Sharp Rees – Stealy San Carlos

Sharp Rees Stealy San Carlos is the best Sharp office I have been to yet. The front desk staff is very personable and friendly. Never had a bad experience.
I appreciate that they greet me immediately with a smile. Dr. Cao is a great doctor. I would highly recommend her to anyone.

This place leaves A LOT to be desired! Their front office people border on incompetent. You can never get an appointment with your primary care doctor so I’m not sure why they bother making you select one. It reminds me of when I was a kid and had military insurance. You just saw whoever wasn’t busy that day and no one ever really knew you as a patient. I previously had Dr Buchner as my primary, never really was comfortable with him so I changed my primary care to Dr Cao. She is pretty terrific but again I can rarely get an appointment with her. Their front office screwed up and didn’t change me over even though I spent $ 30 on my co-​pay to come in and do an «establish care» appointment. When Dr Buchner left the practice they thought I didn’t have a doctor and reassigned me with no notice to yet a 3^rd doctor, Dr Altschuler. I had an allergic reaction to something and have severe hives for going on 1 month now. I initially went to urgent care, the medication I was prescribed didn’t work so I tried to make an appointment with Dr Cao. She wasn’t available so I saw some other doctor, Dr Fowler. He attempted the exact same solution as the urgent care doctor. It wasn’t until I told him I was really annoyed at him doing the same thing and expecting a different result (after all isn’t that the definition of insanity) that he offered a dermatology referral. The derm department doesn’t have anything available until February so now I need the referral to be changed to urgent in order to get in sooner. I called this office to ask Fowler to do that for me, he passed the buck to Dr Altschuler who doesn’t know who the hell I am since he’s never seen me so he decided to do NOTHING. I have been getting the run around for 3 days with no return phone calls and no resolution. Now after talking to three different people this morning I am being told they hope to get back to me by Friday. Seriously, Friday!!! I’ve had hives for a month and they think it should take 4 more days to even tell me if they can do anything for me? They clearly do not care at all about patient care and well being. If you need a primary care doctor to see once a year for a pre-​planned visit that you can schedule months in advance then this is place for you and I highly recommend Dr Cao. If you ever get injured or sick just go to urgent care because this place does nothing for you.

I just love Dr. Walter! I have been her patient for over 10 years. I continue to go there just to see her as my Doctor. However, the front desk really needs to get it together. I am often standing in line since there isn’t a sign-​in area and I get stuck waiting atleast 10 to 15 mins past my apt time :-(and while I am standing there waisting my time, the girls behind the desk are chatting about who knows what but definitely not about me standing there waiting in line! I have had to get out of line, walk up to the counter and say «Hi…I have an apt and I havent been checked in yet!» Seriously… they need to get a better system! Oh and this weriod hand thing that registers your medical info, not crazy about it. It takes a long time to get it to work and that also holds up the line.

This used to be my go to place when I used to actually go to the doctor. Lately that hasn’t been the case… until I smashed my finger pretty badly (going to lose a fingernail) at the gym on NYE. After a day or so my paranoia/​germophobia kicked in and I wanted to get it checked out to make sure it didn’t get infected. I was fortunate enough to get an appointment the same day I called and the woman on the phone who set it up was very pleasant and helpful.
Upon arrival, the staff got me set up and squared away pretty quickly and all in a friendly manner. The wait time was a bit longer than it should have been but that’s the way doctor visits always seem to go. I probably didn’t get in until about 15 – 20 minutes after my scheduled appointment.
Got my finger checked out, no infection, got a tetanus/​booster shot and was on my way. Staff was friendly and professional, the doctor was great. These are great medical offices.

The doctors are great, if you can manage to make an appointment.
Gone is the day when you can simply pick up the phone and call their office. That was too easy so they decided to sadistically complicate things for the ill and suffering. Now you have to call their main line, get their automated answer, listen to their message loop about how all their employees are too busy to help you, but if you are one of the many grateful patients you can decide to be a Guardian Angel in their program and donate to their system. Although you will have a chance to hear this message, oh, 43 times in the next era of your life as you hang on «hold,» it will remain unclear about exactly where this money is going.
Hopefully, you don’t have a fulminating infection, because when you eventually get the actual person, they will take your information, schedule an appointment at their leisure and whatever is convenient to them and eventually get back to you in the next few days. The last time I made an appointment, it took them 3 days to get back to me and tell me that their next appointment was at a date and time that absolutely did not work for me. It took another 2 days for them to call back with another. As it turned out, I needed a specialist. The next available date was SIX WEEKS later!
This is what happened to me today: I called, waited on «hold» for 20 minutes and the next available agent hung up on me before even saying hello. I called back and waited for another 10 minutes then finally gave up.
I plan to do my own surgery tomorrow. It’ll be a lot faster and less painful than waiting for an eternity to hear that they have picked a date and time that will not work for me.
As for their «MySharp» online account, their website hasn’t been able to process my registration. The prior poster was lucky and had a great experience. That was two years ago. San Carlos Medical Group has gone far, far down in the last few years. Shame on them.
I’m going to go sharpen my scalpels now so I can do my own surgery.
Addendum: I called the Sharp helpline and got someone who had no idea what the error code was for the problem that I was experiencing online. Despite the fact that I’ve been a patient there for years, they couldn’t find my files. The man that I spoke to told me to call the San Carlos office to schedule an appointment to go there and register online there. I said him that was the problem that I was having in the first place, that the phone queue was long and that they’d disconnected the call, etc. Despite telling him what my name was, he kept misspelling it and then asking if I’d gotten an error code, bumbling around and generally just wasting my time. I told him that he wasn’t listening to anything that I was saying and that I wanted to talk to a supervisor. The woman that I talked to was nice but apparently as incompetent as the rest of them. She took my information and assured me that someone from the San Carlos Medical office would be calling me shortly. That was 24 hours ago. I managed to figure out how to make a MySharp account and tried to get an appointment with my doctor. The next available appointment date is 20 days away!
This is why health care is so expensive. I’m probably going to end up in the emergency room. I can’t wait 20 days to see a doctor.

Friendly, Professional, Convenient, Knowledgeable
I have been to a few doctors in the past but decided to go with Sharp recently and I’m happy I made that choice. I did some research online, passed by, and even called with a few questions because I only go to female Doctors and wanted to make sure there were no surprises. What also got me was the fact that I could register online with Sharp Reese-​Stealy on MySharp and be able to make appointments, look at lab results, check the pharmacy, and communicate with my doctor’s office thru email, etc, all online! They have plenty of parking and you do not have to pay which is also a plus. The only thing I noticed was that it did take almost a month in advance for an available appointment. Hopefully it does not always take this long but at least I can go to any Sharp Reese-​Stealy Hospital or their Urgent Care.
I signed up with one of their female Dr.‘s in this location and when I went in for the first time, the front office greeted me and proceeded to ask for all my info. They have a new system that scans your palm so all your information comes up for faster check-​in. I thought that was pretty neat. Their reception area was spacious and clean.
The most I waited was about 10 – 15 min. before being called in and the Nurse let me bring in my paperwork to fill out while I waited for the Dr. which was very convenient. The Nurse asked me a few questions and recommended/​gave me a Tetna shot. I initially went in for my physical but mentioned I was suffering from back pain for several years. I had been wanting to get an X-​ray on my spine for my back pain for a long time but never got referred? Anyways, my new Dr. quickly made some notes and took me to another room where the X-​ray technician consulted with me and took the X-​rays. Just like that!
I didn’t know they had all these services at this Family Practice. The Nurse, Dr. and X-​ray technician made me feel very comfortable and I know I made the right choice!