Letter to the VA patient advocate

This is the letter we composed this morning. Jim is so good at this


I am writing this on behalf of my father, Stanley A. Lang.
On Tuesday March 8, I accompanied my father on an appointment with his primary care physician, Dr. George Isaac. My father is currently being evaluated for Alzheimer's. We felt that Dr. Isaac's behavior towards my father and me was rude and disrespectful. When we tried to talk to him, he would interrupt us and raise his voice while telling us "you must listen to me." Since my father has Alzheimer's he doesn't always grasp what is being said to him immediately and he has a tendency to ramble. Dr. Isaac lost his patience several times during his visit and wouldn't listen to my father or me when we tried to explain what was going on with my father's health. He then tried to cut the visit short even though I had produced a written list of other concerns that needed addressing.

My father needs cataract surgery, but in order to receive it, Dr. Isaac said that he can't have any other conditions, such as his high blood pressure. Yet even though his blood pressure was high, all Dr. Isaac did to try to lower it was increase the dosage of his prostate medicine. My brother-in-law is a physician, and he said that increasing the dosage of his prostate medicine really isn't going to be sufficient to bring his blood pressure down. We feel that Dr. Isaac should have prescribed something that would be more effective at lowering my father's blood pressure, so that his vision can be restored.

I have never had an experience with a doctor that was as bad as this one. It seems inexcusable to us for Dr. Isaac to be so dismissive and short-tempered with an Alzheimer's patient. My father and I have discussed this at length, and we both feel that he needs to be assigned to a new primary care physician.

Thank you,

- Donita Smith