Here is a message I got from a member on the APS Facebook group I belong to. It explains what happened to Dr. Schofield.
Thank you for the add. My daughter is 22 and has APS. She sees Dr Jill Schofield at UHC in Aurora. I was asked to pass this asking to any of her patients.
Dr. Jill Schofield has asked me to let her patients know that she is OK and plans to relocate to another office. She came to the University of Colorado in January, 2015 to do a special fellowship in multi-specialty autoimmune disease. While the hospital told her just a few months ago that they planned to create a position for her when she finished the fellowship, they suddenly changed their mind. She was not given a reason why, and is just as shocked as all of you are. She believes the reason was most likely the increasing number of patients she has tried to get IVIG and other immune therapies for and the huge amount of time and effort it takes both on the part of the physician as well as the staff to make this happen, since none of these therapies are approved for dysautonomia. Not only did the Cardiac and Vascular Center staff have no experience with this, but there simply was not enough staff to provide the amount of support necessary. This was leading to increasing frustration on everyone's part, including the patients waiting to get approved.
As many of you know, Dr. Schofield had started a successful clinic focused on patients with the antiphospholipid syndrome as well as autoimmune forms of dysautonomia in Colorado. She was very good at what she did, word spread through the patient community pretty quickly, and she had a long wait list of patients trying to get in to see her. It is disheartening that a hospital would close a successful and much needed clinic without giving patients enough notice to find another doctor or without providing another doctor at the same hospital who could handle their care (although her specialty is unique and not many doctors are qualified to handle the type of patients she sees).
I cannot pass messages back and forth, so please don't ask me to do this. However, I am happy to collect email addresses for patients/families that want to be notified when Dr. Schofield relocates her practice. I will pass along your email addresses to her. To my knowledge, she does not have access to any of your patient records or contact info.
Hello my name is JH Sava. I am writing for my wife. We are trying to find a Doc. that can help her with her DIsautonomia and underlying autoimmune challenge. We have been struggling to find anyone who has any idea what is going on. I just signed up for your facebook membership.
I hope you get some answers. I'm sorry everyone if I have been slow to reply, or if I have come off as a bit crass the last few days. I am not in a good place right now. That Facebook group is the best way to contact/keep in touch with Dr. Schofield. Hang in there everyone!
Thanks so much for posting this. I was really upset to hear she had left. I hope she gets her new office together soon. It took me 5 months to get an appointment!
My daughter had add appt next week with her. She's just started IVIG treatments and now we have no Dr. I'm happy to forward along the contact info of any of her patients. Please contact me privately for my email address, if required.
I must have seen her just after she started at the hospital, got in in a month. Just seeing the difference in a year re: appt times, and the number of patients that have 'found' her, (I drove 3 hours, would have driven much further) why on earth wouldn't they see the great need that is evidenced here? Get more help for her or...I don't know, but to decide the best option is just to get rid of her? What in the world? I was just about to start a new treatment when the first just didn't work just to have it cancelled, and am guessing the first didn't work partly due to another dr in their own hospital, even with test results showing otherwise, treating me like a hypochondriac and telling me basically to see a therapist and lose weight, sending a letter to my PC who then did the same (me: I burned my fingers on my oven, had no idea, felt nothing, until I saw the blisters Dr: Oh. Have you gone to a therapist yet? ???) giving me more time to let my nerve damage worsen....can't take care of my children, I have six, getting worse...anyway sorry no worse off than anyone else here, just so so frustrated! Good luck to everyone!
I'm sorry that your daughter has to postpone her treatments. My next appointment was around Christmas, so I'm OK for the meantime. Although she said my doctors in New York could contact her. I will email my information.
I wonder if we should letters to U of CO? I think she had though of setting up her own practice.
Thank you for passing on my information to Dr.Schofield. UCH is not helping me at all with finding another provider to write for IVIG. I just started seeing progress from it like so many of you! Any doctor recommendations on who else can help with this in the meantime or any update on Dr. Schofield? Thank you so much!
You have to go to the Facebook group I posted. They provide regular updates on there. Jill is apparently in talks with a private practice to move her patients over there with her. That is what was posted today.
Thank you so much! I just sent a join request and hopefully soon they approve me! I'm praying for resolve with this! Dr. Schofield has been the best doctor, she saved me life!
Thanks. I'm not on Facebook, so if you can pop in now and then I'd be happy to know what's going on. I hope she practicing again soon. I'm sorry so many people had their treatment interrupted. I'm nervous I won't be able to get my anticoagulants here, but it's hard to believe they would take me off drugs that help me breathe.
Oh, THANK YOU! I just found out today when I tried to message her and she was no longer on my physician list.
Here is the latest message from Dr. Schofield.
Dr. Schofield has asked me to share the following with y'all on her behalf:
"Dear patients and friends:
I know you are all upset, frustrated with UCH and anxious to resume care. Please know I share your frustrations and I look forward to practicing again as soon as possible.
Had UCH me provided the opportunity to transition my practice, I would have planned at least 3-4 months for this to occur. This is a slow process that entails working out contractual and practice details, credentialing, insurance and other issues. So this will not happen as quickly as any of us would like, but the practice I am planning to join is aware of what has transpired at UCH and the need to try to speed up the process as much as possible.
I am sorry that we are all in this unfortunate situation, but I hope that it will work out to be better in the end with much more support than what was provided at UCH.
Thank you for your patience and understanding. I look forward to seeing those of you who wish to follow me to my new practice as soon as possible."
It's not easy for a doctor to just up and move a practice. There is just so much that goes into it all that we patients do not understand. Doc's make a ton of money, but it also costs a ton of money to maintain a practice, pay for staff, and pay for malpractice insurance. I have a lot of respect for doctors "even though I talk mad crap about them from time to time." It's a love hate relationship. I hope Dr. Schofield will be up and running soon, and begin to see all of her old patients again. At least she has some good options available to her.
Thank you for posting this. I got a phone call this morning telling me that my first appointment with her had been cancelled (in November at UCHSC). I started trying to find her and saw your post.
I messaged you with my email to add to your list.
I was really looking forward to seeing her since my primary issue is APS. I'll look into the FB page too.
could you please pass along our email for Mallory with POTS and MAST cell. swit7823@rogers.com. We were supposed to see Dr. Schofield this Wed, I went online to double check time and it was gone... no call from UC Health - a VERY poor way to treat patients.
Thank you so much for this posting, I was pretty much devastated to find out she was gone with treatments about to start, and procedures scheduled, and, with no explanation from the hospital, and no notice. The prospect of trying to find someone to treat my issues when there really isn't anyone that I am aware of that exists that treats the combo of things she does was overwhelming, especially after the way I was treated by the many Drs I tried first. Being treated as if things were all in my head, and being talked down to even with test results that really should have given a hint, as opposed to actually being treated like a person by Dr. Schofield was more than I could deal with. This makes a lot of sense, as I couldn't imagine what possible other scenario could explain her sudden departure. I am very disgusted with the hospital, I have to say.
Please pass my email along - she diagnosed my POTS, APS, and EDS, and I've been working with her and was shocked when she left. Laura Tvedte, lmt6245@truman.edu. Thanks so much.
Did all of you who left your email addresses here, get on the list?
I received news that her new office will be opening at the end of the month. I think she is intending to take patients in the order of their previous appointments. So that is good news, but it is going to be a longer wait than we had hoped.
Thanks, I thought I'd left mine but didnt get an email, or possibly just didn't see it, I'm not sure which email I left. But I did join the Facebook group, and left my email there, stating I thought I had passed it along, but didn't see a message, so left it again (or possibly it was a different email address but one I'm more likely to notice a message on). Anyway thanks. I am seeing her for autoimmune, dysautonomic issues, and keep getting borderline hughes syndrome labs, but now the one thing that hasn't been explained, as it just doesn't quite fit the other issues, is an extreme weakness that iv'e referred to as 'exactly like what i read mysthenia gravis is like but i know i don't have b/c no eyes or other above neck weakness' im realizing is not true at all, bad double vision that getting glasses a couple weeks ago hasn't fixed, and though i 'knew' i didn't have drooping eyelids, something i read about it not necessarily always being that obvious, and that I've noticed how flat out tired I look in photos just in the last year or two but couldn't pinpoint in what way, made me do an ice test, double vision immediately went away, took pics and eyelid difference is also obvious.
So...the whole playing musical Drs. and being treated like an idiot, the worst being someone in rheum dept co-incidentally also at Anschutz (im 3 hrs away, had asked a brother if he recommended any place in particular and I actually realized later I accidentally called the wrong hospital from what he recommended) whoe letter to my pcp asking 'so have you seen a therapist yet?' to almost anything I brought up, but later all being explained by my above issues finally dx'd by Dr. Schofield.... Anyway, so part of me thinks I should try to see a neurologist right away (as if it would be right away), but even when i was referred to one in the past, whoever answered the phone said we can't help you, you need to go to a pain clinic. I wasnt even diagnosed with anything yet, had not even mentioned pain. I sat there wondering if i was in the twilight zone. what a nightmare. I prob should wait for Dr. Schofield, just practically bedridden which is not a way to raise kids, put off calling for my next appt just before she was let go, so not on that schedule and know it could be months... Anyway sorry, this is mainly a rhetorical frustrated vent, not directing this to you or anyone for answers in any way lol i think people in my house don't want to hear it all for the millionth time...thanks for your help.
Thanks for the update. I really appreciate it. She had just barely consulted on my case and I was setting up my appointment and then poof. Appointment not available and she was gone. Until I came across this thread I had no idea if she had her new office up and running yet or not. I will keep my fingers crossed that we can all get our appointments sooner rather than later! My email is kellyshapiro@me.com. Thanks again!
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