Village Pediatric Cardiology

Our not-​yet-​born baby had an arrhythmia, with suspected PAC (or premature atrial contraction) at the 20 week ultrasound, and so we were referred to Village Pediatric Cardiology. My midwife highly recommended the practice, and said that she had good relationships with the doctors there and that they were not alarmists. I read up on PAC and apparently it’s benign 99% of the time, so I wasn’t too worried.
We went to Village Pediatric Cardiology for a more detailed, heart-​focused ultrasound at 21 weeks. The initial exam was about 30 minutes, and the nurse technician was friendly and competent. Once the scan had been done, Dr. Matthew Martinez came in and said that there was no trace of arrythmia — BUT — there was a mild case of «mitral valve regurgitation.» Dr. Martinez showed me the video scan of the flow of blood in my peanut’s heart and explained the physiology of the condition.
I was unprepared for this news, know nothing at all about cardiology, and was kind of in a rush, so I basically asked him what was next, and what this diagnosis meant. He said he wanted to see me in two weeks to see if the regurgitation was the same, or if it had gotten worse. He said it was possible that I would lose the baby. I made sure I knew the exact name of the condition so I could Google it later, scheduled the follow-​up, and left.
Unfortunately the Google follow-​up was NOT reassuring. There really isn’t anything much on the web about the exact diagnosis of MILD cases of mitral valve regurgitation in fetuses. My guess is this may be to do with the fact that ultrasound scanning and techniques have only recently become good enough to diagnose it? In any case, when I went to my midwife the next day I was a mess. Fortunately she was very reassuring, and mentioned the condition could clear up on its own, and said I had a healthy baby.
I tried unsuccessfully not to worry, followed my husband’s advice of no more Googling for now, and went back in two weeks with my husband and with questions prepared — including questions that weren’t diagnosis-​specific, just in case (i.e. what research is available on the prognosis for this condition? What is your own personal clinical experience of this condition?) Again, the nurse technician was friendly and competent. And then Dr. Martinez came back with the news — all good. No arrhythmia, no PAC, no mitral valve regurgitation. All-​clear low risk pregnancy, and no need to see him again unless the arrhythmia came back.
What a relief! For all other parents out there whose kiddos have heart problems, my heart goes out to you. Good luck!

They seem to do everything backwards. Rather than have a doctor take a look at the patient before subjecting them to an EKG and echocardiogram, the doctors don’t even take a look before running these procedures. This is the case even if the patient isn’t presenting any symptoms of cardiac issues and is there only out of preponderance of caution.
While that might not be so much of a problem for adult patients, this is a pediatrics practice and babies can get very stressed out while these are done. It seems to me that it would be much better for the patients if the doctor took a look to make sure that these procedures are necessary before running them.
Seems to me that they are interested first and foremost in billing the insurance company for all that they can, with the patient’s welfare coming in a distant second. The staff is also pretty bad, we had to correct our child’s information multiple times and they usually didn’t understand what we were trying to tell them even when it was a quite simple.