Family Medicine practitioners - Woodland Park, CO

"Great first visit. Dr. Yacoub was very concerned and interested in my health. Very patient with this senior citizen and very thorough with questions. He is now my primary care doctor."

"My PCP is Dr Hoffman. I've seen him before and I'm kicking myself in the head for not waiting another week to make an appointment with him. It was only a day's wait to see susan zumergrad FNP, (THAT should have told me all I needed to know) and all I needed was a refill script for asthma rescue inhalers. I always have at least three asthma rescue inhalers so I don't die. One for the house, one for the purse, one for the barn- it's a system that's worked well for me for over two decades. Susan Z decided that my asthma was not well controlled. She actually stood up and began waving her arms, saying "The Inflammation! The scarring! You're going to die and I can't support that treatment plan". I should have left at that moment, but I had already paid $125 to just look at her face, so I tried to ignore her rather dramatic response to my asthma. She blamed the fact that she did not understand the nature of my visit because her assistant didn't describe it correctly, and that "she would have to have a talk about that with her assistant". I kept telling myself that I was not in a room with an unstable FNP, to just keep quiet and let her finish so I could be on my way with a prescription to live and breathe again. However she said, gesturing with her arms in the air again, she could not support my "treatment plan"- which was to get refills for my rescue inhalers. She decided that a more appropriate treatment plan would be for me to buy thirty days of a prescription allergy medicine that she prescribed and a SINGLE inhaler. That's what I have now, a single rescue asthma inhaler. I live an hour away in the mountains, and tried to explain again WHY I needed three inhalers (home/purse/barn), just in case. Allergy meds, an inhaler and an expensive . People do still DIE of asthma attacks- a great big breath of cold air can send my lungs into distress. I also use it to prevent asthma attacks before I exercise. I don't think she heard anything I said, so I gave up and took what I could get at the moment (she did give me a couple of refills, but I can only pick up one at a time every 16 days. If I lose that one before these 16 days are up, if I'm in the dusty barn and can't breathe or I lose my purse, oh well???? Her treatment plan didn't feel very comforting at all. It sounded like a very dangerous and risky plan, but Susan would not hear me. I have a single ventolin inhaler at this moment and I really hope I don't drop it in the snow or into a pile of hay. If I forget my purse and go home, I don't have a single reserve inhaler. This is new to me, after 20 years of experiencing asthma- a doctor REFUSING to give me the medicine that can save my life (you would have thought I was there to buy opiates, but I wasn't). If you are asthmatic or have children who are asthmatic, you might think twice before choosing to see susan zumergrad fnp for refills. That was my experience and I regret not waiting to see my PCP. Again- my definition of a treatment plan includes NOT DYING in the barn or anywhere else because I don't have a back-up inhaler. Her idea of a treatment plan was to take allergy pills (prescription) for 30 days, to not have a back-up rescue inhaler, and returning (for another $125??) in a month for a recheck. I did not feel like she respected my wish to participate in my own healthcare. Susan refused to understand how her treatment plan was far more dangerous than just prescribing me three rescue inhalers. I've never had a real DOCTOR risk my ability to breathe like susan did. If this is the kind of care I can expect with NP's, I will avoid all NP's in the future, especially this one, and until I have at least one more rescue inhaler, I feel like my life could actually be jeopardized for something as simple as an FNP choosing not to prescribe more than one rescue inhaler. And I still feel bad about how susan felt entitled to blame her own misconceptions regarding my situation on her assistant (and that she actually chose to say that out loud to ME, her patient). I'm still appalled by the way she stood up and "The inflammation, the scarring, you're going to die". I might actually die from a lack of life saving medicine. It was a scary appointment and I've waited for over a week to share my experience because the entire episode was so unbelievable and traumatic. "