Wendy Froehlich-Santino, Md's Online Review Report Card

Dr Froehlich is the most amazing psychiatrist I have ever seen and I wouldn't dream of finding a new one. Couldn't recommend her enough. The one star review on here I cant imagine how anyone could not love her she has helped me extremely and is an amazing person alone! If I could give more stars I would!

Dr. Froelich-Sandino has provided exceptional care for my son for the last 3 years. Our family was referred to her after 4 years of sleepless nights with our non-verbal, Autistic son. Thanks to her, he began sleeping through the night which meant we were able to get some much needed rest. Dr. Froelich-Sandino is highly competent, stays current on the latest literature and approaches her treatment with great care and consideration for the family. We couldn't be happier with the level of care we receive from her. She is an integral part of our care team and we trust her implicitly.

We had a previous psychiatrist who kept raising the dose or prescribing related medications for my older daughter's ADHD that left her increasingly depressed and suicidal. I can't thank Dr. Froehlich enough for listening to my concerns and agreeing to opt for a completely different pharmacological approach. Two years later, my older child is now a Freshman in High School and has developed the autonomy she needs to succeed. We had such a great experience that we brought our younger daughter to her, who experiences severe anxiety and mild ADD symptoms. She, too, is now on just the right medicine to support her as she learns to deal with her issues. I am very surprised by the review I read from another parent. I have always found Dr. Froelich to be a great listener when working with me or the girls. She responds quickly to any questions I send through the portal and I recommend her to anyone who asks about a good ADHD psychiatrist. I do agree she runs 10-15 minutes late for appointments, but the appointments, themselves, run the full length booked. Early on, she did explore diagnoses I didn't think were applicable to my child, but isn't that why we consult experts? In the end, her diagnosis and choices for support were absolutely for the best. My daughters are both now stable and happy. That's all anyone wants for their children!

We were unable to obtain suitable and consistent medical care through two trials with her over three years. We preferred to stay with PAMF system for all our doctors so tried very hard to work within the system. Unfortunately, we found the following issues from start to finish: a. Impersonal, condescending care: She could not even keep track of child's name let alone his conditions but she would keep bringing up she could not remember his name. Is underlining that she isn't able to remember a simple and common English name supposed to underline how unimportant we are and how little control we have, how much power she wields, or is she simply fond of underlining many times over during most meetings and calls we had with her, that she is extremely impolite and insulting and has significant trouble capturing and remembering core details? She called us up with more misinformation as the last straw, and both couldn't get his name right and underlined she couldn't remember his name, right up to the last two minutes of the last exchange we will ever have with her. What does that mean about being able to consume, assimilate and hold in memory the case history of the patient? I know the answer to this and it's not positive. b. Fundamental biases based entirely not on us but from somewhere else. This was on several caricature behaviors common to being on the spectrum but not applicable to our child. This is a severe warning for spectrum patients. Her specialty is supposed to be spectrum patients. c. Arbitrary harmful decisions even after her provably false assumption set was brought directly to her attention. She met our very polite sharing that her provably false assumptions would lead to endangering her patient with indifference and condescension. Multiple times. Multiple visits. Different issues each time. Her actions, if we'd agreed to continue to see her, would have caused unnecessary significant damages to our child unnecessarily and seemingly arbitrarily. Her reactions had nothing to do with his case but caricatures. d. Interference with pharmacy - Putting in a "Do not fill" notice with pharmacy as we departed her practice. Which action had no real impact, of course. Why bother to do that except to attempt to both cause harm and to impugn the reputation of our family and the care we provide our own child? With no basis to so do, no action ever, no history, that might indicate any issue in this area. Beyond the fact her instructions would not be followed by the pharmacy, so her actions had no impact except as one to let us know she would work to cause possible harm and a negative reputation for us with our pharmacist. That seems very inappropriate. f. She is overly concerned with legal requirements to excessive degree where she appears to be entirely misinformed. She appears more afraid of an audit of some sort than is she of harming a patient, at least in this experience data point of one patient. She was so excessively concerned on this that it made no sense and is something we've never before experienced. If her logic makes sense, both we can't understand legal requirements after reviewing the actual laws and neither can all our child's other doctors, who maintained the same regime for 15 years without any noise or fuss. Needless to say, our child is entirely healthy. It was never clear to us how much her irrational actions were based on fear of a misunderstanding by someone in a legal position --- a false perception that she was doing something illegal, or could be perceived to be so doing -- which is bizarre in and of itself --- and how much her irrationality was based on the false reasons she tried to use to justify her behavior. Her conclusions and behavior were, simply, bananas. And rude. Her adamant, unshakeable, non-fact based, non-science based, dangerous-for-patient biases are and were....simply uncalled for, non prudent and show a lack of common sense and understanding of others. Meetings are short. Every meeting with us started quite late and ended early or on time. We are unable to recommend her to any of our friends or acquaintances, after trying her out two times over four years, for a total of five visits. It's hard to mess up a relationship and the management of someone's care this quickly, imho. We've seen psychiatrists for the past 15 years for mild, mainstream pharmacological supplementation to support our child on the spectrum. There is nothing I can think of in looking back to explain how her care of our child could be justified. Given all the doctors with whom we've worked, we have been simply astounded at our experiences with her end to end. We have been blessed with consistent and positive experiences with excellent and careful care providers for so many years less this doctor that we have to believe there is simply something not right here.