Sutter East Bay Medical Foundation

Had a pretty good experience with their OB department. Never had to wait long and the doctors that I saw were good. My friends also had a pretty good experience with their OB. I don’t think they’re the types who would go above and beyond during the appointment but if you are not that picky, they do the job fine.
I really like the way the nurses are quick to respond to questions, they’re very good about that.
The pediatrics dept is a miss for me. I signed up for a «Meet & Greet» with Dr. Way and never got to see her even after waiting for 40 minutes. The patients rep didn’t seem to give a crap when I told them about it and wanted to leave feedback.
I would probably give 4 stars for the OB, Nurse, and their online health portals, and 1 star for the Pediatrics dept so 2.5 stars average.

OBs were just great but after 9 months I never had a good experience with front desk personal. They are extremely impersonal and rude with simple questions. Left feeling frustrated after every visit! They obviously don’t have a good work environment and seems like a simple fix to make the patient experience better.

This review concerns my experiences with obstetrics care at Sutter East Bay in Berkeley.
My care was very hit-​or-​miss. They have a policy where you don’t have a consistent obstetrician (OB) that you see, but instead see whoever is available, so I met many of the OBs in their group.
In general, my visits were much too short and the OBs always seemed rushed and stressed because they are only given 10 minutes to meet with patients and are always behind schedule. They hardly have enough time to address all of our concerns.
Some OBs, such as Dr. s Foley and Van Remoortere, were compassionate and helpful. Others, like Dr. s Zhang and Madhavan, were dismissive and condescending. Other OBs I saw fell somewhere in between.
Overall, the medical foundation needs to allow for more time with patients to address their needs.

Just don’t. Do yourself a favor and find another provider. My wife and I made appointments for new patient visits. I was then told a day before that the physician was no longer accepting new patients. They rescheduled me with another physician a couple weeks later to which I found out they cancelled on me again. This time without the call the day before. In addition, my wife was able to have her checkup but met with a nurse for her first visit instead of a certified physician. Lastly they ran tests without explaining prior to administering that our insurance might not cover them. Subsequently, we ended up with the bill for $ 429 for her routine check-​up.

I wish I could give zero stars at this point. **Names are not added** How can one call up for a simple OB appointment, and go through so many hurdles? I originally wanted to go to my referral, and I booked an appointment in January since I was still on winter break. Three days before my appointment I was told that she wasn’t covered under my insurance and I thought «Fine, I’ll look it up to see whats going on since I usually don’t have problems». I cancelled my appointment and finally got another referral for THE SAME doctor, and I told them «Hey, I tried this doctor before and they don’t take my insurance plan». They assured me that this doctor does, and they apologized for the miscommunication before that. I brushed it off since I just wanted to get my appointment done. It turns out the doctor was booked out for the only other break I have as a teacher (spring break), so the lady on the phone looked for a doctor that was covered by my plan. I made sure of it that she check my plan to avoid this hassle of a situation again. I booked another doctor, and was happy that I could go during my student’s spring break. Everything went smooth after, UNTIL the Tuesday before my appointment when they called and told me the doctor didn’t accept my insurance. AFTER I TOLD THEM TO CHECK WHEN I BOOK THE APPOINTMENT. Please, please, please just get your staff members on the same page before this happens again. People have actual lives that they need to plan around, and don’t have a lot of time to take off. Overall, I am greatly disappointed in Sutter East Bay when I once had high regards for this establishment.

I had a good experience with the OB doctors here, giving birth at Alta Bates. The care system is otherwise disorganized — I had a nurse and a doctor visit me during my two days in the hospital (postpartum) and I was assured that my OB appointments were canceled: then a day later (3 – 4 days after giving birth with one of their doctors) I received a phone call about my «upcoming appointment for my pregnancy». One of the nurse practitioners asked me if the doctor ordered a breastfeeding kit for me — not only did the doctor not know about it, but I had another pregnancy/​baby with them and shelled out $ 200 – 300 for a breast pump when I went back to work — nobody mentioned that my doctor could have ordered one through my insurance! The practice seems to be miscommunicating with the lab as well, I had the same test done three times when I was in my 3^rd trimester, and the lab still did not have definite results reported by the time I was in labor, the doctor had to call them (and then guess what medication to use, because the lab did not have an answer for her)…

I had a terrible experience today at the lab at this facility. There was one person working, Darlene, when I arrived at 7am when it opened. She was extremely rude and confrontational from the moment I walked in to the point that I ended up asking for her name (so I could report her). Even though I had just heard her answer the phone and identify herself as something like «Dardeen,» she told me her name was Sarah. When I said that wasn’t how I heard her answer the phone, she then said it was Darlene. I was the only person there, but it took until 7:22 before she started to do my blood work because her «system wasn’t up» and she spent the rest of the time inputting my insurance (at least that’s what she said). I almost got up and left but had arranged childcare that morning and felt stuck. There is no way a person who is so completely lacking in people skills and who would talk to a patient they way she spoke to me should be working there. She actually told me, «I’m sorry you are having a bad day,» in a very snotty tone and I overheard her on the phone telling someone who was clearly lost, «Don’t you remember how you got here yesterday?» I have no idea why someone in her position would be so spiteful, but she is clearly in the wrong job.

Billing dept has a very poor understanding of insurance policies and standard medical practices so I ended up paying for it. I just came for 1 preventive exam and had enough of the bureaucracy. I got a preventive pap and during the visit I asked for a general blood test especially for cholesterol which has always been included in all of my preventive visits with other doctors. The NP and I got caught up in talking about what I do for a living and after the visit I realized that both of us forgot about my lab order. After the visit I emailed her asking for one also sharing that I was experiencing fatigue and insomnia, in an effort to build rapport with your health clinicians, which the health community encourages (but which I will later regret and will never do again). She then ordered the tests right away.
A couple of weeks later I got a bill which surprised me since my insurance would cover for preventive blood tests. When I emailed her inquiring what happened she replied that she typically doesn’t prescribe blood tests for healthy women under 40. Yet she never asked me during the visit when my last blood test was. What a dangerous cost-​cutting measure since there are so many things you cannot catch outside of a blood test. Because I reported these symptoms she coded the tests as diagnostic rather than preventive, which prompted a bill over $ 300. My insurance would pay for preventive exams and since I didn’t get one during the first visit, I asked her to re-​code it since she «forgot» to give me a routine blood test. After months of emailing back and forth (since Sep 2015) it is still in what is called CSR review. I don’t know exactly what this department does but to my experience it is a black hole where your cases go to and nothing ever happens. I have been following up diligently with them, have gotten nothing written in the mail acknowledging this case is in review. What they managed to do quite manipulatively was corner me to promising to pay in installments. I have no problem paying what I am responsible for but not when I am tricked into paying more! To this day, they have not forwarded my claim to my insurance company.
Sutter is not patient-​care oriented but geared towards minimizing malpractice suits and driving profit. Expect surprise bills, even though you’ve tried to estimate the cost of care beforehand with their billing dept requesting CPT codes. I’m completely healthy but I wouldn’t even want to imagine what the overall experience would be like for someone with a terminal illness.
Before Obamacare the trend among providers was to offer care that was often found medically unnecessary. The end result was that doctor offices earn more money from providing care. Post Obamacare, I’ve found through just one annual visit the trend seems to be providing less care during the preventive visit so you return for more visits. Also difficult to estimate the cost of care and know what you will be financially responsible for. It’s like walking into a grocery store and not knowing what prices you’re paying for the food you need. No wonder the price of health care has been skyrocketing.
I feel I cannot trust any private-​sector health provider now and have found the best care and overall experience at community health centers. I hope they’ll take my Anthem insurance.