PAMF Family Medicine Sunnyvale Center

One of the most disappointing and unethical medical organizations I’ve dealt with.

I have repeatedly been charged unnecessary and excessive amounts, despite having insurance and despite bills already being settled. Most recently, today, I received a bill of $341 for a “new patient travel doctor appointment” from TWO YEARS AGO—a visit that was already paid for and closed.

In the past, I was charged $700 for routine blood work and $350 for an urgent care visit, both of which were supposed to be covered by insurance. Yet I ended up paying everything out of pocket. Each time, there is confusion, retroactive billing, and no accountability.

This feels less like healthcare and more like financial harassment. Repeated surprise bills, years later, for services already settled is unacceptable and deeply stressful. It’s extremely disappointing to see such practices coming from an organization that operates under the trust people place in medical professionals.

I strongly urge others to think twice before choosing them as a medical provider. Be prepared for inflated charges, billing issues, and ongoing harassment.

They are horrible and a complete waste of money. I will never recommend them to anyone

My PCP is good, but I am extremely upset with how my labs were handled at Sutter Health. During my annual physical, a few routine screening tests were ordered. Without informing me or getting my consent, Sutter sent some of my blood samples to an OUT-OF-NETWORK lab, even though other tests from the exact same visit were correctly routed to an in-network lab.

This undisclosed split-routing resulted in a huge, completely unexpected bill for preventive tests that should have cost me nothing under my insurance. This is unacceptable. Patients deserve clear communication about where their labs are being sent and whether those labs are in-network, not surprise charges caused by internal routing decisions.

I am actively disputing these surprising charges with my insurance and Sutter, and will file a complaint to DMHC. I would appreciate a prompt follow-up from Sutter to resolve this.

They kept cancelling my OB appointment on the same day, throughout my pregnancy. And no one is taking care of it at all. It’s not a trustable institution for patients. We don’t get needed help at the right time. I’m so sick of the last min cancellation.

Agree with a previous reviewer about getting charged with no warning for a quick question during an annual wellness checkup. If something is to be coded as an office visit rather than a wellness checkup, I would like to know before it happens rather than the doctor secretly doing so. They also pressured me to take a diagnostic test, which came back negative, then charged me exorbitantly for the negative test. Highly unprofessional service. I hope to take my business elsewhere, and I recommend that others do the same.

Again unexpected extra visit cost of $263 for simply stating I have asthma. Extremely unethical. Avoid if you can.

Unexpected “extra visit” fee for 2-minute chat
I came in for a routine annual physical—one appointment, fully covered as preventive care. The doctor spent maybe two minutes on questions (“How are you doing?” “Anything new?”) and i shared my status. Weeks later I was stunned to see a separate office-visit charge tacked on.

• No substantial service: There were no substantial service —nothing that justifies billing a second visit. Doctor spent well under the 10-minute threshold, Under CPT 2024 E/M guidelines, this does not meet the definition of a ‘problem addressed’ nor of preventive counseling. Therefore service code 99212 is unsupported and must be removed from the claim.
• Zero disclosure: The doctor never mentioned that these routine questions would be coded—and charged—as an extra encounter.
• Poor transparency: When I called billing, they brushed it off as “standard practice.” That feels like double-dipping and erodes trust in PAMF’s patient-first mission.

Patients shouldn’t have to scrutinize every casual question for hidden costs. Until PAMF adopts clearer billing practices and stops padding routine exams with surprise fees, I can’t recommend them

They billed me nearly $900 for a low-complexity physical therapy initial visit.

Amidst the shortage of primary care physicians, after covid, I was thankful to secure an appointment with a PCP here. However, primary care appointments here are slow.

My previous PCP from Sutter left, and so did my dermatologist. Seems like Sutter has a problem with turnover.

If you want to pay 1000 dollars for routine blood work, go here.

PAMF engages in predatory billing practices. They are in-network with Anthem but the blood work here costs 10 times the price as it does for Labcorp or Quest. They do not communicate this ridiculously high and unexpected charge and then blame it on the patient when they intentionally send the lab work to their lab which they KNOW is expensive and have gotten complaints about.

For example, CBC (85025) is $4 dollars at labcorp, but with them I was charged $40 after insurance. FSH (83001) is ~6 dollars, but with them I was charged $110 dollars. All this resulted in 1000 on my insurance claims before my insurance went to argue with them.

Furthermore, they engage in extra billing that is explicitly not allowed, billing me for code 36415 (venipuncture) when they cannot bill for this if they ran tests in-house (which again, they should NOT have done KNOWING they have hundreds of complaints about lab work prices and still REFUSING to tell patients the cost).

Speaking with their billing department does nothing to resolve the issue except waste hours of time, they always just deflect your valid concerns and claim that you signed away your rights in the patient agreement when I literally had a printed copy out and nothing they claimed was in the agreement.

Billing ASIDE, they also have problems with informed consent in the office. I only requested a ferritin test because I suspected I was anemic, but they added on a bunch of tests without explaining what any of them were and what they were checking for. Clearly, they don't know what informed consent even means. I TOLD them I had no sexual activity since my last period and they still decided to run a pregnancy test on me even though I said theres no way I'm pregnant, no consent whatsoever.

SAVE YOURSELF and go literally anywhere else.