Patina Lui's Online Review Report Card

Typical office where the booking/receptionist/billing either do not care or are not properly educated to relay the proper information to new patients. My wife has been out of work for a year because she is a restaurant worker during Covid-19 and her place of work closed. Upon needing an appointment she not only called to ask if the office accepted our insurance but also presented her card to the receptionist before her first appointment. The receptionist failed to tell her they did not accept our insurance even though we were told they do over the phone and was now hit with a nearly $400 bill. Shame on the receptionist for not letting her know and shame on the billing person she spoke with over the phone trying to fix this matter who did nothing. I had something similar happen to me 2 years ago HOWEVER my receptionist alerted me they did not take my insurance and allowed me to cancel before my actual appointment and worked with me if I decided to keep it. Kudos to that office which was Maiden Lane Urology if anybody is curious. If you are going here for the first time I recommend making sure they take your insurance before you go in. This is a known scam offices take part in because, in the end, they do not care about the patients which is clearly the case here.

I am amazed every year I go for my annual check up that Dr. Kolton is so punctual. I never wait even though the receptionists are so delightful and I enjoy chatting with them every time I come there. Also I feel so lucky as Dr. Kolton is such a fantastic doctor and follows up on my mamograms and bone density exams. You'd be lucky to have such an excellent physician.

Adding to the slew of negative reviews about this place, particularly about their billing. Was double billed for what should have been a covered annual visit because of a yeast infection I had at the time. Spoke to my insurance who said this is absolutely a result of how they billed the visit. Billing team was nice but did nothing to correct the double charge and defended the practice. Needless to say I won’t return here.

This practice is severely understaffed. New "Pandemic parameters" for this practice is that they do not need to communicate with you on any timeline, unless you are giving birth or hemorrhaging. This is direct quote from Dr. Buxbaum's email to me. Nurses station a VM dump. The one time I got through, nurse Cara Dubroff angrily stated: "you are NOT our priority!". Messages sent via patient's Portal do not get answered for weeks, sometimes longer. You can, however, set up a PAID Video call for your questions, new medications, followups and/or referrals. My guess is that is how this practice stays afloat. Completely unethical behavior. Pandemic or not, this "WOMEN for WOMEN" practice gets zero stars.

I want to be clear that this post is only about the OB side of the practice. I've come to see Jessica Safier on the GYN side for years and she is amazing. But in the middle of march, I was pregnant and had a really negative experience on the OB side. This was just as COVID-19 was starting, and I had not received a message that partners were no longer welcome. My husband and I arrived, excited about our first pregnancy, only to find out from a sign on the door that he couldn't even come in. I tried to advocate for him to be able to join me, but was told that for safety reasons he couldn't (despite the fact that we live together, and if he was exposed/sick/carrier, more than likely I was as well). Feeling anxious, I shared my feelings with the nurse who told me they were risking their lives coming to work (so was I in traveling on the train to the appointment) and dismissed me by saying I could call him on facetime for the appointment. But very quickly, things went from unfortunate to much worse. Dr. Bahora (bless her, she was so kind) came in for the ultrasound, and I had my husband on facetime, and she was very reassuring, but discovered that the pregnancy was not viable - no heartbeat. That's how my husband found out - over a video call when he was out in the hall. Because I was shocked and crying at that point, Dr. Bahora thankfully realized how unnecessarily cruel this practice was in the moment, and allowed my husband to come in so she could talk with us privately about the bad news. A heartbreaking experience made much worse and more traumatic by a ridiculous policy that protects no one really - especially if everyone wears PPE, appointments are appropriately spaced out, etc.I only write this now because we received an email that the practice was opening up again, but the policy (this time clearly communicated) is still in place. It's not clear who the leadership is - I would simply reach out if I knew to share my experience and advocate for some kind of change, but since it's not clear, I figured this is the only place to share. As wonderful as Jessica Safier and Dr. Bahora are, I have real doubts about coming back if we do become pregnant again.

Long wait times, rude staff. I had a question about something very important to me and the doctor was incredibly rude and made me feel like an idiot. I will never go back. I felt unsafe and left in tears. Terrible bedside manner.

I had a very good experience with Downtown Women OBGYN. They were there throughout my entire pregnancy. Dr. Suzanne LeJoie successfully performed an external version on me just two weeks before I was due, and Dr. Antonette Whitehead delivered by baby. Dr. Whitehead was patient, kind and everything you could have asked for her in a doctor. I recently saw Dr. Whitehead for my first annual visit post-baby (1 year later) and I felt so at ease with her as she spent such quality time during a regular routine visit.

Although this center was recommended loosely through a coworker, my experience at this center has been less than ideal for most appointments. If you are looking for a 1:1 person experience with a doctor you've selected and trust, this is not the practice for you. Their doctors and midwives are kind and understanding, but they work off a rotational schedule, and you will have a different doctor for every appointment, and will not know who your doctor at birth will be either. Additionally, office staff are unprofessional, curt, and wait times for appointments ranged from 30 minutes to over 1 hour before your name is even called (despite having an appointment), and then even longer before you actually see a doctor.During the pandemic, it seems that the service here has deteriorated even further. Wait times increased even more with no personnel or staff to help guide patients, confirm appointments, etc. During my most recent appointment, the patient in front of me waited for nearly 2 hours and was about to walk out of the office since there was no receptionist in sight to handle the situation. I waited for an hour and 20 min. before I saw a doctor. Office staff were all in sweatshirts, leggings, and sneakers and were unphased about the long patient time.After my appointment, despite the fact that I confirmed my address for the pharmacy, my medication was sent to the wrong pharmacy in COLORADO (a completely different state). As the office is closed over the weekend, there was no way for me to remedy the situation - having to call the pharmacy network and get the issue rectified on the backend. Moreover, billing issues were erroneous with my insurance (which was not confirmed by admin staff at the office), and I've also had to employ a health advocate to navigate the invoicing error from downtown for a C-section they urgently scheduled.Again, the doctors here were great and real knowledgeable, so it is such a shame that the office administration is in such disarray and unprofessional. It makes for a truly unpleasant experience. If you prepare yourself for administrative issues, for long wait times, and for frequent errors with no apologies -- then this might be an okay office for your OBGYN needs.

Good doctors—I come here maybe anually and recieve good medical care for my IUD. But their phone service is really disappointing. I have had to try and call several times to get to speak to an actual person. I get extremely frustrated with this, especially when I'm on hold for several minutes just to be told the extension is unavailable and am forced to leave a message and hang up. When I call back, I'm sent back to the end of the line on hold. I really hope they fix this!

Do NOT go here. Doctor was extremely rude and the nurses act put out if you expect them to answer any questions. You have to hound the office for test results. Everyone I've spoken to who went here also had horrible experiences. This place was so awful that I had to switch to a different practice mid-pregnancy.