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Letters to Dr. Ray Greenberg, MUSC staff

Since becoming president, I (we) have received many letters commending our faculty and staff for outstanding patient care. These letters, or excerpts from letters, from patients and their families provide ample evidence of their high regard for our clinical services. I am pleased to share some of them with you, and recognize those who are providing skilled and compassionate care. 

Dear Dr. Greenberg:
I was admitted to the emergency room and treated by Dr. Steven Saef and registered nurse Jackie Carmen. They were both extremely professional, but more importantly, they were very compassionate towards my wife and me during a very frightening experience. I was then admitted to the Burn ICU, since there were no other ICU beds available. The nurses on the burn unit were also outstanding. I want to especially mention Libby Tally, Lisa Craven, Luc Gagne and Virginia Grantham. I also wanted to mention the GI team who were active in my care, particularly Dr. Mike Wallace and Dr. David Sabol, who performed two endoscopies. You must be especially proud to have so many caring and competent people working to insure excellent medical care. I am sure that many angels were looking after me, and not all of them were invisible!

Dear Dr. Greenberg:
I was recently an outpatient at the Hollings Cancer Center seeking a second opinion about the colon cancer I have been diagnosed with. 

At HCC I had an appointment with Dr. Robert Stuart, and Dr. Mohammad Rashid, meeting with them was one of the best experiences of my life. Here were two absolute geniuses diagnosing my problem.  Never in my life have I been more impressed with two people. The insight they provided me was astounding, the details they reviewed were explained in such a way that there was no misunderstanding on my part, everything was laid on the table and covered clearly.

The professionalism of your staff is outstanding! They performed their duties with true professionalism, not all tensed up, but with a happy demeanor. My experience started with Laurie at the appointment desk, she really went all out to line up my appointments on short notice. Nurse Amy Metger contacted me about what to expect  at Hollings, what I needed to do beforehand, what I needed to bring there, and what to expect when I arrived there. True professionals!

To President Greenberg:
I wanted to write to you regarding our mother who was treated at MUSC by Dr. Charles Kellner and his wonderful staff.  We have so much respect for a wonderful, modest and brilliant doctor.

Dr. Greenberg:
I would like to take this time to thank you and your great staff for all of their kindness that was given to my husband and myself. My husband was on the ninth floor the first of December and received great service from the housekeeper to the doctors. A special thanks to Sharon and Ken but also to everyone on the ninth floor.

Dr. Ray Greenberg:
 I have lived in this area for 22 years and have never had the opportunity to be a patient in your facility until recently when I underwent a bone marrow transplant. I want to commend Dr. Debra Frei-lahr, Dr. Jeana Havidich and her staff, Lynn Sweatman, Kathy Tabor and Christine Schaub.

You can be most proud of all of them and the job they are so devoted to, and do each day with true dedication.

Dear Dr. Greenberg:
My husband was an inpatient at MUSC. While he was there, the Public Safety staff provided me and my family with a place to park while we were visiting. It is comforting to know there are people who care when there is a medical crisis in a family and the entire staff at Public Safety were most kind and caring.

True professional comes to rescue
There is something to be said for old-fashioned customer service. As a child-abuse nurse examiner, I met a young girl who had to flee the state she is from due to abuse by a stepfather. Her mother is very ill with cancer and unable to work, and the two of them are staying with a family they hardly know. This child is on several medications that she is unable to do without, due to some long-standing, chronic health problems. Her mother was unable to find a provider to see her as a new patient in time to refill her prescriptions.

As a medical provider, I felt that it would be very detrimental to her health for this child to abruptly discontinue these medications. However, with Christmas so near, it was almost impossible to have her seen, especially with out-of-state Medicaid.

I finally found several wonderful physicians who were willing to see her and update her medication prescriptions yet, when it was time to have the prescriptions filled, none of the 17 pharmacies that I called would fill them because they didn't know if they would be able to recoup the $400 cost of the medicine.

Finally, I was given the name of a new pharmacy on James Island, Medigap, and although it was after hours, there was an emergency line.

I called the number and spoke with Joey Masneri's wife. He is the independent pharmacist at Medigap. His wife took the phone to him in the woods where she told me he was “playing Grizzly Adams.” She was calling out to him, “Joey, it's an emergency.”

I told him of my patient's plight and he immediately said, “No problem.”

He too risked losing money, but he understood the importance of this child receiving her medication before running out and was willing to come to bat to help.

I just wanted to say thanks to this very professional pharmacist an obviously awesome human being, and if what goes around comes around really does come around, as I believe it does, he should very successful in his new endeavor.
Editors note: The  letter was written to the Post and Courier and ran  in its Letter to the Editor column. Joseph Masneri is a 1986 College of Pharmacy graduate.