Zenner Robert G MD

I can’t get over these reviews.
I was a patient of Dr. Zenner’s for five years from 2008 to 2013. Only reason I no longer am, is that I no longer live in Phoenix.
I’m sorry to hear that the primarily gripe with other reviews is the wait time. Let me tell you something, I’ve lived in five major metropolitan areas besides Phoenix, been seeing various psych’s for about 20 years — I say this to give an idea of the history of my knowledge of other psych’s. Psychiatrists are a dying specialty. Every single one I’ve seen in every city I’ve lived in – there has always been at least a ½ hour wait for an appointment. Did I wait when I was Zenner’s patient? Yes. Did I wait when I was a patient of every other psych? Yes. It’s sad, but its indicative of a greater problem with the medical community.
With that said, I found Dr. Zenner to be excellent. While my issues were primarily stable over the course of his care, there were a few things that came up through the years. When those issues arose, I’d bring them up, he’d provide suggestions and we’d change the course of treatment. He’s quick, his assessments are spot on (or at least they were for me).
I’ve been to a LOT of pysch’s, some good, some horrible. Dr. Zenner is excellent.

Don’t go see this doctor. Seriously, find somebody else. The reviews on this page are 100% accurate. I’ve been seeing him for about a year now and after the first visit I was fed up. Save your money. Save your time. Save your sanity.

This doctor treats his patients like cattle! I’ve never felt more uncomfortable and insignificant in a doctor’s office as I felt in this one! First off, the office looks a bit shady because there are no marking even telling you it’s a doctors office except for the doctors name on the glass door in small font. So I walk in to a totally full waiting room, which is unusual in a psychiatrists office, and that makes me even more uncomfortable. Then I sign in and pay my copay and then sit to wait. It immediately becomes apparent that he is picking up pieces of paper with people’s names and their payment receipts attached from the front counter and calling them in for 15 minute appts. Finally 45 minutes goes by and I ask another guy in the waiting room how long the wait usually is… he tells me an hour. At this point I have to leave to head back to work so I go to talk to the woman at the front desk and she is nowhere to be found, so I go walking through their office looking for someone. I tell her I need to leave to get back to work and she tells me that someone will call me to reschedule and tells me there is often a significant wait. Two hours goes by and I get a call from the office and the woman says that they will refund my copay because they don’t want me as a patient. I asked the woman why they didn’t warn me about the wait and she said that a wait that long is not normal, which I know is not true. This doctor wants to get as many patients through his office as possible with no courtesy to his patients whatsoever. It was like a cattle call! Their customer service is also severely lacking and it took me over a month to get an appt.

I went to Dr. Zenner for a couple of years and never got much out of it besides my meds refill. Very rude office staff what there is of it. He spent to much time talking about himself and current events than asking me my issues. I was just glad when I got out of there and didn’t have to come back for 4 months.

Dr. Zenner is a good guy and a good doctor. Plus, he has a good sense of humor. I have seen him for 12 years for medication management and I have never been disappointed with his medical services. He does tend to run late on his appointments (he has a receptionist but no PA or any kind of medical assistant), so I recommend scheduling first thing in the morning. I rarely have a wait when I schedule early. If this is not possible, I recommend allowing 2 hours in your schedule, or schedule the appointment before or after work. He’s had some challenges with his receptionists (the newest is friendly and helpful), but I’ve always received returned phone calls in a timely manner and I am always able to schedule an appointment in a timely manner. I am a medical provider myself and I refer patients to him and get good feedback from them. He takes insurance and his prices for self-​pay (what I have to do) is reasonable. There are a lot of psychiatrists out there who do not take insurance and charge an arm and a leg for a 15 min med check.

I have been seeing Dr. Zenner for about half a year. If you are trying to find a new psychiatrist, I highly recommend going elsewhere. I can’t speak much to his personal ethics, as I really don’t know him. He seems like a decent guy. His professionalism, however, is insulting and unapologetically so.
I make appointments usually three months in advance, by necessity to get an appointment. They do not provide any kind of email reminder service, even upon request. They do call you the day before. They won’t call you any further in advance than that. If the voicemail doesn’t work for whatever reason for the receptionist, she is not going to try again. Of course if you miss the appointment, or are late, you have to pay something along the lines of $ 200 (fairly typical policy for missing appointments in the industry, but their reminder ‘service’ really sets you up for failure.) Even so, it really is your own responsibility to keep track of your own appointment, so not horrible on their part, but certainly inconvenient, as well as unconventionally unhelpful.
Every single appointment I have had, I was kept waiting for at least a half hour. At first, I thought, ‘ok. This doc has some patients who have just had the proverbial poop hit the fan, and has to extend the sessions.’ People have bad days, and I know I have been in situations where my therapy appointments ended at times when 5 minutes more would have made a huge difference to my functionality for the next few weeks. We are all human, and if my waiting an extra 5 – 10 minutes means someone can get through their week, it didn’t seem like the worst policy.
However, waiting a minimum of a half hour, sometimes exceeding an hour, proves to me that while he is more than happy to charge you for his time whether you make your appointment or not, your time is completely worthless to him. Maybe a half hour isn’t a huge amount of time, but if you are working a low paying hourly wage job, trying to pay rent, that missed time at work adds up very quickly into you not being able to pay for things like food or rent.
One day, I had the first appointment of the day. I got there on time. The receptionist was unfriendly and without a good morning, said, ‘that’s x dollars’ as if I were buying a hot dog. Admittedly, I was not über friendly either. I wasn’t rude, but I also wasn’t being paid to be there.
Dr. Zenner had his door open and was talking with someone. It clearly was not an appointment. He was really just shooting the shit. Half hour into my appointment time, a guy with a nice suit and briefcase walked out of Dr. Zenner’s office. Dr. Zenner walked him up to the receptionist desk and they had some friendly goodbye words.
He then called me in. There was no apology for the wait time. No real explanation. He mentioned he volunteers his time on Tuesdays and Thursdays (it was a Thursday). I think volunteering is great. But for someone to volunteer my time without my permission, during my scheduled appointment, especially when I was paying a lot of money to be there as well as not being paid because I could have been missing work (it was a weekday), that is excessively rude. There is no excuse for that. None. And it wasn’t just me! Within that half hour, two more patients came in and sat down, waiting for their appointment. None of them mentioned anything to the receptionist about being early.
I have been seeing psychiatrists for over 20 years. I have had plenty of experience in seeing what is out there, what a good psych is and does, and what a poor excuse for one does. Dr. Zenner is not evil, but he is offering a business that completely abuses you of your time and does not make up for it in any kind of special psychiatric skill. He has not offered any real psychiatric help to me that I think any other psychiatrist would be able to offer (i.e. maintaining a treatment plan developed by another psychiatrist). Like everyone, I have problems, and I have found Dr. Zenner to be of no real help in getting insight into defining them, or finding their solutions. There are better psychiatrists out there. Much better. Find them instead.

Have been seeing Dr. Z for years, but have lost faith in him. Office staff is not the same and forget about being on time as the usual wait is 30 mins or more unless you get in very early morning appts.
Have been on pretty much every drug known to man and to this day, I feel worse off in years.

If you are looking for an honest and ethical doctor to help you make the right decisions when it comes to your mental health, don’t go here. My wife went to Dr. Zenner to update her medications as we had moved from Colorado to the Valley. When she walked in, the waiting room was full of people. She signed in and waited for more than 45 minutes past her appointment time before she went looking for someone to find out when she would be seen. There was no staff at the desk and she had to go looking through the office to find someone to help her. After getting to an employee, she told them that she had to get back to work and needed to know when she would be seen. The employee responded «Patients are normally seen an hour after their appointment time». Understandably, this upset my wife and she asked to reschedule.
When the office called her back she was told that the doctor did not want her as a patient and that her office co-​pay would be refunded. She was told they did not want patients that would walk out on appointments. It wouldn’t be so bad, but it was clear from her experience that they were trying to push through as many people as they could in as short a time as possible. They had no care in how they approached their patients or their mental health needs. The office was run down and the overall vibe was like being at the DMV. Not good for someone who is supposed to be helping patients.
If you are looking for a good psychiatrist, we suggest you take Dr. Zenner’s approach to his patients and fire him before you see him.