Duke Rheumatology Clinic - Clinic 1J

Leigh Anne Batchelor

I had a great visit with Dr. David Leverenz - he was very kind, caring, listened to me, and spent time explaining my diagnosis to me. He would get five stars however when the appointment was made, I was told I would be seeing him at the clinic and not the hospital. This part was true and I paid my $40.00 copay upon arrival of my visit. Then I get a bill in the mail for hospital fees. For the life of me I don't understand how you can bill for hospital fees and I was seen in the clinic in a regular exam room just like a doctor's office.

RD Bradley

I met with the rheumatology clinic Dec 12 2018 and was advised I would be called within a week to let me know of tests and X-ray results. I’ve called back several times and am told someone me will return my call, It’s been 3 weeks and haven’t hear a thing. I’ve tried calling and just get the run around . This is not good customer service at all.

Terri Fisher

This is a Dr. office, not a hospital, yet I was charged over 200 dollars for the examination room! In addition to the over 400 dollars for the very casual examination the Dr. gave me. My primary doctor's office sent my labs over TWICE, well in advance of my appointment. The system at Duke is so backlogged that the Dr. didn't have my labs to work with and recommended that I email them to him directly so that they didn't get lost in a stack somewhere. The visit was entirely unhelpful. Over 600 dollars I was charged to have him tell me nothing. I will avoid not only Duke Rheumatology but the whole ridiculous Duke money-gouging system.

Liz Runge

Ok so, I’m going to go ahead and tell a bit of my story here, because I hope it helps someone have the courage to stand up for themselves and their health. I was diagnosed with Lupus at age 12. This diagnosis was based on several blood tests as well as symptoms I was having at the time. Since that time I have struggled year after year my entire adult life to get doctors to accept and treat me for the thing I was diagnosed with as a pre-teen. Very little is known about a lot of autoimmune disorders and almost none of them can be diagnosed or ruled out with a single test. Since I was 20 years old I have have doctor after doctor try to argue that my diagnosis was wrong and therefore they should not treat me based on one or two blood tests, despite many severely painful and debilitating symptoms that popped up every few weeks in “flares”. During this pregnancy with Maddison after all of the difficulties, my rheumatology team at MUSC decided they’d rather send me to another hospital and have THEM tell me I didn’t have lupus. So that’s what they did. They sent me to Duke University to see Dr. Clowse an “expert” in the field, and at eight months into a high risk pregnancy, my mother and I traveled 5 hours to another state to hopefully finally get some solid answers and treatment. Well long story short, after a thirty minute discussion, no blood tests, scans, or any other tests, this expert told me I did not have lupus and it was not a good thing to keep chasing that diagnosis. I was so incredibly frustrated. Fast forward about a month. I got yet another spot on my skin that I knew was connected to my disease. I can tell when I’m in a flare and these skin spots and swollen lymph nodes happen every time. I wrote a letter to 6 doctors on my care team at MUSC begging one of them to biopsy the spot. 6 of the 7 doctors would not. One agreed to. Well I’ll give you all one guess at what that biopsy came back positive for... LUPUS! Yes. After all of this a skin biopsy has proven beyond a doubt what probably twenty doctors in my life have tried extremely hard to convince me I DID NOT have, and subsequently refused to treat. My question is... what happens to the people who don’t insist? The ones who don’t know how to read the medical studies and blood test results. The sad answer is most of them eventually die from the disease process. They never had a chance. My second question is when is this going to change? When will doctors start taking pride in their treatments instead of running from liability? Moral of the story. If you know something is wrong, don’t let it go. Advocate for yourself, for your health. No one will do it for you, unfortunately not even your doctors most times. It’s up to you. Don’t give up, even when you are frustrated. Your health... your life is worth fighting for. I’m so glad I have found it in me to fight and continue to fight.