This experience is about Dr. Carpio, how he handled the situation and Sutter Medical as a Medical Group. My family had to find a new primary care physician. Haven't done this in 15 years. Dr. Carpio's office said the final step was to come to their office for an intake appointment. Mind you, we had NO MEDICAL NEED TO DO THIS. The three of us went and had our 8 minute "nice to meet you, quick medical background review" appointment and went home. We were billed $800 for these appointments. With a high deductible plan, that comes out of my pocket. $800 for an appointment we didn't need. SHAME ON THEM. A fee was never discussed beforehand and I never assumed there'd be a charge since we DID NOT ASK FOR OR NEED THE APPOINTMENT. Worse yet, Dr. Carpio refused to return the multiple messages i left for him to discuss the matter. I won't even go into the BS "coding" that was done to "correctly" bill the appointments. The coding referenced things that weren't even discussed in the appointment. Dr. Carpio is part of the problem. Charging/coding for things that were never discussed to justify a fee. It's not how a normal business is supposed to run but it's how we've all accepted the medical/insurance industry runs.
We've since found another primary care physician and the last thing their intake person told us prior to hanging up the phone was "you do need to come in for an appointment to finalize your onboarding as new patients but LET'S WAIT UNTIL YOU ACTUALLY HAVE A NEED before we do that."
I will never go to SUTTER or DR. CARPIO again. Other medical groups and doctors offer the same level of service at a much more affordable price. read more