Balacco & De Marco Family 108 Washington Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030

"As most of these reviews have identified their office and office billing is completely incompetent and incapable of doing the minimum correctly. The office manager is never in the office and when she finally calls back she has the worst attitude. Frankly, in any business, industry and/or profession this manager would be fired. I don't wish this upon anyone despite how poorly they perform, but this is a consistent scenario with her. I feel bad for the physicians because Dr. Metry and Dr. Patel are amazing people and great physicians, but they work for an unprofessional and greedy Medical Company (Hackensack Medical) that could care less about their patients. I would love to go to Dr. Metry directly without going through Hackensack because she has helped me and has been fully transparent on every step. I unfortunately don't advise anyone to go to this medical office. And I say unfortunately because the physicians, PA, and nurses are great. It's the office manager and the organization that makes the patient experience a very costly and painfully dreadful experience."

"I went to this practice for 17 years, and never once did Dr Balacco show any recognition of my face or name. The only thing he ever did for me was refer me to various specialists, each worse than the previous. I finally quit and found a PCP in Manhattan after I stopped by the office to pick up an urgently needed referral and found the office closed for the day during normal office hours without any reason given. I told my insurance all about the indifferent care and the shoddy office management when I was switching to the new PCP and later received a letter notifying me that the insurance company no longer did business with this practice. I couldn’t have been the only one who complained. This was a while ago, has nothing to do with Covid-19. I’m surprised they are still in business, and I absolutely do not recommend this practice."

"Nice doctor, but unbelievably inefficient processes that render healthcare at this office frustratingly slow. They refuse to process a prior authorization request for drugs they prescribed (as required by insurance company). The insurance provides them with a website and dedicated hotline that would process the request within minutes. But they refuse to use it. Instead they wait for a fax from the pharmacy, which the pharmacy can't send. In summary, only go here if you have hours to spend to get the office to do their work."

"Can't get appointments, can't get prescriptions refilled, doctors are almost never there. It's because they've been bought out by big, corporate Hackensack Hospital and everything about this once really terrific, local practice is gone. My blood pressure goes up every time I have to see them because they're overbooked, the staff has no idea how to handle problems and you have to wait weeks and weeks to get an appointment. Even then, they treat you (not the doctors, the staff), like you're just one more pain in the neck that they have to deal with. If this is the future of medicine, watch out. It's not medicine anymore, it's an assembly line. My son needs to take a certain restricted medication. When the practice was just Balacco and de Marco, it was great. They would examine him every few months and give him his new prescription with three refills. Now with the big, corporate Hackensack in the picture, my son has to go in every month for a refill. That's 12 visits to the doctor just to get his refills. He already works three jobs. As anyone who has been to see the doctors knows, the wait is often at least an hour. My son can't take off from his job for 2-3 hours a month, so he has gone without his medication. Not much sympathy from the staff. Also, his insurance does not cover his doctor's visits, so he used to just pay out of pocket. He can't do that anymore - not with the necessity of having to visit the doctor 12 times a year. It's a nightmare. So now both he and the rest of our family have to find a new doctor, after seeing deMarco and Balacco for over 20 years. Add to that, you're no longer allowed to "cross over," which means if you started out seeing Balacco, you have to stay with him, even if the waiting room is filled to capacity and deMarco is right next door to Balacco with an empty examining room. This is the state of modern American medicine."

"I have to start by saying that I have been a patient at Hoboken Family Practice for over a decade. I love Dr. Demarco and actually have a good relationship with the staff. Dr. Balacco is a different story. I called in to the service on a Saturday from out of town with a sore throat that had been ongoing for seven days. I was looking for advice. I didn't call in sooner because I have allergies and sometimes get sore throats from post nasal drip and my daughter recently had a cold that I assumed I caught. He took an hour to call me back. He told me that I waited too long to call. Told me that he was in a conference and that this wasn't an emergency (of course it wasn't, if it were I would have gone to the ER. I thought the answering service was for non-emergency consultation). He then told me that he wouldn't prescribe anything to me over the phone even though I didn't ask him to prescribe anything to me. Furthermore, Dr. Demarco, my doctor knows that I try to avoid taking pharmaceuticals whenever I can, sometimes to my detriment. I was looking for alternatives I may have overlooked. Reassurance that it had been a bad allergy/cold season and he'd seen a couple of patients like this and to hang in there another few days because it passes. Or even a yeah, that does not seem normal, why don't you come in on Monday when you return. Dr. Balacco made me feel like some pill head in need of a fix who was bothering him at his conference because I was negligent in coming into the office even though I told him that I was out of town and a plane ride away. I am disappointed in the way I was treated when I was only calling for advice and help and was treated rudely by him. I gave two stars because his unconscionable behavior took three stars from his amazing partner and good staff."