Southwest Pain Group's Online Review Report Card

Dr. Rodrigue is without question the most incompetent doctor I've ever seen, and I've seen a ton. Oh, if you're a drug seeker, he will gladly RX you anything as far as I can tell. He is DANGEROUS in that sense. I was referred by a lacking headache neurologist while waiting to get into one of the best in the US. Unfortunately, I don't really respond to narcotics. It's genetic. Dr. Rodrigue determined I hadn't been on the right one yet. Morphine, Oxycontin, Dilaudid, you name it. It's like a water pill. But he said I just haven't been on the right one. METHADONE is the drug for me, he said. I thought it was a junkie drug. No, no, no he assures me. This is the golden ticket. What he failed to tell me was that it was a one way ticket. I actually went on half the dose he RXed, because it mostly made me feel like I was dying. When I went for the follow up his nurse told me she was happy to hear that b/c she thought he prescribed too much. I'm thinking, you mentioned that now? It mediated pain a little. Now, I learned from a friend's pain doc later they can do a genetic test to see what works and what doesn't. My half sister suffers the same fate. Perhaps it wasn't available, but I really think he's dangerous and incompetent. I have a few examples. He had me on Klonopin. I suffer from a genetic panic disorder and PTSD from nearly being killed in a hate crime. Half my face was broken, plus my orbital cracked and my ribs were kicked in. While he was titrating me off methadone which he screwed up...he also RXed me Xanax while I was on Klonopin. You can't take Xanax and Klonopin at the same time. It's the same family and the only two drugs approved for panic. You could OD someone just by being that stupid. Now, I know not to take both drugs, and I'm highly resistant to both...but that's luck on his part. When I got to a good headache neurologist and she found out I was on methadone she was...very unhappy. It's not something you would RX to a headache patient in pain. It makes headaches worse, or it can the longer you're on it so you can no longer tell what's causing the headaches...could be your methadone...brilliant job...Dr. Rodrigue. Bravo. Now once the headache pain was under control, with a proper headache treatment plan working, she told me to get off the methadone. I'm thinking no big, take me off of it. She's said, "Oh no. That's very specialized. You have to go back to your pain doctor." So I go back and make an appointment. They call and cancel it. Doctor is busy. They will give me titration instructions over the phone. I'm still thinking no big deal. Okay, there are methadone hospitals for a reason, but I was put on it by a pain doctor. I'm not a junkie. It doesn't make me high. I think no big deal, follow his directions, I'll be off it in a week In 3 days I'm screaming. I mean day and night. I wanted to sever my own legs. I had no idea there was that much pain in the world. The doctor won't call me back. It takes him 3 days. They extend my titration to 10 days. The next time I call it takes a week for them to call me back. But they can't extend the titration...I'm off the drug. It took too long for them to call me back. The pain I endured from being assaulted resulting in a broken nose, cheek and orbital bone, kicked in ribs and broken teeth plus the surgeries...does not hold a candle to methadone withdrawal. I screamed for about 10 weeks...it's a blur of excruciating pain and screaming. Lots of puking from pain and misery. But thanks to Dr. Rodrigue I got to spend what I think was 10 weeks of my life screaming every waking moment until I passed out. Abject misery. Then after that comes a deep dark fake depression also caused by the drug. He didn't warn about that either. Didn't mention that as a possible side effect. And there was no relief and no one knew how long it would last, and the doctor wouldn't call me back for 3 weeks until I threatened a lawyer and patient abandonment. There was nothing they could do but put me back on the drug and correct the titration after weeks of screaming. No one should go through that. I called the office about 9 months later, after I calmed down, to follow up and make sure this NEVER happened to another patient. They didn't even apologize. When I say go ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE UNIVERSE IF YOU CARE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH. I mean it! If you're a drug seeker, he told me he wasn't afraid to RX dilaudid. He proudly proclaimed most doctors were afraid to RX it, but not him. Throw a rock. You'll find a better doctor. I'm now living a life without pain drugs that didn't work anyway, and I have a handful of migraines a month. Brilliant what the best doctor can do for you as opposed to this guy. Methadone, and by extension this doctor, nearly killed me thru incompetence. If I can save one person this review was worth my while.

I have been a patient for several years with Dr Bulger. Today I inquired about a drug test that I was charged for back in October that I did not take. The lady got upset and they decided to drop me as a patient because I was rude. I never even got to see a doctor. The other doctor named Rodrigue made the comment in the hall that it is a shame what they have to do to get extra money from an insurance company. He is the one that made the decision to drop me as a patient.

The staff is very professional and nice same as PA . The negative side is unnecessary tests. I have been in pain medication for more than 10 years, understand I have to have a drug screen to confirm my intake of the meds, but I just received a outrageous $13000 bill for a unnecessary urine Toxicology test!( I have never met the Doctor who ordered it) first came to this group because Eric Buchl as a PA was the best , understood my condition and treated me since I had my back surgery , stayed with this pain management group because all the protocols it have to be follow when change doctors is something that my pain cant afford .The commute from Denton to Dallas is awful( they used to be in Frisco and Plano) .

I have been seeing Dr. R. Rodrigue for several years now and I am absolutely satisfied with the service provided and the staff. I understand there may be times when you're waiting longer for your appointment but imagine why that is. These guys are so good at what they do they have tons of people trying to see them. The staff have always been nice and helpful. The schedules are done a wide distance apart so that you don't have to keep coming to his office. If you're in that much pain, they don't want you trudging up to the office every 3 weeks for meds. IMO the staff have always been friendly and Dr. Rodrigue is the man.

I started working with Dr. Bulger and what a wonderful experience. He is thorough, personable and I am very happy with the results. Their office is very convenient and I especially like the procedure videos on the website - very informative.

If you need someone to put a couple needles through your neck and into your spine, this is the place! Five stars!

My husband took his MRI paperwork - the only copy he had by the way - to them on Thursday. They called him Monday and told him the doctors had looked over it and they just needed a little more information and they would call him Tuesday. Never got a call. He called them Wednesday to see what was going on and they said they have no records for him!! Are you kidding me? After he personally went up there and handed his paperwork over and after they called him?? My husband suffers from back pain every single day and we were really hoping for some help. If you can't trust them with your paperwork, how can you trust them with your treatment? DO NOT RECOMMEND.

Horrible practice. All of their PAs quit so they have over 500 patients and only 2 doctors. They went through the entire patient list and, contrary to law, cut everybody's medicine that was above a certain level, regardless of how long the patient had been on that amount. They will argue that the law says that they have to cut the medicines, but a little digging shows that arbitrary cutting medicine "across the board" is an extreme violation of the law. When pushed on the subject, the true answer comes out.. "It's just too much trouble to keep patients at that level of medicine". Their convenience trumps the patient's quality of life. Stay away (or get away) at all costs.. their PAs certainly did.

This place has very very poor customer relationship. Especially in their account payables. If you do not have insurance they will charge you $190.00 just to come in for a refill and half the time you don't even see the doctors. Even if you see the doctor if has if they don't care what you have to say, they will just keep pumping medication to you and get you out the door fast. My advice is go find someone else.

Amazingly frustrating group to work with. Scheduling is nearly impossible. I don't know how many times over the last few years I've called up crying in pain because I'd tried to get off of this med or that med and they couldn't get me in for 3-4 WEEKS. The most recent example was this past Monday, when I called to notify them that I was having an allergic reaction to a medication I was using. They told me to stop using it immediately and I told them I already have. The scheduler then said the first available appointment with my doctor was in 9 WEEKS! I asked if there was anyone else I could see and she said they were all booked. I reiterated to her that I'm having to stop using the one medication I'm taking for pain, and they can't get me in for over 2 months. I asked what I was supposed to do for pain and she said, "If it gets really bad, then just go to the Emergency Room." I've heard the "go to the ER" thing from them more than once. I used to see their PA, Eric Buchl in their Frisco office until they closed it a few years back. Then I had to go to the Plano office. Despite the scheduling problems, Eric was a fantastic provider. He understood me, my case, other pathophysiology that played into my medication routine, my personal and professional struggles (as they related to pain) and always took time to talk to me and understand what was going on. Unfortunately, Eric left earlier this year. He's the only reason SWPG got a 2nd star, and he's not even there anymore. I now have to travel all the way down to Dallas (Presby) to see Dr. Bulger. The last time I saw him was because I needed to change my medications to get off anything narcotic at the request of another one of my doctors. I tried talking to him about some of the other options I knew about, then told him this was simply a temporary switch until I got through a couple things, and that I'd want to go back to my original routine ASAP. In the end, he basically just looked at me and said, "So, what do you want me to prescribe?" I told him, and he shooed me out (I was the last appointment of the day and he was already 45 minutes late getting to me). My last appointment was just for refills, where, again, I had to drive all the way down to Dallas. They got me in pretty quickly, and a MA took me to a room, said, "you're just here for refills, right?", left the room, came back maybe 5-10 minutes later and handed me my prescription. That was it. No questions, no doctor, no nothing...just have a seat and here's your meds. I'm not sure that's even legal. By far the most frustrating part of dealing with their practice is their scheduling. You'd think that a practice that deals with chronic, and severe, pain on a regular basis would build some time into the schedule for emergency patients each day, bu they don't. They have no regard for the fact that you're in pain for weeks - or even months - and make no effort to get you in to be seen. I'd change practices in a heartbeat, to one that's more convenient both geographically and scheduling-wise, but jumping Pain Management docs is very difficult to do without getting looked at as a seeker. So, I stay put. And I suffer for it.