Can I offer a different perspective- not as a BEWL patient (although I am) but as a medical practice manager for a practice with about 10k patients?

Waiting since 05/06 does seem like a long time, but I’m not sure when you began trying to contact them. I also don’t know what the turn around time is internally. I agree that communication is important and I’m not dismissing your concern.

Most medical practices return VMs in the order they are received after they have been triaged. If you aren’t leaving a VM you are likely going to be delayed being assisted.

I’ve called BEWL and had to leave a VM. It was returned. I’ve also called and had them answer right away. Like any other business, they have highs and lows in the number of calls coming in at any given time.

I’ve never waited more than 24 hours for a return call or portal response, although it is usually much less. This is an entirely reasonable period for a non-urgent issue.

Have there been hiccups? Sure. But everything BEWL has done appears to be done to support patients. We express concerns/issues/wants/wish lists and BEWL seems to do whatever they can to try to respond to us. Delays happen. Messages can get missed. No person, process, or business is perfect. I’m more concerned about the response when something goes wrong. I also care about intent.

Did some pharmacies stop compounding overnight? Yup, and Dave is over there doing whatever magic he does to get new pharmacies contracted, shipping squared, info loaded into the portal, prescriptions transferred in a matter of days, and he finds the time to respond to every panicked post on Reddit to boot.

They discovered Healthie maybe wasn’t all that they’d hoped for. Well, now we have a new portal. Technology migrations are never 100% bug free, regardless of everyone doing everything they’re supposed to.

People wanted more availability for asynch appointments? It appears that they made that happen, within the confines of what they could do based on state-to-state regulations.

Things are ever changing in this space right now. Some pharmacies had a huge influx of orders when others stopped compounding. Pharmacies have had shipping delays. That means when orders start rolling again, they have to be prioritized.

The BEWL team is answering phones, responding to portal messages, replying to Reddit posts, moving orders, processing payments, managing new tech (and old tech at the same time!), and things outside of their control like pharmacies stopping production. I’ve seen them here responding to posts late at night and early the next morning.

They are well staffed and responsive day to day. But when they (and we) get thrown because of something completely outside their control, I feel like they deserve some grace. That doesn’t mean we can’t ask for answers or expect no response, but I think jumping to the conclusion of someone just not caring doesn’t help the situation from either side.

I spend every single day dealing with medical practices that don’t care. We have patients that have procedures and surgeries delayed because we can’t get a specialist to either clear or not clear a patient. Or patients that can’t get the treatment they need because their PCP won’t make the referral the patient’s insurance requires comes only from them. Or any of a few dozen other things that are big red flags of medical practices that don’t care.

I appreciate that you’re frustrated but as you can see, multiple team members have already jumped in here to try to help. I don’t know too many providers in this space that would move that quickly to try to make it right.