Kim,
No it was not difficult to get an appointment with Dr Kiran, and I was shocked— and very pleased. I saw him within seven days of calling his office. Even more miraculous is that I saw him within fifteen minutes of my appointment time — in contrast to my last surgeon (see below), where the wait was often two months for an appointment and always more than three hours at the office (and nobody ever returned my phone calls or emails, etc etc).
Dr Kiran listened to me attentively, did a pouchosocopy, sent me for a CAT scan and we scheduled surgery as soon as he got the results of the CAT back. Some doctors will sugar-coat things but he is very, very straightforward -- maybe a little more than usual with me because he knows I have a background in medicine -- but I really appreciate cold facts. His staff of ETs and NPs are also very knowledgeable, well organized and accessible. I feel like I'm in good hands with both the surgeon and his staff, and even the pre-surgical testing at Columbia was easy and fast.
When I tried to make an new-patient appointment with Feza Remzi at NYU in early July, they gave me an early September appointment, then a mid-September appointment... then moved it into October — even though I explained that my pouch is leaking very, very badly and getting rapidly worse. I finally got so pissed off that I went looking for another doctor -- and found Dr Kiran.
I will not go into a long story here about why I left Jeffrey Milsom's practice after many years except to say I EMPHATICALLY DO NOT recommend him.
Note that Kiran, Remzi and Milsom are the respective heads of colorectal surgery at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia, NYU and Weill Cornell respectively. The contrast is amazing.
sd