Santa Monica Medical Clinic

This is a great doctor to visit if you want to wait an hour and a half for you appointment (I know doctor’s offices run late, but come on! 4:30 for a 3 pm appointment and there’s only one other person in the waiting room?)
After I was finally called back and a nurse did the preliminary check up, Dr. Kostenboym came in and it was very difficult to communicate with him. He also seemed confused as to why I would want a general yearly check-​up. He asked me several times if I was sure I wasn’t sick, and what was bothering me, and I kept trying to explain that I just wanted to have a routine exam. Terrible bedside manner and definitely doesn’t put the patient at ease.
The office was terrible about following up about blood test results and after they told me to call the following Monday for my results, it took one month and five persistent phone calls before I received the promised call back from the doctor. His response to a high blood cell count? «It was abnormal — I don’t know why.» Not the most comforting explanation or response from someone whose job is to know basic medical things and whose sole purpose of calling about the test results was to explain them.
If I could give this medical practice negative stars, I would. The treatment and service I received was a disappointment and as a paying patient, it’s obnoxious to have to work so hard to get basic follow-​up. Will certainly not be going back to this doctor, nor would I recommend it to anyone.

I was very displeased with my first (and last) experience here. Looking for a PCP, I wanted to go to West Hollywood so that I wouldn’t run into the issue I ran into when I lived in San Diego a few years ago; namely, a doctor who learns I’m gay and then makes a WHOLE lot of assumptions about me that aren’t true.
I guess I must admit that Dr. Kostenboym didn’t do me like that. He didn’t seem to generalize about gay men in any way, which was appreciated. But my case just wasn’t handled very well.
I arrived, filled out paperwork. No problem. Got in to my appointment within ten minutes of my scheduled time, which was good also.
Where things went awry was in the diagnosis. I’d been having headaches for a while, and came in prepared to answer myriad questions about a variety of factors; caffeine intake, alcohol intake, exercise and lifestyle questions, history, etc. Being a psychologist, I’m used to going in-​depth for intake sessions, and thought that an MD would do the same.
I felt like thirty seconds into the conversation, a diagnosis had been thrown out and assumed to be accurate. I injected a few facts into the conversation, and suddenly the diagnosis shifted to another. I challenged that diagnosis, and providing evidence to support my thoughts, that one was thrown out. A third provisional diagnosis was then provided, and it didn’t «feel» accurate to me either.
I drove home thinking to myself that I could have honed in on this issue faster with my own understanding of brain biology (minimal) and WebMD. Had I been a less educated ‘consumer’ of medical care, three diagnoses would have been assigned to me, none of them apparently accurate (considering the outcome).
Just felt like a big waste of time. I’m going to go shopping for a new PCP now… one who asks me thorough questions before choosing a course of treatment based upon incomplete hunches.

I went here and the visit started out okay — the receptionist and nurse were both very nice and welcoming. I had to wait quite a while to go into the doctor’s room though when no one else was even there. After the nurse was done with the regulatory check ups, and I was sitting in the room waiting for the actual doctor to come in. I could hear him taking phone calls at the front desk and trying his best to convince a customer that he is «the best doctor in hollywood» and that they need to come to his office…
First of all, he was not very good at making you feel like you should trust him, or be comfortable with him like most doctors are. His English was very poor and we had a hard time communicating in general. He started asking me about how much money I have, and I was barely able to give him a straight answer because I was uncertain about the angle he was coming from or what he was trying to get at, then all of a sudden, out of left field, he twisted things around and acted like I was begging him for lower prices and said «Okay, okay, okay I’ll give you half off» — and that’s when I stopped feeling like I was on earth, or like I should listen to anything this man says…
Towards the end of the appointment, he recommended I take a piss test which would need to be sent out to a different lab for results. He said it would cost an extra $ 100. At first, I tried to say I would pass on it, but he kept making me feel like an idiot for saying no, and eventually talked me into it. So I did and paid an extra $ 100 even though I felt like it was pointless.
Upon leaving, they told me I had to wait about 5 days then I had to call back for the results from the urine test. I called back and they told me the doctor would have to check on it and then he would call me back…
He never called me back. The medication he gave me did nothing to fix my problem. And he made me feel like an asshole for being there.