A doctor mixing up patient records is a SERIOUS mistake.
A doctor making a wrong diagnosis and treatment plan based on mixed up records is a SERIOUS mistake.
If he had truly listened and evaluated me as carefully as he has a reputation for, and as it seemed, he would have caught his mistake while I was there for the initial examination. If he had looked at all the records he was sent before I got there, he would have caught his mistake (it included a printed, numbered, cross-referenced list of scans. This other scan was not on the list, not by type, body part, or date. I know. I sent him the list and ALL the discs and reports myself, directly.)

His office people at MGH itself were very nice. The one at his outside office who handles insurance and appeals, not so much. AND, she wasn't doing her job in my case. Totally blew it. Tried to lie to me about it (blaming the delay on the insurance company, when after the initial request for approval, she had done nothing further for months, until I spent a couple hours on a couple phone calls transferring department to department trying to find ANY evidence of anything she'd sent in), and in doing so closing ANY opportunity for getting the insurance to allow the treatment, by him, for all eternity, according to their rules. (You appeal within time limits, or forever hold your peace. The same doctor can never apply for that treatment again. So if it had been the right thing to do, I could not have had him do it. Irrational, but that's their system.)

If I hadn't been blinded by the reputation (people here write about him like he is a god) and nice demeanor, I might have questioned his emphasis on hearing about "my pain" so much, when I kept saying pain was not really the problem. And we would have caught his mistake. And, between waiting to get in to see him, waiting 4 months until the mess unravelled, and waiting another month to get to a new doctor, I would have saved six months of my life lost to this.

Am I the first and only person he or his staff has ever made such a mistake on? Hopefully, but probably not. If I had seen anyone else saying, hey, be careful if something doesn't sound right, hey, check up on K in the office, don't trust that she actually is doing what she should, at the very least I wouldn't have lost 6 months of my life, of my kids' lives, to pinning hopes on him. At best, we would have caught his mistake while I was there, and I would have had proper evaluation and maybe proper treatment.

So, yes, I want people to know they should be cautious of the golden glow of his reputation. Or anyone else's. And ANY doctor who claims to NEVER have a problem that it is documented others do, without solid, documented reasons why and how he prevents it, well, he's fooling himself and you. There is a difference between "I have not had that problem" and "I never have that problem". Red Flags all over the place. And that comment is not applied to Dr. D, but to any and all, and again from experiences. You don't want a Dr. Denial on your case.