Sunrise Medical Group - Maimonides Medical Center — Local services in New York

Dr Katsman is great, Dr Plawes who is no longer present, was amazing. This is a great local place to get medical care from doctors with great bed side manner, patience and kindness.

But they have a major problem — BILLING. It seems to me that they have transitioned their billing department to some sort of auto bill program. Several problems with that …

Any bill you receive from Maimonides does not explain the charges. It literally stamps the date of visit and whatever they say the cost is. The most unclear bill you will ever receive. I’m pretty sure this is not legal. You are supposed to outline the charges so patients can appropriately agree or disagree with each bill.

It is possible to receive bills for canceled appointments. Their auto bill system is not always lined up with booking system. I received a $ 20 bill from Maimonides for an office date for a date of service when I didn’t see a doctor. I have verified I didn’t see the doctor because … I was no where in the vicinity on that date. Also, they didn’t actually submit a claim to my insurance. Yet and still, they’ve billed me… I refuse to pay… it’s difficult to dispute the charge since the billing department as you should be able to tell by now… is in shambles… and they’ve forwarded it to collections. So at this point, both Maimonides and the collections agency are mailing me almost weekly now for this $20 I do not owe them.

Separately, it is pretty sad what has slowly become of this place over the last few years because of poor management. Maimonides as a hospital is falling apart (check the news to see hospital administrators stuffing their pockets and letting everything else go to hell including the doctors and the patients). Hopefully NYU or some other entity can buy this place and save it. It would be a tragedy if this community...

Update: It is clear from whoever is responding to these reviews that there is a customer service problem at this medical practice.

Here is what you should be doing: Making it possible for patients to make appointments online, make the patient aware of what services you are charging to insurance versus what the patient's insurance covers (especially for standard procedures and checkups as you know the codes you typically charge), avoid surprise billing that arrives more than a year later, offering a "we hear your feedback and are taking it into consideration as we are always trying to improve our patient experience".

Original Review:

Since switching from Weill Cornell, you can no longer make appointments online. They’ve completely dropped ZocDoc, which is how I originally found the practice and scheduled appointments. I had a prescription that needed to be refilled and received a voicemail from them saying I needed to schedule a telemedicine appointment to get it refilled. I ignored that BS and the doctor refilled it, as he should.

Also received a surprise bill a year later that Maimonides somehow missed. Surprise bills are not uncommon here as they are just playing the game of throwing codes at the insurance company to see what sticks—what doesn’t, you pay for out of pocket, and the billing office doesn’t seem to have any clarity as to what insurance will cover or not, and tell you to figure it out on your own.

Aside from that, Dr. Carpenter is a good choice if in down to...

After my initial appointment I have discovered it is mega difficult to get in touch with any representatives at Sunrise. I have worked in a call center and customer service roles in the past and was advised that in order to be professional and to encourage business, I should always first alert the party on the phone that I would need to transfer them and whether that was okay, then to also include my name (if not stated before when I first answered the call), title, and extension in case our call was disconnected. It’s also generally good business practice to notify the caller that you would need to place them on hold and to regularly check in with them during the hold period and estimate the time remaining. Both of these tactics I’ve noticed have not been adhered to with the employees at Sunrise I’ve interacted with. I usually get the impression when I call that they are impatient and overburdened, and then without warning I am transferred to either a phone number that is out of service, a voicemail inbox that I need to leave a message at (and do not receive return calls from), or to another department where that person usually informs me that they cannot assist me but then they transfer me to a phone number that is not connected usually as well. Also......their office is physically dirty. It's fascinating that for whatever reason, the need to clean is not felt in...