Vanderbilt Children's Neurology Franklin's Online Review Report Card

We were suppose to see Dr. Lori Chaffin Jordan for episodes my son has had since August 2019. For the first 30 minutes a "trainee" questioned us. After that she came in and and blamed school anxiety for my child episodes without asking any questions and not even examining herself. I demanded an EEG and my son has a major focal seizure during the test.. she is now claiming doctor anxiety on his reaction during the test. So now she has brushed us off twice. I would never recommend her. Never.

*STOP HERE* If you are making a decision on whether or not you should consider Vanderbilt Pediatric Neurology for your child's care, please read this review. We had reason to suspect that our 4-month-old son might have Neurofibromatosis Type I (NF1), so our pediatrician referred us to Dr. Jennifer Brault. During our appointment on November 11, 2019, Dr. Brault took her time with us and answered our questions. She offered us a couple options for testing for NF1, and we decided to have his blood drawn and the sample sent to the University of Alabama (UAB) for testing. My husband and I took our son into another room to have his blood drawn with two women. The four of us held him as still as possible while they drew two viles of blood from his arm. Dr. Brault informed us that UAB would contact us in about two weeks to discuss insurance coverage and cash payment options, and that the entire process should take 6-8 weeks. Over 3 weeks passed without hearing anything, so on December 5, I reached out using the MyHealthatVanderbilt.com portal. The nurse responded the same day, stating that she would send my message to Dr. Brault for review. I never heard anything, so on December 13 I reached out again. Finally, on December 24, 6 weeks after our initial visit, I received a message from Dr. Brault through the portal. It read, "Sorry for my delayed response. I made a mistake with the samples and forgot to send the samples out to UAB. I have packaged everything today and sent today. My apologies for the delays. You should be hearing form UAB soon. Thanks, Jennifer." I had many questions and wanted the details of this mistake, so I responded right away, "I need someone to call me immediately to discuss." On December 26, the nurse called me and left a voicemail. I called back and had to leave a message for the nurse to call me back. She did call me back, but she did not have the answers to my questions and she said she would have to ask the doctor. On January 2, I reached out again because I had not received any information regarding the mistake. On January 3, the nurse reached out to me and said she had called me on December 26 and left a voicemail, but I never called her back. I had to remind her that I had called her back and we had even spoken voice-to-voice. January 7 marked 8 weeks since our initial visit, so we had hoped this would be the latest date we would find out the results of our son's genetic testing. On this day, I contacted patient relations. They coordinated a phone call with Dr. Brault. She called me that evening and said that SHE FOUND OUR SON'S VILES OF BLOOD AT THE BOTTOM OF HER WORK BAG WHEN SHE WAS CLEANING IT OUT. I do not know where she obtained her education from, but my guess is that she was not trained to handle blood samples in that manner. I am currently waiting to find out if we will have to take our son in to have new blood samples drawn. Dr. Brault should know the answer to this question herself, but she said she would have to call them and then call me to let me know what they say. This was supposed to happen yesterday, but I never heard from her. I will be following up with patient relations today. I am not looking forward to subjecting our baby to having his blood drawn again. My have several concerns with our experience. 1. The handling of our son's blood sample. 2. The difficulty in getting in touch with the doctor. 3. The lack of documentation that lead the nurse to believe she had not spoken to me, when in fact she had. 4. We met our out-of-pocket maximum in 2019. Now that we are into 2020, we have a new maximum to meet. Vanderbilt's mistake will cost us thousands of dollars. I have requested a meeting with the department head to discuss our case, and once that meeting occurs, I may update this review with additional details. I STRONGLY advise that you consider other options before seeing Dr. Jennifer Brault with Vanderbilt Pediatric Neurology.