Menlo Medical Clinic

I have been seeing Dr. Amy Elliott for about 4 years. Prior to seeing her, I had been through many doctors who never got my health issues under control. They just kept prescribing medications, but could never figure out what was causing my pain. Dr. Elliott takes the time to listen to me and address my concerns. She keeps in contact with my other Doctors to make sure everyone is on the same page in regards to my health and my treatment. I can’t say enough about her professionalism and her genuine concern for me. I consider her to be one of my guardian angels.

Came to have my blood work done today in their lab. Fronk desk person rude, wait wasnt bad 5 min. I probably wont come here again.

Terrible medical records staffs
Misplaces my infant daughter’s medical records that was supposed to be transferred (tried 3 times) and blames me for it
Trying my best to not to lose cool and be nice on the phone — but bumbling unprofessional staff — who definitely sounds like not enjoying their jobs — made it easy for me to choose Sutter Health over this clinic
Good bye and good riddens

It took us three tries to find the perfect pediatrician that fit our family’s needs, listened, worked with us and respected that we are slightly untraditional (extended breastfeeding, cosleeping, etc) but we finally found Remington Fong who was then at Welch Road Pediatrics, in Menlo Park. We were thrilled, he was great, all was well in our world. Fast forward about 6 years, the practice closes and the doctors move to Menlo Medical Clinic. The difference here was palpable. It felt like big business, no warmth, it didn’t appear that the doctors had the same family vibe one could feel at Welch.
I was very sad when I decided to stop taking my kids to Dr. Fong but the heavy handed, old school approach that Menlo Medical Clinic is taking with patients did nothing but isolate me and make me feel pushed into a corner over some medical choices we have made for our family.
I will also point out that the same people who worked at Welch Road were there when I was a kid yet over the past 3 years I have watched those familiar faces disappear. It appears I’m not the only one unhappy with the move to Menlo Medical Clinic. Such a shame that the current medical model forces the good guys with small, caring practices to join the corporate machine in order to stay afloat.
I should stress again that we still love Dr. Fong dearly-​he is an excellent, caring, thoughtful doctor who gets five stars-​Menlo Medical Clinic not so much.

My kids have been with Dr. Vie since over 13 years now and we couldn’t be happier. Dr. Vie always is very responsible, caring, understandable, she takes as much time as she needs for her patients. I can’t say my kids love going there. Who likes to go to a doctors office anyways? But they feel comfortable, they trust Dr. Vie, they are open and have never been afraid going there. Meanwhile my daughter is 18 years old and they have told her she may consider choosing another doctor because of her age. My daughter will do that (to bad they don’t take adult patients…), but she asked Dr. Vie if she could see her again when visiting from college and Dr. Vie told her she sees her as long as she likes to come. I highly can recommend Dr. Vie as a pediatrician. I was never disappointed in her as a doctor nor in her as a person. She has a very warm personality. She loves kids, is great with teens and even is never annoyed when worried parents ask too many questions. Sure, everyone is expecting this but my experience is that this isn’t always the case even it should. The office staff is also very helpful, friendly and helps you with anything coming up in a timely manner. Thank you Dr. Vie and staff!

This is my experience with the Allergy Dept. at Menlo Medical, and based on my experience, I would never return. My child had a visit in October 2015 with Dr. Tourangeau. Prior to the appointment I called the office to ask what the estimated cost of the visit would be, because I know these allergy tests are not inexpensive and I wanted to know the estimate in advance. The woman at the Front Desk who answered the phone told me that she could give me the information. She told me the appointment would cost «about $ 500» (which included both consultation and allergy test). Of course, I understood the actual cost could be somewhat different. So I went ahead with the appointment. Later I received the bill, which was close to the estimate I was given, and paid it. But then I received a revised bill stating the total cost is actually over $ 1,400 and that I owed more money. Really? So I call the front office and they tell me billing matters are not handled by them. Before the appointment the office was eager to speak with me, but now that the service is done, they are not so eager to speak with me. I am still trying to resolve this with Stanford Health Care (they send the bills). SHC tells me the front office never should have given me an estimate like that without doing proper research. There are so many allergy offices around here so there’s no need for my family to return here.

There is a clinic which denied my child’d medical records and denied given her access to vaccine because she did not have a doctor at Crane street.

Menlo Medical on Crane Street is a first rate clinic. I see Dr Amy Elliott there and visit the clinic on a regular basis. Dr Elliott’s office and clinical staff are friendly and helpful. The waiting room is spacious, clean and comfortable. Examination rooms are fairly standard with modern exam tables and furniture. Wait times are minimal. Dr Elliott is a caring, experienced specialist and I feel fortunate to be on her patient list.
The Menlo Clinic lab is well organized. Minimal wait time for blood draws and the laboratory technicians are experienced.
The facility is patient friendly. Decent signage with a huge directory, functional elevators, clean restrooms and a simple, compact layout.

Avoid Dr. Tiffany Ly. She is a prejudiced uninformed woman. She jumps to conclusions. Her diagnosis is based more on her preconceived perception of reality than on the facts. She will send you down a rat hole that is a figment of her own imagination.
Instead of focusing on the condition of her patient she will run you through the paces and have you undergo tests that are not even remotely connected with the issue at hand.
Currently filing a complaint with the California Board of Physicians.

So far I am loving the fact that all my physicians are in the same building including labs. This prevents me from having to travel from physician to physician office locations or to an outside lab with work up orders. One stop. That’s it. I know that when I leave I have been treated by Stanford affiliated physicians and staff and that I’m done until my next appointment. Other practices do not have labs on site which require traveling to them with paper order forms. This method is inconsistent and the establishment is far removed from the physicians who order the test. Any questions on orders can start a broken communication chain for multiple days. Menlo /​Stanford associates are all in one. Love it.

Dr Braveman is great. She is detailed and really quite entertaining for our toddler (and parents).
For reference, for our one year visit, we were late 12 minutes, and had to reschedule, bummers. Sometimes they do try hard to see us even if we are a little bit late.
Clinic appears to be busiest right after lunch, at any other time the parking lot is quite free.

Yep, still one star after all these years. Called to get an appointment. Answering machine. «Someone will call you back». No they won’t. Nobody will call you back, because they don’t care.

My primary care doctor, Susan Garay is a knowlegable doctor. However dealing with the billing department and not responsiveness of the Dr.‘s office makes going to this clinic almost impossible. I tried it for three years and eventhough I like d the doctor I had tochange because they would charge twice or instead of charging the insurance which they are part of the network. they would send me the bill. I am talking about the preventative care that is free once a year. I kept calling and after being transfered several times, the person would say they would take care of it and two months later, there was another bill.
Once they charged office visit in addition, when I was there for the yearly preventative check up. Impossible.

I’d like to add my single star to the reputation of their billing department. I wish I can subtract stars. I’ve sent them the payment almost 2 years ago (I have a record of this), they apparently lost the check and now (almost 2 years later!) they’ve sent it directly to collections without even trying to send me a second bill.
Luckily for me, my primary care physician recently left the Menlo Clinic and I have to select a new one. I’ll make sure that I chose a clinic which doesn’t use University Healthcare Alliance.

My negative review is mainly induced by bad experiences with their billing practices. I have been getting my allergy shots here for a few years now. Their billing has switched web interfaces a couple of times (it is now via stanford health), and these websites do not make it clear enough where the bill originated.
This was annoying, but I stuck with them until now. Lately they stopped sending billing notices, both mail and email, and some charges went unpaid for about 5 months. Without sending any type of warning — neither via letter, email, or phone call, they put me into collections! That is absolutely unacceptable, and I intend change allergy clinics as soon as possible.

This review is not for my doctor but rather for the admin here. I called for an appointment in March and was told I couldn’t get an appointment until July. Fine, fair enough, I get that doctors are busy. I confirmed with the staff my appointment and put it in my calendar and thought I was ready to go. Fast forward to July, I was not only not notified of my appointment a couple days prior but I found out that it was never made. I had to reschedule myself online for October. This is ridiculous.

Good to see I’m not the only one with a bad experience visiting Dr. Pagano. She’s rushed, terse and generally just wants you to take her advice then leave so she can head to the next one.
Long story short, I came in for muscle tears which she said I didn’t have. X Ray proved different and I had 6 months of therapy to remedy it. Recently I went back with a clear leg issue, but she kept saying ‘you’re fine there’s nothing wrong with you.’ Turns out I have another knee injury after consulting with another doctor who agreed to spend more than 5 minutes talking to me.
I give Dr Pagano a ¹⁄₅. Go anywhere else.

These are literally the worst doctors I have ever been to. Rather than write a review, I’m going to write a summary of my experiences.
1) I called the billing department to get the information to nominate a PCP with my insurance. Billing informed me in a rude tone that my health insurance plan did not exist and that I was making it up, and that Menlo Medical Clinic did not exist either, and that I was making it up. The Menlo Medical Clinic website had a banner welcoming all members of my healthcare plan at the time.
2) Went to primary care with a question re: side effects of a medication. The doctor informed me that the side effects would last 1 year, so I should ignore the symptom for a full year before I would be able to get treatment. A specialist said the medication processes out of your system in a week, and that the side effect should have been treated with a $ 10 prescription from the outset.
3) Went to primary care with bronchitis that felt like pneumonia. As I sat there struggling to breathe, the doctor informed me that I «wasn’t acting sick» and «didn’t look sick enough» to be sick, and laughed at me for being «a giant wimp» for staying home from work, when she never does. The doctor then said they do not treat people until they have been sick for three weeks. She gave me a stack of prescriptions that had a warning «Immune system depressant, do not take while ill» which I had to decline at the pharmacy.
4) My husband developed a stye that was blocking his vision and making it hard for him to drive. He called urgent care (before they outsourced to Stanford) and got yelled at by the urgent care nurse for wasting time, because «urgent care is for people who are ACTUALLY sick» and «just go to the emergency room and don’t waste our time.»
5) My husband had an eye exam in Opthamology and got a new lens prescription. He told the person working the machine that he did not like the prescription, but she insisted that it was «good enough» and would not adjust it. A few days after getting his new glasses, he noticed the prescription was hurting his eyes. The doctor refused to give him an appointment for a month «because we only do rechecks from 4 – 5 pm one day a week» and then when he went back, the person tried to send him on his way before the prescription was corrected. He had to fight with the person to get her to adjust it to where it was comfortable for him to see again.
6) I went to GYN with a minor issue. The doctor sent me to a subspecialist at Stanford that had a 3 month waiting list for an appointment. The subspecialist said that there was no reason for me to be there, and that regular GYN should have been able to diagnose it. She told me to switch to her department for proper care.
7) I caught a nasty respiratory infection from the children I teach, as they all had it. After it not getting better for 3 weeks (as advised above) I went to primary care to get it looked at. The doctor informed me that it was impossible to be ill for 3 weeks, so I must have asthma. She refused to listen to any of my symptoms besides coughing (fever, stuffy head, congested chest etc.) and would not let me speak to describe them, telling me that I did not understand what I was talking about and that I was not acting sick enough to merit medication. I had to shout over her to be heard. She eventually caved and gave me a Z-​Pack, which, in 2 days, left me feeling markedly better.
Additionally, their billing department repeatedly makes mistakes. Every bill I get, I have to call my insurance company to check the benefit, then call Menlo Medical back to confirm the benefit and have them re-​bill it. They never collect copays on the day of the visit, and if they do, they charge the wrong one (and I have to call and complain.) I recently received a bill for a copay 14 months after the visit. This is unacceptable.
I am switching from this practice ASAP. The level of care there is abhorrent, and every time I start feeling sick I dread having to go to the doctor, between the name-​calling and the billing nightmares.

I put up with the poor customer experience, the lack of follow-​up from my visits and Dr Pagano’s rushed and terse bedside manner but when they billed me $ 75 as a no-​show appointment when I was a few minutes late to my appointment. I should submit a bill to them for the number of times I sat in a room waiting forever for the doctor to come see me. Often times I wondered if they forgot they had put me in a room. Did I mention it took a month to get a follow up appointment regarding my knee injury! And good luck getting a complete physical, it takes 3 months to get one of those appointments.
I’m so deeply offended by this bureaucratic approach to medical care. They’re clearly running a business and not a very customer friendly one at that.
The only truly exceptional doctor in my experience was Dr. Jamie M Nuwer and I’m sorry to say they let her go. The staff knew she was the best too.

I’d seen my primary care physician here for over 10 years, and sadly he is no longer with the clinic so I switched to another doctor here recently. Also very good. My baby daughter’s pediatrician is also here and he’s wildly popular and with good reason. I’ve also seen other specialists myself here. The clinic itself is excellent. The overall level of service and the back office and the front desk. They are tied to stanford so that is a huge plus. The facilities are OK, meaning the building is somewhat dated even after going thru a facelift. It doesn’t detract from the service but reduces the overall impression somewhat.