Don't even bother, unless you are Vietnamese, and even then I would suggest you stay away. I believe they are racist here, but I can't prove it. I'll just tell you my experience.
A year ago or more Blue Shield of California assigned me Dr. Bui as my primary care physician as part of a "Point Of Sale" plan which was supposed to be a combination of PPO/HMO. But my regular doctor's office wouldn't schedule me an appointment with her because Dr. Bui's name was on my insurance card. Since Dr. Bui's office is close to my home in downtown San Jose, I called to try to make an appointment. But I travel a lot (50%) so I couldn't stop in in person.
I called and was told by the receptionist that "for new patients" I would have to call back after 2pm as the office manager was the only person who could make an appointment for a new patient. But every time I called back after 2pm, nobody answered. For days. So I gave up. Later I changed insurance plans again and Blue Shield assigned me a different doctor. Unfortunately that doctor had a 1-star Yelp review, but I decided to go visit his office anyway today because I'm having a medical emergency. There was one guy in the office who said the office had flooded, and wouldn't be open again for a while, and he didn't know if the doctor would be seeing any patients or where. So I decided to try giving Dr. Bui another try.
I went in person this time to Dr. Bui's office, at 1:45pm, where I met two Viet receptionists, one in her 20's and one well past retirement age. They told me I had to wait or come back after 2pm because only the office manager (Huong B.) could make appointments for new patients. So I left and came back at 2:05. I stood at the window and saw that Huong was on the telephone, the older receptionist said "Please take a seat, she is on the phone" and I said "No thank you, I'll stand." Huong finished her phone call and, without even looking in my direction, stood up and walked down the hall into another room and closed the door. The older receptionist looked at me standing there and said "She is busy, please take a seat."
So I sat down and waited. And waited. And waited. Patients came and went. After a half hour, I went up to the window again and there was Huong, fiddling with something. I asked why nobody had talked to me and she said she didn't know I was waiting and talked in Vietnamese to the two receptionists. Then she said they were not taking new patients. I told her that Blue Shield of California said they were accepting new patients on the Blue Shield website, but she said they were not. She said that she never came out to tell me they were not accepting new patients because she was never told that I was waiting. I strongly suspect they do not accept new non-Vietnamese patients and she was hoping if I was ignored enough times and for long enough I would simply go away. If they were simply not taking new patients, they could have told me that at 1:45pm the first time I showed up instead of asking me to come back and then refusing to even acknowledge my presence.
I have a video of our conversation to document the interaction.
P.S. I called the Physicians Medical Group of San Jose, of which Dr. Bui is a member, who said their records indicate he is currently accepting new patients. And filed a complaint. read more
