harshja

Buyer beware We had met with Bobby Monroe at Dr. Grant Koher's office in Harrisburg, PA. Bobby had recommended 2500 grafts at $6 per graft or $15,000 for a NEOGraft procedure. The office had followed up a few weeks later at which time I told them we were only looking to spend $8000. Bobby followed up with a call and stated they could do the 2500 grafts for that price. Based on our agreement above, we scheduled a surgery date of Friday, November 22, 2013 in Doctor Koher's Lancaster PA office. Shortly after scheduling, Bobby Monroe reached out to me and asked if I would travel to their North Carolina office due to a scheduling issue. I stated that due to work commitments, etc that I could not do that, so we kept the Friday, November 22nd appointment. Bobby then followed up with me again in October 2013 to see if could now move my date of surgery up a day due to another procedure getting booked. I said I was willing to do that. Prior to the surgery, the communication from staff was not very transparent. I had to initiate communication regarding start time of procedure, address of the location for which the procedure was to be performed, etc. In addition, prior to the surgery, pre-op instructions were sent out. Doctor Koher's office sent me the "strip" method pre-op instructions instead of the NEOGraft instructions (their own staff confirmed they sent the wrong instructions during my surgery). These pre-op instructions are very different. Strip method requires that you let your hair grow to at least 1/2 inch for surgery. NEOGraft requires a shaved head or very short hair to extract the grafts. Based on the pre-op instructions I was provided, I grew my hair out to comply with their instructions. Upon arriving, I was told my head would have to be shaved. Our appointment was scheduled for 10 am on Thursday, November 21st - Doctor Koher and his staff showed up at 10:20 along with all of their equipment. They took additional time to setup and prepare for surgery that day before meeting with me. Once setup, Doctor Koher met with my wife and I, took our payment for the procedure and explained the day. Doctor Koher's staff then started with my procedures. Based on Doctor Koher's staff sending me the incorrect pre-op instructions, my head needed to be shaved. They started with a set of clippers that kept shutting off, so we were not able to do the entire area for pulling grafts. In some cases the clippers were locking up in my hair. The staff went out and purchased new clippers to finish the job later in the afternoon. We were at Doctor Koher's office from 10 am to 9 pm on day 1. Day two Doctor Koher's staff started grafting and got half of the grafts needed. Their staff took a break and then began the other side of my head. When they started the other side, the NEOGraft machine broke. I sat and waited as they were on the phone with customer support. They went and got new fuses to try and fix the machine but that did not fix the issue. They eventually decided that a part of the machine was malfunctioning and they had to overnight a new piece for the machine. With the machine out of order and us not having the graft amount quoted, Doctor Koher's staff being the process of taking manual grafts from my head. I was told that manual grafts take significantly longer to harvest. I was prepared to come back the next day to take the additional grafts as I wanted to ensure full coverage and that we met the full graft count that we discussed in our consultation but was not offered that option. Day 2 we were at Doctor Koher's office from 9 am to 4 pm. There was no post op follow up from Doctor Koher's staff, which shocked me. I brought this to their attention at which time they responded that since I had FaceBook friended one of their staff members that constituted follow up. No discussion regarding follow up visits or anything. In addition, during our 18 hour procedure, the only time Doctor Koher did any work related to my procedure was to take my credit card payment, draw a hair line for graft placement and to make the incisions or holes for graft placement - he may have spent 1.5 hours with me during the 18 hours in his office. He did not extract the grafts and he did not place the grafts. I followed up with a Doctor Koher's office on November 26th regarding graft count. On December 4th I finally received a call from Bobby Monroe stating that total grafts were 1872, which he said was really good since it was close to 2000 (I still have his v-mail). I followed up with Bobby on December 16th via email regarding the issues faced during our procedure and inquired why we only received 74.88% of the total grafts contracted for. Through January 1, 2014 I still had not heard from Bobby, so I followed up again on January 2, 2014 via email. It wasn't until January 13, 2014 that Stephen McGee, Office Manager, had responded to my inquires. Stephen and I had a phone conversation regarding the issues we faced and he agreed that they had problems during our procedure. During our conversation, he stated that if he were I, that he would not come back to Doctor Koher's office and offered a $500 refund for the issues faced and variance in graft count. He then stated he would document the offer in the written form. He sent me a email documenting the issues faced but retracted on any type of refund only to state they would offer me another procedure to make up the graft shortfall even though he recommended not going back to their office. We were supposed to receive a follow up visit at 6 months - to date I have not received any communication regarding that service. My recommendation is to stay away from Dr. Grant Koher.