Donald Brode Md's Online Review Report Card

Me and my husband is been seeing Dr Brode for almost 12 years and so far he is the best primary Doctor we've ever been..He's very understanding, always able to listen and very kind.. Thank you Dr Brode...

I have been with Dr. Brode over 10+ years ..... he's a doctor I would give him a 10 star if you had one.... all my family goes to him. Thanks Dr. Brode

My insurance doesn't kick in for another month at a new job I started so I was going to be paying out of pocket for a doctors visit. I had a sciatic nerve injury at my job that had healed after a month off and I just needed a doctors note to return to work. I called around to a few different places after searching for inexpensive doctors in Austin. This place was the most expensive. They were going to charge me around $190 for a 5 minute appointment. I went to Premier Family Physicians...walked out the door with a doctors note for $80 after being checked thoroughly.

Dr. Brode has been our children's physician for 6 years and we couldn't be more pleased. He is just an extremely likable and compassionate person and my children absolutely love to go see him. I feel like we just lucked out.

I've never had a better doctor. He explains everything to me, even the simplest of problems, every time. I love his demeanor and humor, too! So lucky to have found him.

Dr. Brode has been my primary care physician for about 5 years now. He's conscientious and never makes me feel rushed. He even helped answer a question for me while I was overseas and broke my foot!

Love Jodi and the staff but always feel listened to and cared for.

I've been a patient of Dr. Brode's for almost 18 years. As I've traveled across the US and moved from city to city, as long as I came back to Austin, I would schedule an appointment with him regardless of whether my insurance covered it or not. He is one of the best doctors I've seen because he is knowledgeable, capable, compassionate, and as I read in another review- if he doesn't know something, he will actually do the research. I've been prescribed various prescriptions over the years, and what I value is that there's never been a time where he just phoned it in without requesting to see me to ensure this was appropriate, and conversely, there were times where I was able to get messages to him regarding prescriptions I needed immediately, that were not dangerous, nor classified drugs, where a 2 month wait wouldn't have worked in even a non-emergency. Even with my VA care, I see him as my PCP and will continue to do so as long as he is practicing.

Dr. Brode may be a fine pediatrician and family doctor, but if you are an HIV+ gay man who still has some self-esteem, you may want to choose someone else. I was not impressed with Dr. Brode, his staff, or the clinic where he works. His manner during our appointment felt rushed, rude, and careless.It took over two months for me to get an appointment with Dr. Brode after i declined his clinic's first match, their most available (read: unpopular) doctor.When switching my treatment regimen to lower my pill burden and cholesterol level, which i was grateful for, Dr. Brode gave me three drugs to pick from, telling me they were all the same, although there were slight differences in pill burden and side-effects. He seemed to want to get through the appointment as quickly as possible right at the outset. During our appointment, Dr. Brode held up his Body Mass Index machine that read "Obese". 5'7" and 185 pounds is a bit overweight, but not obese. I told him that his machine was wrong and that the BMI machine failed to account for the muscle mass in my legs. His response was to hold up the machine not once but two more times in front of my face so that i could read "Obese"! We wasted a fair amount of time going round and round on this when i had more important issues to discuss.I appealed to Dr. Brode for help healing the undiagnosed foot pain I had been experiencing off and on for a few years. Dr. Brode wrote me a referral to a podiatrist who then got paid by Medicaid to inform me that Medicaid does not pay for peripheral neuropathy tests. A total waste of time. I ended up solving the problem myself with New Balance shoes, stretching, swimming, and medical marijuana after i moved away from Texas.Dr. Brode's nurse responded to the simple question i left on her voicemail about whether or not i could get my blood drawn at a lab closer to my home in South Austin by mailing a letter to my home address (!), not answering my question, but informing me how important it was to get my blood drawn before my next appointment.Unlike private clinics, the clinic where Dr. Brode works absolutely refuses to release patients' T-cell counts and viral road results to them over the phone. The paternalistic reason they give is that their patients can't be trusted to make their appointments if they get this information ahead of time and that it is essential that patients have their complete lab results explained to them by a doctor. Unfortunately, the clinic staff can't seem to comprehend that their policy prevents patients and their partner's from immediate access to critical health information that may affect their behavior and risk; not to mention that it is not always possible for their patients to make immediate follow-up appointments... After i had had to write to their medical records department (twice, because they lost the first request) to obtain my lab results, Dr. Brode reiterated that my test results had been mailed to me as if they were doing me some kind of special favor. I would have been much more impressed if he had listened to me and then offered to discuss this with the Clinic Director in charge of this policy (who has since been replaced).As i'm sure Dr. Brode knows, patients who wish to change doctors at this clinic must make an appointment with a social worker first, which relegates their issues to "social work" issue instead of a clinic management issue, which makes more work for their patients and, of course, more money for the clinic. There is only one other major clinic for HIV+ patients in Austin. And this is how patients in Austin get trapped with mediocre doctors in bad clinics.For stable HIV+ patients in Austin, I recommend finding a good Internal Medicine Doctor who will write your prescriptions for you - or even better, leaving Texas and moving to one of the many states that has a long tradition of respect for LBGTQI people and that has expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act (California, Oregon, Washington, New York, Massachusetts, Vermont...)*ADDRESSES FOR REPORTING PROBLEMS WITH DOCTOR BRODE OR ANY DOCTOR WHO WORKS FOR COMMUNITYCAREAttention: Chief Operating OfficerCommUnityCareRBJ Building15 Waller Street, 5th FloorAustin, TX 78702Texas Health and Human Services Provider ComplaintsHealth Plan OperationsOffice #320PO box 85200Austin, Texas 78708Texas Medical Board Investigations Department - MC 263PO Box 2018Austin, Texas 78768-2018

I went to see Dr. Brode complaining of low testosterone symptoms and I felt like he didn't listen to me at all. He had it in his head that it was definitely not low T from the very beginning of my visit. Turns out he was wrong and it I do have very low T. He tested me at 5 pm which I have since learned is a useless test since the peek levels of testosterone are around 8-9 am. I had to go retest my blood at another location. A complete waste of my time and money thanks to his stubbornness. Doctors are not always right 100% of the time and need to realize that.