Azher Uddin Siddiqi, MD, Staten Island NY

Good doctor, fairly knowledgeable. The one star comes from the fact that the main receptionist - Carol - shuts the ringers off the phones and then proceeds to screen calls so that she will only answer for other doctors, insurance and or other office related lines (likely so she doesn’t have to be bothered with doing the rest of her job like talking to patients God forbid). I suspected this was the case as I had tremendous difficulty getting anyone to answer or even respond to messages. Then when my referring physician’s office call, surprise! They get right on through and make sure to tell me as much, ya know as if to imply I am lying.

Basically while waiting in the waiting room upon my first appointment she self admitted to shutting lines to another patient - while I was seated right there in the flesh waiting and could fully over hear - as this patient had expressed difficulty to her (Carol) in getting through to make an appointment just the same I as I experienced except she was a long time patient. Then you could imagine the typical rebuttals followed after being cornered for an answer finally. So excuses were offered such as staff (her) running late, or being overwhelmed with little bandwidth at the time (except this is all day this happens) to finally appease this patient when the patient wouldn’t relent as to the why and how it keeps happening. However as I said before this blockade occurs the entirety of business hours.

My 2 cents, of course no true confessions were offered as to the intentional lazy screening of calls on her part as she is barely busy with other phone duties at all. However if one is calling from a RUMC or other doctor or office line - well surprise again! The line is answered right away! Now why is that? When something like this happens it makes one (me) look like a liar when you inform you can not get through to your referring physician’s staff from RUMC - however they DO get through - and on the very first ring they snidely remarked to me as they further add insult to injury!

Dr Siddiqi you may want to have a word with her about that. That office never seems swamped, in fact pretty open, so why allow for such slothful and unprofessional behavior?

You probably had no idea this was happening right under your nose until this very review, right? Don’t believe me? Then I suggest you test this yourself (On multiple days at all different times from numbers she doesn’t recognize just to get a better idea and fully see). Yes, proceed to call from multiple different unknown phone lines that aren’t known hospital / doctor / office / etc to her and see what happens. Guaranteed eight out of 10 times (maybe even nine) you do not get through while you can hear that lovely Carol talking (gossiping and yes even about other patients) to her other lovely coworker in the background.

I hope you do this.