Stanford Blood Draw Lab at Emeryville

May 2024

The health care itself seems good. The bureaucracy is awful, horrible, incredibly bad. It is almost impossible to deal with them. Lots of wasted time which could easily be streamlined. For example, chaos and confusion around what images were needed - so they had me do some that were unnecessary. Confusion around my diagnosis, so I had problems dealing with follow up care. Asking me for other office's fax numbers - when they could just as easily find this themselves - , without the delay there was in getting the message to me, and then receiving it from me. This great loss of time and energy all causes stress - bad for my (and your) health, and difficulties in getting good care, so it outweighs the healthcare itself as part of my overall evaluation.

Feb 2024

The doctors here are top notch but everything else is horrendous. For a bone density X-ray (dexa axial), they charged me $151 for a technician to read my results and $1367 for the actual imaging (total $1518). Even without insurance, the maximum cost nearby for this procedure is about $150. When I called up to ask about this surprise charge, the customer support agent, Rita, told me that the majority of this cost was for a "facilities" charge. I'm not sure how they pulled this number out, considering I was there for about 30 min. Their billing and explanation is the poster child for the messed up American health care system. They have done this in the past for a simple flu shot as well (ended up paying $500+ for a flu shot - insane). DO NOT go to their testing or imaging facilities; it is a total scam and their billing department has no real reason on why the charges are so exorbitant other than "facilities charge". Appointments are also incredibly hard to schedule, even for simple checkups. They seem very adamant that you must respect their time by charging you late fees but the appointments almost always start late by 45 min to 1 hour. I will be changing my PCP over this since the only thing they seem to understand is how to rake in cash without caring about the underlying cost or care of service they provide.

Jan 2024

I would not advise using Stanford. In my experience most of the good physicians quit after they have been subjected to the Stanford bureaucracy. I have had three physicians quit in the last year. Two primary care and one cardiologist. No one was helping in any caring way with the transitions. They likely quit for the same reason I am so disappointed--the bureaucracy----the phone system, the difficulty of getting a personal response in a timely manner, the rushed services--not the physician's fault, they have a tight schedule. The only good things about Stanford are the parking and the lab. Apparently he compassionate and talented physicians leave. Now that I read the other yelp responses I see a definite trend. I'll try Sutter.