Stanford Health Care Multispecialty Clinic, Emeryville — Local services in Emeryville

This place is a complete mess when it comes to billing. I have never encountered such unprofessionalism within a medical facility.

Despite my having provided insurance, they keep billing me personally intermittently, and then give my insurance and me a hard time reimbursing it. From what I experienced, this is mostly because of unqualified and unfriendly staff in the accounting department that doesn't know what's going on - and then just charges the patient because why not.

At one instance they gladly took the reimbursement from my insurance while being adamant about not having to pay me back anything (which was resolved after a year of back and forth - yes, a whole year of waiting to get paid back multiple thousand dollars).

Miraculous charges of multiple hundred dollars. As one would expect, the online explanation doesn't tell you anything useful on how those are justified. I wonder how this can happen, since no other medical institution ever has conducted itself in such a way.

Discrepancies in charges printed out on a the receipt of the day of visit vs the documentation online. Yes, you heard right. I have yet to find a bill where my bank account charge, the same day receipt and the documented charge in their app display the same amount. This is a patient's money you are working with, and it should go without saying to not treat this in such a negligent manner.

I cannot recommend this place for those reasons. Medical service is good, nothing special. And exactly that's why I don't see a reason to not pick any other average place over this without all the...

Had an issue that my PCP (not Stanford) recommended I see a specialist for, just to rule some things out. After waiting months to get an appointment, despite my PCP marking my case "urgent", I went to see Dr. James Edward Lai, who said that I was ok but that he would like to run an EKG just to make sure. My PCP has run several EKGs on me before, all came back clean, all of them covered by my insurance. I said sure. EKG came back fine, he said everything was ok.

A month later I find out that I owe $700 for this EKG (it was over $1,600 before insurance). I call Stanford and ask how this EKG could be so expensive when every other EKG I have ever received (three in the last 5 years) has been totally covered by the same insurance. Their response: "Well, it's Stanford, so everything we have is a little better (???), and therefore it's more expensive" when I asked why the doctor didn't mention the potential cost, they said: "the doctors don't know the pricing of things."

For the future, Doctor James Edward Lai of Emeryville Stanford Cardiology, your EKG (I assume, one of the most common things you do) is almost 1,700 dollars. Maybe let your patients know before doing something...

I was referred to a Stanford Health Care skin specialist having turned 26 for a baseline checkup. While signing in, I ensured with the desk that my insurance covered the visit, barring the $70 copay. The doctor saw me and didn't understand why I came in if I had nothing worrisome to check. I explained the reference for a checkup and he performed a checkup. At the end, a nurse asked me if I had the flu shot and if not, if i'd like one. I said yes if it's covered by my insurance. She said it is and gave me a flu shot. A few weeks later, I received a $700+ bill, my insurance had covered around $300. The flu shot itself was listed at around $200. When I called in to discuss the bill, the Stanford Health Care representative explained that it was my job to check with my insurance before receiving services. This is true and makes this post more of a cautionary tale. However, telling a patient that their visit is covered by their insurance when it's not borderlines fraud and malpractice in my opinion. I'm sure this happens all over, as insinuated by the collections agency, but I nonetheless wanted to share...