Fox Chase Cancer Center

The good: Competent, friendly staff. Nice facilities.
The bad: Sent a bill to a debt collector mere days after they sent my husband his first notification :(Now his credit report is messed up for the next 7 years. Be proactive about bills if you’ve received services there! Even if you haven’t heard from them, don’t assume it’s because they’re in the process of working things out with the insurance company — they could just be sitting on your bill, waiting to mess your life up.

Absolutely the worst cancer center, doctors, nurses and staff. Unprofessional, no compassion and no help. If you have cancer do yourself a favor and don’t go here. The best thing would be for this dump to close.

Good doctors but they charge ridiculous prices for a simple biopsy and other simple procedures. I had a punch biopsy done on a lump. Thirty minutes and they charged over four thousand. When I called to discuss, Theresa from central billing told me its like buying a car. They are like Lexus and other places are like a regular car! Before you say OK to any procedure, ask them what it cost. They won’t be able to tell you easily because they bill things separately. Their bills are unclear. They don’t show what the insurance paid and why you owe what you owe. They make you call to request an itemized bill. Outrageous! She told me its the insurance companies responsibility to show that. They are banking on your need and fear for medical treatment that you won’t shop or discuss price with them.

My husband was treated at Fox Chase for a tumor on his tongue. I have to say that some of the doctors were very good and the aggressive chemo and radiation that was recommended probably saved his life. However, that being said, there was and still is plenty to, complain about. Long, long wait times for chemo, a few very insensitive doctors, no attention whatsoever to diet and alternative therapies to name a few issues. The billing department is a disaster. I’ve been trying to keep track of bills for the past five years… one year of treatment and four more of follow up visits.
Trying to match our insurance statements up with the bills we get from Fox Chase has been a nightmare. Procedures that he has had many times are coded differently each time and costs have varied greatly. It seems they recently upped their costs dramatically. They just charged our insurance company close to $ 6000 for a simple
throat scope. If you had the same thing done at an Ear nose and throat doc it would cost $ 3 – 400. When I asked Fox Chase why the cost was so ridiculously high, I was told it was because it was done at FOX Chase and they are a specialty hospital. It is because of charges like this that we all pay so much for health insurance.

I was very disappointed with the care. The surgeon Dr. Kutikov was more concern with using a robot that didn’t even help vs regular surgery. The commercial says they offer treatments that no one in the world has access to however the hospital didn’t have anything to offer. I was very disappointed to see that half of the center was close on the weekend. When my love one came to visit, almost every door was locked. Should of went elsewhere! Please avoid! The center did not even have a doctor on call in the middle of the night. Please avoid at all cost. This place is like stepping into the past. Philadelphia has so much more to offer don’t get stuck herem

Well if Fox Chase Cancer Center is a «center of excellence,» THANK GOD my loved one did not go for treatment at one of those un-​excellent centers of mediocrity. If FCCC holds a higher standard, than I shudder to imagine the disgrace others may encounter along their journeys to wellness.
Sure, everyone there is really, really nice. But as Little Red learned in Into the Woods, «nice is different than good». Their hook, line and sinker approach to the patient’s initial visit is misleading. The team of medical professionals appear to be a cohesive network all on the same page. An assessment was made. An appointment for surgery was given. Then the appointment was POSTPONED by one week (the doctor says «a few days to a few weeks don’t really matter») because there was another surgery scheduled that day. Some tests were done. The assessment was WRONG – the problem was worse than they first assumed. A more complex surgery was rescheduled again (the third appointment). ONE MONTH after the initial appointment, my loved one is finally in the hands of FCCC for major surgery. Not good. My loved one gets sent home with an I.V. still in the arm. Not good. Two lumps of gauze fall out of a wound that were previously causing stabbing pains. Not good.
And today, one week after the latest tests, FCCC RESCHEDULES the results appointment TWO HOURS prior to the appointment time. We now get to wait ANOTHER WEEK before getting more answers and, oh, finalizing a treatment plan.
Maybe these doctor’s are among the nation’s finest and only their admin needs major upheaval. Maybe the problem stems from this nation’s misguided approach to wellness. Regardless of «who done it», I, as next of kin, find FCCC’s mistakes to be unacceptable, offensive and terribly upsetting.

Registration took multiple rounds to correct information errors and still did not get them all. Registration person ended up rushing the patient saying others needed to be checked in. This patient checked in before the scheduled time. The next receptionist (s) failed to prepare documents for the doctor’s review. This was realized 45 minutes after the appointment time, when the patient was finally seen. One of these receptionists did get to take care of personal business at the desk for at least 45 minutes. Maybe he/​she was on break and took it at the reception desk. The break may have been longer, but the patient was finally called in 45 minutes after the scheduled time. The nurse entered the blood pressure number incorrectly. A lesson that numbers for a patient’s record should not be memorized, even if it’s 4 different numbers, 2 – 3 digits each and for 8 steps to a computer. The visit with the doctor was short because (s)he didn’t have all the items since it wasn’t prepared by the receptionist. So the visit became a long trip to be rushed, treated at fault, be part of their mistakes and drop off material that wasn’t reviewed.

I can’t speak to the medical care. I have not been a patient at Fox Chase. However, a dear friend of mine was, some years ago, suffering with pancreatic cancer. I visited Fox Chase’s web site, and followed their instructions for leaving a message with Fox Chase. I had concerns about my friend’s condition and the treatment she was receiving. The instructions stated that someone at Fox Chase would reply. No one ever did. I find this incredibly uncaring, and that shouldn’t be the case at an institution that, in its current TV ads, boasts about its caring approach to treating patients.

This place has, hands down, the nicest doctors, nurses and staff I have ever encountered. Their focus is treatment and people so the facility could use a little updating (specifically the waiting areas) but they have a great cafeteria (good prices too!) and their techniques and practices are the best around! My mum had a tumor on her kidney removed with robotics, which apparently they can do with most organ cancers (kidney, liver, bladder, etc). So much less invasive and her recovery was so much easier than if she’d had the full blown surgery to remove it. The doctor was great and everyone kept us informed of exactly what was happening throughout the surgery. Hope to never have to go back though. :)

I am a 71 year old man with recurrent prostate cancer. On my third visit to Fox Chase when I was really desperate to start treatment, my oncologist, who I had made the appointment with, refused to see me saying she was too busy with another patient. Instead she sent in a PA who was sweet, but who knew very little about treating prostate cancer. This all occurred after I had been kept waiting for over an hour past my appointment time. I ended up with no treatment or even a plan going forward other than a script for repeating two scans that I had done a few months ago. I will say that after hours had passed the PA came back in and said the Doctor could perhaps see me for a couple of minutes if I wanted to wait for another 45 minutes or hour. Geez!
I am done with Fox Chase Cancer Center. Go there at your own risk.

The best thing I can say about FCCC is that there are some wonderful caring individuals here. For the most part the nurses were not only professional but kind and aware that everyone here isn’t a stat or a room number, but an individual with a scary fight for their life going on.
That said, they have an open door policy that maxes out the capacity and allows for many people to fall through cracks in the system. A strong feeling that the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing here.
A few examples:
Becoming diabetic is a common side effect of pancreatic cancer and despite it being clearly marked in my mother’s chart, the staff would forget to check her glucose/​administer insulin/​or remember to offer her the diabetic menu daily!
I set a radiology appointment for a Thursday, only to be called the Tuesday before asking why we missed our Monday appointment? When I explained we had a Thursday not a Monday, she blamed my mother’s medication and that she must have forgot she changed it… at this point I was setting all appointments! To blame a dying woman, come on… and not only that they wouldn’t see us until the next Monday! This amounted to two weeks of no treatments!
In fact, my mom went almost the full month of March without a single treatment do to scheduling issues, contracting a deadly virus while in the hospital, cancer spreading and her Radiologist and Chemo therapist not being in on the same days to update their strategies, etc…
It wasn’t until after one of their interns wrote the wrong drug on a prescription that almost caused my mom to OD (rush to the ER Narcam shot!) and my threatening lawsuits all the way up to the president of the Hospital did they A) put the port that she needed a month ago in, B) get her a second Chemo treatment, C) actually see her team of doctors in one room at the same time.
Those were just a few of our problems…
My mother’s was a terminal diagnoses and I make no illusions that they could have cured her. What I do know is that her final months could have been a lot better if we didn’t go here. I’ve heard similar from other patients and sadly a story that mirrored my mom’s own awful experience happened, a month after my mom passed, to my father’s childhood best friend there at FCCC
I’ve struggled with the idea of posting this here, but in the end if you or someone you know is considering going here don’t. Not until they get there staff to patient ratio under control.