What do I do when I have been denied an appointment multiple times?

@dhanson98, you may find the tips in this related discussion helpful:
- Can't get an appointment: Any tips on what to do?
https://connect.mayoclinic.org/discussion/cant-get-an-appointment/

It is hard to be denied an appointment, especially when you've invested your hopes that Mayo Clinic's team approach could be the answer. It sounds like you have taken the right steps to getting an appointment, but upon review by physician experts, it was determined that Mayo Clinic cannot offer any further treatment for you.

Did your doctor submit a referral on your behalf or did you make the request for an appointment by self-referral? Have you considered a center of excellence or university medical center near you?

Hello @colleenyoung, thanks for your reply. Two of my appointment requests were from doctor referrals and two of them were self referrals. And yes, I live in Iowa and have been to the University of Iowa a few times. Still no answers. I read some of the reply’s in the discussion that you sent me. All of my appointment requests were for the Rochester, MN location. Maybe trying to get into one of the smaller Iowa locations would be a good idea?

It’s so disappointing getting denied multiple times, especially after you’ve tried other places locally and have been struggling already with mystery symptoms. I’ve definitely been in that boat before.

It sounds like you’ve gone through some of the other tips. The one thing I can think of is, do you know if you’re doctor sent in clinical notes, or if they only filled out the general form?

The one and only time I was successful was when my doctor did a referral and submitted the maximum allowed number of pages of clinical notes. Unfortunately, I was misdiagnosed and continued to have problems after my Mayo evaluation, which is what led to subsequent referrals to specific departments once we had more information, but those were all denied.

I don’t want to be the “negative Nancy,” except I always feel like I’m that person in this part of the forum because frankly, I find the referral/denial system to be completely opaque and sometimes random. The decision is supposed to be based on whether or not Mayo feels they can contribute more to the treatment plan than you could do locally.

But then you get situations like yours (and mine) where we can provide reams of documents showing evaluations from other medical centers who couldn’t get to the bottom of it. And then I see others who say they made a call and received an offer in 2 days.

At any rate, trying a smaller location may help. Perhaps you may be able to get an internal order/referral that way. I’m not sure how that works.

But like Colleen was asking, it may be worth considering other options, especially if you’re willing to travel. Cleveland Clinic offers a similar process to Mayo—they offered me an appointment immediately after my doctor referred me.

My broken heart story is I had an internal referral from my physician within Mayo to a specialist department. It’s a high volume department, difficult to get an appointment. I got one, and their teams cancelled it without notifying me, saying (after I had to call and demand to know what happened) (a) they couldn’t corroborate the diagnosis (b) didn’t need the appointment because it wouldn’t change my treatment and (c) could obtain care locally.

All of that was false and my own care team including the Mayo physician who referred me could vouch for me but it didn’t matter in the end.

And I learned the hard way they can still deny you even when you’re established. So, you’re definitely not alone.

I got lucky and got into Johns Hopkins for all the same reasons Mayo declined the appointment, and I think it turned out better for me in the end.

There’s still hope.