Sean Lai, MD

I don’t understand how this doctor continues to practice. He gave me a double whammy — the absolute wrong diagnosis, and the wrong medicine for that wrong diagnosis.
I did a colonoscopy with him, and he diagnosed me with a chronic disease — Chrohn’s Disease. This was incorrect because the lab results showed that the cells were not having chronic inflammation, but they were flared up due to overuse of Advil (this was later confirmed by a doctor at UCLA — he actually took the time to read the lab results).
Going along with his diagnosis, he prescribed this medicine to me that I had clearly marked I was allergic to, and completely messed up my system.
I will never visit this office again.

(1) Poor communicator
(2) Extremely disorganized staff – also the main secretary constantly opines as though she has an M.D.
(3) Not compassionate or caring
(4) Does whatever he wishes even though there are better and cheaper medical routes – almost seems that he is either not knowledgeable about the better, modern medical paths or he simply wants to make more money by choosing the more complicated way.
In sum, AVOID this doctor if possible. You’ll be saving yourself more time and money.

My first appointment with Dr. Lai was scheduled for today at 3:30. I was 10 minutes early. At 4:10pm, I left his office.
Dr. Lai never showed up. Nice.

Plain and simple… Dr. Lai saved my life. His experience, knowledge, skill and ability to address your G.I. issues and create a plan to help you regain your health is priceless. As with any doctor, emergencies come up, but no matter how long the wait, he is «there» when it is your turn, and doesn’t rush you, takes time to explain lab results, test results, procedures, et al. His staff is wonderful and as accommodating as they can be. I HIGHLY recommend Dr. Lai.

The procedure I received from Dr. Lai in the hospital seemed to be done well and I appreciated that he fit me in his schedule because it was kind of an emergency.
I didn’t have much interaction with him at all and there was no follow up by him after, but it fixed the problem and seemed to be good work. My rating is really of his office staff and the way they run his office.
His office staff is really a major problem and caused me so much grief it almost undid the the work he performed on my stomach.
They told me that they would wait for my insurance to kick in and not worry about the bill.
I talked with them twice on the phone over two months making certain that this was the case. Both times I was told everything was fine, they would wait for my retroactive insurance and all was good.
A few days after I’m told everything is OK I start getting phone calls and letters from this terrible collection agency with a woman yelling at me and threatening me and all types of terrible stuff. She would not even let me speak or listen at all. The doctor’s staff sent my bill to a collection agency even though they said that they would wait for my insurance!
In a couple of days my insurance did come through so I called the doctor’s office and they said that they did know about my agreement and waiting for insurance but it was just too bad and they didn’t have to live up to the agreement and their was nothing that could be done about it now and basically tough luck sucker even though I now had the insurance that they could bill.
The bills were not even 30 days past due which should not matter anyway because they said they would wait as long as it took for the insurance to go through.
They said the doctor could send me to collections within one hour of sending out the bill if he wanted to! I kept saying here is the insurance number, I’m covered, all you have to do is bill them like you said you would! They didn’t care one bit and said it was all my fault.
Man, I was so pissed off. I wrote a four page letter directly to the doctor explaining what terrible things his staff was doing.
I don’t know if he read it or not but somebody high up did and they called me within 18 hours of getting it and said that all was good and that they had called off the collection agency and billed the insurance just like we agreed at the start.
Because of my hospitalization I had numerous doctors and emergency and hospital ICU rooms and labs and x-​rays all of it and they all waited for my insurance to kick in and none of them went back on their word. Some never even bothered with me and just waited until the insurance came through.
The only doctor that gave me grief was the same doctor that said don’t worry, it will be fine, we will wait. Maybe the doctor is fine at being a doctor, but I wouldn’t go back solely because of his staff and their unreliable practices and breaking of their word and their attitude.

Worst drs experience to date. Do not go to him. Took 2.5 hours.

Make an appointment, and expect to wait at least an hour to be attended. Had to step out to see if we were going to be helped after an 1hr and 20min of waiting… And once helped only takes 10mins to concern my health issues.

What a frustrating experience! First his office staff said they would email me my records and test results. I asked Jenny three times and I never got them. I had to go straight to the pathologist who called me back immediately and answered my questions. Dr Lai made me crazy too. He didn’t listen to what I was saying. He misinterpreted what I said. He was short tempered and lectured me on «herbs». He never returned my phone call when I had questions. I will never again let a hospital assign a specialist for me. Ugh! Horrible experience. Worst! Makes me mad the insurance company will pay him.

OK the most unprofessional office I have encountered.
I ended up canceling my procedure yesterday, after dealing w the office for over 3 weeks, hard to get a hold of, hard to communicate with and beyond frustrating .
Some of my calls wouldn’t even go to voice mail it would just say call canceled.
but most importantly 2 days before my procedure I was asked by email mind you !!!
not by phone and at 4.59PM they close at 5Pm if i had gotten a blood test?
Well no I hadn’t because I had no idea that the one e-​mai attachment meant get a blood test and by the way where was I to go? Who does that ?
I am so frustrated at this point and need to start all over w a competent office
I doubt Dr Lai will read this but he needs to because getting a hold of his «people» is hard and now, that I have wasted my time for 3 weeks I am starting from scratch.
If you are going to work in any area of the medical field please care and do a little follow up.
Oh and of course they didn’t recieved my call from last night just my email, glad I started doing both with them.

It was hard to read his affect at first but he took such good care of me. He figured out an unusual and painful problem and it makes my life MUCH better!