Andrea Van Pelt, M.D.

There really are not enough words of praise to cover all of the wonderful things that we experienced working Dr. Hammond and his team. My son lost 150 pounds and had a great deal of loose skin as a result. Our family physician referred us to Dr. Hammond for consultation. From our initial contact with the administrative support team, we were treated with kindness and respect. Our meeting with Dr. Hammond was the same; he talked with my son, husband and myself at length, answering all of our questions with care and patience. Throughout the process of negotiating with our insurance company, everyone in the office remained positive and supportive, encouraging us along the way. The surgery went extremely well and all follow-up contact was professional, polite, friendly and kind. Removing the excess skin was the finishing touch in my son's transformation. The skill of Dr. Hammond and the entire team (administration, nursing care, medical interns, et al) made our experience, most especially my son's, less anxious and uplifting. I would not hesitate for an instant to recommend this office and its excellent personnel.

I was treated very poorly from the nurse who works on referrals. To begin with, I went in and had to leave because they said I was not refferred from my doctor, which I was. When I left and called them they told me, they didnt realize I had priority health medicaid and that I did not actually need a doctors referral with that insurance. The doctor was nice. So, I just figured that mistakes happen.

They took 3 months to refer me over and it only happened because I called after a month and then after 2 and then after 3 and finally raised a stink. The nurse was very mean to me. I was told that they fired the refferal lady for doing that sort of thing by one other nurse. My insurance made a few mistakes after this and I had to call the office a few times and my insurance a few times to work it all out. Then the nurse told me that I was bothering her and that she had more important patients that had cancer to deal with and that she was going to talk to the doctors and sell if they even wanted to continue the relationdship with me and would make sure that they did not want to. I had a capsular contraction and it was very very painful.

I contacted the head doctor on facebook and he called and said theyd do the surgury if i promised never to contact them on facebook again. I had even apologized to the nurse and then to him for being hard to deal with. I told them i really needed the surgury. THEN they sent me a letter saying on top of how much my insurance was paying theyd charge $5000 and if anything went wrong $1000 an hour. They knew I could never afford this and did that on purpose to get me to go away. They are the only doctor around her that accepts priority health and I was left helpless with no other doctor to do the surgury and they did not care.