Austin Regional Clinic

I was on Family Medical Leave Act (FMLA) for over 2 months. This began the end of September of 2013 until December 2, 2013. I was starting to lose the ability to walk with my right leg. It began getting weaker and weaker. I was starting to drag it and lift it up with my right hip muscles. I was having problems with my balance. The top of my right foot went numb. I had electrical sensations in my extremities. I was getting short of breath. I had problems talking on my ham radio or talking period. I started having problems functioning at my job. I was having problems driving. After 4 hours, I was wiped out. I thought I was going to lose my job, my house, my cat, and end up in a nursing home. To say the least, I was very frightened. It was difficult to drive. I admitted myself into Seton Hospital during this period because Dr. Louis Kennedy Hine could not help me. One Friday afternoon he promised to call me back and he never did. He never explained why he did not call me and he never apologized. His answer was to get myself into the ER. I was admitted into Seton Hospital where I was for a couple of days. They tested me from head to toe and could not find out what was wrong with me. They sent me back home with no hope. One of those doctors worked for Austin Regional Clinic. Dr. Hine would see me stumble into his office and he would have nothing to say about it. I found that to be very baffling. I could not even walk straight or walk on my tiptoes. The nurses who answer your calls when you call the office had much more sympathy and were much more professional than my own doctor was!

To make a long story short, The CEO and Founder of Austin Regional Clinic, Dr. Norman Chenven, called me around 11/15/2013 at 9:00 PM while I was in bed and talked to me for about 50 minutes. That is very unusual for the founder of such a large medical institution to call you in person to tell you that you need to seek another doctor OUTSIDE of his own clinic. He told me that and quot;I wore outand quot; Dr. Hine.and quot; He later apologized for that statement. Just when I had lost all hope in the whole medical establishment, this man dropped me like a hot potato. One of his own nurses that worked at the South 1st and Ben White location in Austin, Texas assured me that I would not be dropped like a hot potato, but that is exactly what DID happen. Hindsight being 20/20 and being a new Angie's List customer, I thought I would tell my horror story here. It has been about 9 months now since this began. I have been working regularly with few health problems since then, but I had to find out myself by doing research that a medication I was taking could have been the culprit. I do not know for sure, but this is the medication that Dr. Hine doubled before I was forced to stop seeing him. This medication can cause MS like symptoms. Everything that I was going through looked like MS. After stopping that medication myself cold turkey, I noticed a marked improvement within a couple of days. Even after returning to work, I had been struggling.

After choosing a new doctor in Bastrop, Texas, I had to have my medical records sent there. In the records, Dr. Hine had noted, and quot;NO DRIVINGand quot; but he never told me any such thing. I had also had a sleep study during the summer of 2013. He would never go over the results with me. I found out that ARC did not have the results of that study. Dr. Hine had sent me to a third party sleep study facility and they said they sent the results to ARC. I had to go get them myself for my new doctor! No wonder Dr. Hine would not go over the results of that study with me. All he would ask me is and quot;you are sleeping okay, right?and quot; That was it. Basically, I did the sleep study for nothing. Nobody at Austin Regional Clinic even viewed the results! What a waste of time and money! Dr. Hine would also forget to send my prescriptions to the correct pharmacy on multiple occasions and forget to include certain tests when I had blood work and fail to call me when he promised me that he would. He would seem overwhelmed which did not help the situation. Believe me, I realize that NO doctor is perfect, but all of this seemed to be the “norm” for him.

As I said earlier, as long as you did not have any serious health problems, Dr. Louis Kennedy Hine was fine. If you had any other health issues, he was not very reliable. Dr. “Ken” Hine was also an Internal Medicine doctor. I researched Austin Regional Clinic on the Internet and found another individual that had a very similar thing happen to him. We both spoke over the phone. They have a doctor that you have never even met send you a canned letter that says that the and quot;patient/physician relationship was never established.and quot; How can you see a doctor for 3 years and never establish a and quot;relationshipand quot; of any kind?

Dr. Louis “Ken” Hine left ARC 90 days after I was told never to return. I read somewhere on the Internet that he is working at Seton in Austin, Texas.

I would not wish ARC or this doctor on my worst enemy.

He is very competent with surgery. I broke my wrist and did not know that and had a surgery done may be three weeks after that I broke that.  The surgery went well. I had a little insurance incident with the coverage of some acts, but I do not know who to blame on it: the doctor or the insurance company.