malpractice – Welcome to infinitefreetime dot com

This was kind of an annoying week; I spent way more time than I usually want to trying to get people to call me back who were manifestly refusing to do what I wanted. I’m trying to give people money to mow my dad’s lawn and no one wants money. I tried to cancel a doctor’s appointment, discovered I could book an appointment but not cancel an appointment online, called and was told by a recording to leave a message, and no one called me back. I left messages with various denizens of the city I live in for various other reasons. Very little luck.

So, Dr. Curry. I went back on the 31st and checked his office out again. This is its current condition:

That’s taken through the window, which gives you a sense of the current security level of the office and how guaranteed it is to be broken into by someone looking for drugs in the very near future. I took more pictures, but all of the rest would require some level of image manipulation to hide people’s names and addresses and shit, because there are documents with people’s Social Security numbers on them sitting in the windowsill.

While I was standing in the lot, another car pulled in. It turned out that the driver was the mother of another of his patients, one who also had spent time trying to convince their family member to stop going to this guy. Unfortunately, her daughter in this case is not only on Medicaid, which makes it difficult to just pick up and switch doctors, but she’s also on a thyroid medication that she can’t currently get her prescription renewed for. Because no one can get ahold of this fucker.

Again, this situation is literally going to end up killing someone. He has a lot of elderly and Medicaid patients. (This makes the “no insurance/$50 a visit” thing on his door even worse– if you’re on Medicaid, it’s because you don’t have fifty bucks to toss at the doctor every time you go.)

I found an article from several years ago that suggested that at that time he had “over 6,000” patients, by the way.

I went to the nearest pharmacy, just for the hell of it, and they told me that as far as they knew he was still practicing but that his hours were limited to “between six and eight in the morning.” I told the pharmacist that the lobby had been cleared out and she seemed surprised by that; apparently they’ve seen him relatively recently, so I very well might just drive over there at seven on Monday and camp out in the parking lot for a little while and see if anyone happens to drive by.

Dr. Curry also had an FNP working for him. She has also disappeared. She’s considerably younger, so I have to assume she’s going to turn up somewhere with another job? I’m still trying to find her. She’s got privileges with a hospital south of me but it’s not like you can call those hospitals and find those people; that’s not how it works.

I also called the local newspaper and a couple of lawyers. One called me back and explained that he couldn’t help me. One has not. The newspaper guy called me back and said he was treating the situation as an action line situation, where they just help out readers with shit, but that he was looking into things and would get back to me if he found anything out. I haven’t heard back yet, which I’m choosing to not treat as sinister just yet.

We’ll see what Monday morning has in store for me.

So this asshole here has been my parents’ primary care physician for, more or less, my entire life, and was my doctor during the time when I had no choice in the matter as well. His name is Dr. Lawrence Curry, and you can damn sure bet that I want Google to pick up on the fact that I’m using the name Dr. Lawrence Curry of the McKinley Medical Clinic a whole lot in this piece, because I am pissed.

I’ve never liked Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O.; his receptionists are rude, he clearly doesn’t have time for his patients (oh, you wait, if you think that’s an unfair thing to say) and he consistently overbooks so that you are guaranteed a multiple hour wait any time you set foot in his smelly, dirty office, which will be playing vaguely racist black and white comedies the entire time you’re there on a tiny and yet incredibly loud TV in the corner. But I’ve never mentioned him here, at least not by name, although I think I might have bitched about the TV show that was playing in Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O’s office the last time I was in there without actually using his name.

I saw my dad yesterday, and he asked me for my doctor’s name and phone number. This surprised me; as I said, I’ve been trying to get him to change doctors for forever with no luck. I asked what happened, and he said something curious– that the office wasn’t answering the phone any longer. Which is … kinda weird for a doctor’s office, even Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O.’s, right? So I called the number on their typo-ridden, shitty website, and it’s disconnected.

Huh.

I had to go see Dad today for something unrelated, so I decided to hell with it, I’m curious, and I swung by the office. Not a car in the parking lot. This was on the front door:

Fuckin’ classy, eh? Apparently dude doesn’t have access to a printer. Note also that today is May 30th, which is relevant, because this is their lobby on May 30th, two days before they apparently stop accepting insurance:

Now, I didn’t get a picture– I should, and I will probably swing by tomorrow and take a closer look, because I’m pissed, and I’m pretty sure there are some laws being broken here– of the office/reception space, but it sure as hell looks to me as if everyone’s medical records are still in there. Hundreds if not thousands of patients; as I said, my mom and dad have been seeing this guy for 40+ years.

Dr. Lawrence Curry, D.O., has literally just ghosted all of his patients. Fucking disappeared. Shut down the office without telling anyone– the Shipshewana office mentioned on his website has a disconnected phone number too– and disappeared. Poof. Not an email, not a letter, nothing, and you can tell from looking at recent reviews of his practice on, well, basically any rate your doctor site. There’s one semiliterate screed that suggests that all of his employees quit, which wouldn’t surprise me, because he’s an asshole– but it’s literally so full of typos and crappy grammar that I can’t take it seriously.

Oh, did I mention that his practice shares a building with a physical therapy group? This is on their door:

If it seems like I’m taking this personally, it’s because I am– as I’ve said, I’ve thought the guy was a bastard for decades, and even if he was dead it’s fucking inexcusable that his patients literally have had to do research to find out that their doctor wasn’t their doctor any longer, and now all have to find new doctors– when one of my doctors retired some time ago she passed all of us on to someone else, but that isn’t the case here, because the practice is simply gone. And, again, there look to be several thousand HIPAA violations sitting in cabinets just waiting for some fucker to break a window and go on an identity stealing spree. I want every piece of paper in that office with a member of my family’s name on it, God damn it, and if putting this fucker on blast on the internet helps in any way with making that happen I’m sure as shit gonna do it.