"I've since gone back and had the surgery: rny. Dr. Ali is very experienced in his field and pushes hard to prevent any potential complications. To that end, there are a variety of hoops you have to jump through to have him as your surgeon.
Since my initial contact with his team, the nutritionist has left and they now have a really dynamite woman who's great to work with. With Ali's help, the thing with the psychologist got dealt with. If there is room for improvement, it's in the administrative part of the program. Small things. For example, I needed a particular surgical date on a rush basis, but the sticker for that never got attached to my folder. An important test result wasn't followed up on until I asked about it. As soon as I raised an issue, though, it was handled quickly, efficiently and in a very friendly manner.
I would definitely recommend this group for a safe surgery but would advise that you participate in your own care by reading everything, keeping track of deadlines and following up if you don't hear back on something."
"I have nothing bad to say about Dr. Ali. He seems conscientious and competent. However, the rest of the program, aside from surgery, consists of "the team" and I do have feedback about that. I have not had surgery yet, but feel like I'm caught in a very automated machine with little human contact or support. I attended the nutrition class, given by a nutritionist who clearly wanted to be elsewhere and didn't care for questions from the peanut gallery. The psych screening deals heavily on a large set of standardized psych tests and when I answered the questions I got grief from the psychologist ("How can you answer the question this way????") because my interpretation of the (standardized) question was different from hers. She looked even more irritated when I explained how I understood the question and when I suggested re-wording it, she muttered "They're standardized...." In short, this is a very big life change and I feel like a marble caught in a machine. We'll see what happens."
