EM
Elizabeth Miguet
Jan 28, 2026
I have mixed feelings about Northwell. I like my doctor here. She’s great! But the method of scheduling appoints and walls between you and your doctor are really frustrating.
I was trying to find out whether I should get an appt to see my primary care doctor or a specialist for a specific issue. Some primary care doctors will do basic exams for more speciality issues and some do not.
I didn’t want to go to the specialist if I didn’t have to because they’re harder to get into and as previously mentioned, I like my doctor. I also can’t call and talk to my specialist’s office staff or make appointments for the specialist online so I end up playing phone tag with the specialist’s office staff for days to get an appt (which is frustrating in itself).
So I messaged both my doctor and the specialist, who are both part of NorthWell, to ask who I should see for my issue. The specialist took 2wks to respond and my primary care took a wk to respond. The stated response time for messages is 48hrs.
When I call, I just go to a scheduling service who can’t tell me who I’m supposed to see. Due to the delay in responses, I ended up going to a walk-in clinic for care because I could call them directly and ask if they could help with the issue.
I like my Northwell Health doctors, but I don’t know how long I’ll get to keep seeing them because the Northwell Health patient environment (messaging, scheduling, portals, etc) is so bad that it seems like the are actively trying to make it so patients can’t communicate with or see their doctors.