1) provider lookup. 2) portal access. Portal access is like an app within the Medstar app. Happily, they've made it so you don't need to log in twice. Finally. Unfortunately, since the portal is like an internal app, you can't get notifications about new messages (from doctor, lab etc) you've received.

Communication and ease of finding information is key in any business. Today Medstar failed and the staff was irritable. If Medstar is requiring staff to verify the patient, with a first birn child, just maybe staff is being set up for a call going south quickly. When calling to ask a question why would they need my email address? Today, I called (FS)to see if they might have an earlier appt for an echo cardiogram. Someone needs to walk through the patients experience and streamline the process. After an appt is set info could be verified. My husband was advised to get a cardio echo. He made his appt in-person. His first appt was in mid August back in early May. He asked if they could check other Medstar locations. He was told they can only see appointments already made at other locations. He was actually told, we don’t have time to call locations for you. Really? If I want an mri, I call one business and they can tell me (and book) what is available anywhere. He did get an earlier appt after checking in person after a stress test. He was supposedly on a wait list. I called medstar-Timonium to find out if they did cardio echos at this location and the phones gave little assistance. It wasn’t until I finally git help from Vanessa (manager Patti) who took the time to listen and investigate. I called Franklin Square and they did the same to me asking for verifications unnecessary for a question. I called Union Memorial “How about tomorrow at 8am?” SOLD!!!! Why all this frustration? How many times do we need to give name DOB and email address and phone no? The ack of coordination and correct information is a problem at medstar. Also please liat what is offered at yea hd location If I want orthopaedics services, its not this hard.