Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center Cardiology 1 Medical Center Drive, Lebanon, NH 03766

"I was a patient of DHMC cardiology for many years and I had an excellent 5 star experience. My physician retired and I was assigned to a new doctor who knew absolutely nothing about my case or condition. He couldn’t pronounce any of the medications I had been taking from DHMC for years. I was having a significant problem with my cardiac device causing very clear pacing related chest pain and he insisted it was normal and did nothing beyond prescribing a calcium channel blocker (useless for pacing related chest pain and dangerous for someone who had severe hypotension like I did). There was a major problem with my lead and the device had been red alerting for lead failure for years yet he insisted it must be chest wall pain or musculoskeletal. I went to another hospital where they identified the problem immediately and fixed it surgically. I put up with this severe chest pain for YEARS with DHMC doing nothing to fix it and it was resolved immediately by another hospital. Even more ridiculous? When my DHMC provider found out what the other hospital suggested he told me he could do both high risk high specialty procedures at Dartmouth……..in his first year practicing. Again this was a doctor that couldn’t even pronounce my medications, misdiagnosed the issue for years, knew nothing about my underlying condition, never referred to others or asked for help and then expected me to return to him for high risk procedures that another hospital recommended after his negligent misdiagnosis. Absolute absurdity. DHMC you need to be far more diligent in maintaining continuity of care. Transferring long term patients from an expert provider in their condition to one with absolutely no experience is unacceptable. Additionally you need to train your physicians to refer elsewhere when they are not qualified to help a patient. The transfer of care I experienced, to a completely unqualified provider, was negligent on many levels. You are asking for a lawsuit having brand new grads practice with no oversight. Not only are they misdiagnosing, but they are attempting procedures that they are in no way qualified to do."