I have never had a good experience at Childrens and we have been there for various things with two SN kids over the years.

As far as the sleep study specifically--My dc did a sleep study a few years ago. He had a long history of inability to fall asleep and stay asleep as well as other issues. After spending a night there being monitored (you as the parent have to stay awake all night. He fell asleep around midnight and then they woke him up at 5 am on the dot)--we met with the sleep doctor who basically told us his sleep was abnormall and there was nothing she can do and just keep using melatonin forever.

Anonymous wrote:Why would PP’s not tapnjnto Johns Hopkins network? Miles ahead of cnmc and gtown.

I agree but they are in NoVa. Very far to travel.

Anonymous wrote:I really hate dealing with the appointments and non-doctor staff at Childrens. The. Worst.

Agreed. I've tried through the years to make appointments with multiple departments at Children's and usually give up just trying to get the appointment set up. Terrible customer service.

Why would PP’s not tapnjnto Johns Hopkins network? Miles ahead of cnmc and gtown.

I realize this is an old post, but because I know people search the archives (myself included), I have to say, we started my daughter's care at Georgetown and it was AWFUL. Absolutely abysmal. We spent a full month inpatient there, and saw a series of doctors (GI, ENT, Peds, Cardio, Neuro, the list goes on) and the only provider we liked was the general surgeon Dr. Chahine. (But, he has privileges at Children's too, so when we switched her care over, we kept in touch with him.) Everyone was just guessing at her care, and the doctors were ordering conflicting things, and we eventually got so fed up that Dr. Chahine arranged to get all of the doctors in the same room at the same time so that they could finally develop a coherent care plan (which turned out to be the wrong plan). GI was the absolute worst of them - two separate doctors tried to bully us into a major surgery we now know was totally unnecessary.

All of which is to say...it probably depends more on the doctors you see than the system, but in our experience, Children's has been head and tails above Georgetown (despite the woefully bad scheduling!)

CNMC - Rosenbaum is fantastic (genetics), Brian Reilly (ENT) is fantastic as well. The best Dev Ped left to go out of the country and now the remaining ones are beyond overwhelmed. There are a dearth of Dev Peds and Child Shrinks in the area.

DiFazio is pretty good fro Neurology but he is now head of the group (i.e. the administrator) so may not take new patients.

G'Town is OK in some ped areas, but I have not been bowled over. Maybe you are in VA (can't recall) but Hopkins is another option.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:We've had awful experiences with ENT at Children's. But fantastic experiences with other departments that it seems you don't need (GI, Pulmonology).

Great experiences with ENT, and neurology/sleep at Gtown (although the doctor we saw for this is no longer there).

Everyone I know who has used a geneticist has loved Dr. Rosenbaum at Children's.

In theory, you'd think that having specialists at multiple hospitals would be a pain, but in reality, I found it easier to get Dr. Milmoe (fantastic ENT at Gtown) to talk to GI at Children's than it was to get Children's ENT to do so.

Interesting. We just moved from out of state, and everyone except our primary care doctor was at the Medical University, and it was nice having them all in the same place.

I'm the PP above. We started with a specialty (special immunology) at Children's, and I just assumed that that meant we'd choose other specialists at CNMC, but the quality was so uneven that we ended up seeking care elsewhere, and I was surprised that coordination of care worked as well as it did.

If I had to choose a hospital for all my kid's care, I'd choose Georgetown, because I think they're more consistent, but there are some fantastic people at CNMC.

I really hate dealing with the appointments and non-doctor staff at Childrens. The. Worst.