Primary Care Doctors - Elkhart, IN

"On the day of my visit we were told the staff of the office was out with covid—all of them—so our visit started late and Dr Vanderzwaag had to take my vitals and measurements herself. Throughout the appointment, her comments and questions felt strange—at times dismissive, stigmatizing and even rude. Eventually she ended the visit after I explained I was uncomfortable with the direction the visit had taken. Overall, she wasn’t very understanding or sympathetic towards me. I have a chronic condition that requires lifelong medication and monitoring. While I am disappointed with how the visit went, I think I’m better off not having doctors like Vanderzwaag as part of my care team. I think I (and every other patient) deserve to feel respected, heard, believed and understood—she wasn’t able to do that. I hope she’s better to her other patients but I cannot recommend her given the experience I had."

"He claims to have done a fellowship in pediatric anesthesia yet he’s to afraid to do anesthesia for a tonsillectomy for a child under three years of age. On healthy adults, he has cancelled cases for people whose first blood pressure after he puts them to sleep (with too much medicine) was in the 50s. That’s low, sure, but to cancel an otherwise healthy patient for that reason is ridiculous. An average CRNA calmly deals with such circumstances on a routine basis. His gun shy nature reflects a boob who is salaried and who can’t manage anything off pure first year resident level aberrations. Imagine how he performs during an emergency bleed in the middle of a case, or in the ER or ICU. Incompetence or cowardice? In his field, what’s the difference? He shows up in scrubs in preop at 06:58 to see his 07:00 patient before following the patient into the OR having done no preparation, not even turning the anesthesia machine on until the patient is on the table. He spends 20 minutes drawing up meds while the patient lies there staring at the ceiling. So he is effectively billing the patient for more time than he should and holding up the operation while the hospital bean counters foolishly remain blind to his game. But the records don’t reveal this nonsense; they only show that the patient was in the room at 6:59 am. He’s an expert at exploiting the rules this way. Watch this guy closely. He is not guided by Right and Wrong. He is guided by the principle of “What can I get away with?” and “Will I get caught?” Make him pee in a cup on a random basis. Don’t let him work around controlled substances without tight supervision. Warn the women staff about him and encourage them to report him on first offense; let the “warning shot” be fired by the OR director LONG AGO. And don’t trust his word on anything to do with things that will bring him money."