Fenway Community Health Center Inc

My best friend just died of pancreatic cancer, after going more than 5 months back and forth to the Fenway with every typical symptom and just being given pain meds and acid blockers and diabetes meds and no one referring him for scans or to a specialist even when he asked. When he finally got himself-- on his own-- to another health system for a GI aptmt and scan because it was open enrollment and he switched out of HMO, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer right at borderline of being able to get surgery, was told to do chemo first to shrink tumor a little and it didn't work and spread beyond being able to be resected. This is entirely because of Fenway's negligence and malpractice, as it should have been diagnosed more than 5 months earlier when it likely still could have been resected.

These are the symptoms my friend had: unexplained rapid and severe weight loss, diffuse abdominal pain that was sometimes severe, sudden onset diabetes, and severe fatigue. The Drs and nurses he saw at Fenway just gave him painkillers and an acid blocker saying maybe he had an ulcer (but with no diagnostic procedures to see if he did) and put him on metformin for the diabetes, and told him he was probably just stressed. He asked about whether to cancel a 2 month trip out of the country and his dr said he could go because maybe it was all just stress and he'd get better by going. He came home early in severe pain and went to ER. Even then when he asked for a referral and scan, they told him to go to Beth Israel and when he called BI he was told that he'd need to wait a month or more for a scan and that Fenway had not sent over any referral. He happened to know someone with a relative working at another health system and so, on his own with his new insurance, he got himself a consult and scan and biopsy and it was pancreatic cancer.

It turns out that all the symptoms he had were indicative of pancreatic cancer all along. In fact, he had almost every symptom people with pancreatic cancer get. It was unusual for him to have so many symptoms so early in the disease, but that should have meant that he got diagnosed early enough to get curative surgery. Instead, he's dead.

The whole 5 months he was going to Fenway without getting diagnosed, I was pressuring him to go elsewhere. But for most of it he had HMO insurance that required a referral from Fenway to see anyone else, and they refused to give him a referral. I offered to pay out of pocket for him to see someone else but he thought that if the Fenway dr and nurses were saying he didn't need any more workup and it was likely stress that there was no reason to pay out of pocket to go somewhere else. The trust he initially put in Fenway led to his death.

I would not trust Fenway with any kind of serious health problem ever. They clearly do not have an ethic of looking for the causes of symptoms, and they seem worried about giving people referrals to specialists or any kind of diagnostic procedures, likely because they're an HMO and make more money if they avoid diagnostic procedures.

If you have any choice at all, do not use this clinic. I know it used to have a good reputation, but what happened is so far beyond the pale. They really should be sued for malpractice in this case as my friend went in SO many times and asked multiple times for referrals and diagnostic procedures and was told no. Lucky for them, his survivors are not likely to sue anyone. But I hope this review can save someone else's life, because although my friend talked to the dr who hadn't diagnosed him properly, once he was diagnosed elsewhere, it did not sound like they would make any chanced. My friend was a public servant who helped many thousands of people in Boston. He is no longer here. No one else should die due to their negligence and malpractice.