Sondra Summers, MD

NO! NO! NO! If you have a high-​risk pregnancy (in my case, twins) find better docs. I implore you not to risk your health at this place. I should have sued them, one doc did not agree with the other docs practice. Please, save yourself. There are other fine hospitals in Chicago.

Dr. Summers is an OB/​Gyn whose practice shares space within the Loyola Family Health Center in North Riverside. There are 2 other female OB’s, Dr. Deighan & Dr. Stoeffler, and apparently 1 male OB (who I never met). This is a hard review to write, because while Dr. Summers & her colleagues were perfectly nice doctors, a few things occured that resulted in us being very disappointed with this OB practice.
I was pregnant with twins, and the fertility doc I had seen to get pregnant had recommended her to me… so off I went. She was nice, and I met the other OB’s in her practice and they were all nice as well. My husband was impressed that the docs and nurses all just input their info on me into a computer instead of using pens and charts. High-​tech! So that was good. I saw the ultrasound tech there a couple times and she was quite pleasant.
So lets see, first off there was a doctor’s appointment where I sat and sat and sat and SAT in that waiting room for a really long time before anyone realized that the front desk gal had never given my chart to the nurses in back so that they would call me back for my appointment. Not the worst thing to happen, I know… and it was an accident but hey I had taken time off work and was losing time here. Plus I was pregnant! And I had to pee!
The second thing that happened was a few weeks after an ultrasound appointment, when I had a doc appointment, the doctor starts talking about how we are going to just keep an eye on the placenta issue I was having… but this was the first I had heard of it! When I said «what?» the doc just said «oh, didn’t anyone tell you? someone was supposed to call!» and then just moved along. Um, hello, this was the type of issue I should certainly have been informed about, as if it didn’t correct itself then I was going to have to have a c-​section! I would have liked to have been informed about this right away, instead of hearing about it weeks later!
Finally, we moved while I was pregnant, a bit far away from the doctor’s office but fully intended to continue going there and have our babies at Loyola. However, one night I had a bleeding episode which required me to be taken to the hospital by ambulence, and we were now nowhere near Loyola… and the docs at this hospital felt it was in my best interests to stay put until delivery. My husband called the doctor-​on-​call who he feels was rather dismissive, and the next day (once I had been admitted to Edward Hospital in Naperville, the closest to our new home) my husband called my doctor’s office to give them an update… and they pretty much said they’d like me to be moved to Loyola, and when he said «no, I think we’ll stay right here», that was it. He asked if they would speak to the doctors treating me to give them background on my situation, and they were not interested in doing that… nor did they ever check in on me from there on out.
Maybe I am silly to feel like they should have seen how things were going… maybe doctors are just too busy for this type of thing? Maybe I was expecting too much? I guess this just made me feel like a number rather than a person with needs and fears… especially during such a scary time! It just seems sad that someone who I had chosen to help me deliver my babies (such a personal and joyful event!) didn’t ever think to say «hmm, what ever happened to that one nice girl with the twins»? To this day they have no idea what happened to me… if I had the kids… or even if the babies had survived such an early delivery. That just seems sad to me.
So basically, while the doctors were nice and nothing bad happened as a result of going to them… I just feel like doctors are supposed to CARE for us… and we just don’t feel like they cared.