4 /5 John Marzka: Dr. Ahn is an exceptional surgeon. He performed cataract surgery on both of my eyes and exceeded my expectations. I highly recommend him as a surgeon.
I do however, have a serious problem with the people running his billing department. The day after my second eye surgery, I received a phone call from billing saying that they neglected to ask me for the $1750 payment upfront for the high end laser they used (not covered by insurance) and they needed that payment ASAP. I will still laying in bed recovering from the surgery I just had 24 hours earlier. I explained that I would take necessary steps to send payment within 24 hours. The billing office then proceeded to call me 8 times over the next 23 hours leaving messages about needing payment. They also sent me 2 emails regarding payment. I was not going to call back until I had been able to send payment, since I told her it would likely not be until the next day. They then called my EMERGENCY CONTACT (my son) not once, but TWICE; to tell him that I had not returned phone calls and they were very worried because I just had eye surgery. Meanwhile, I had just had my follow up appointment with Dr. Ahn that morning where he said my eye looked great....and I spoke with the surgery center, who had called to check in on my health.
The woman from the billing office never once asked me how I was doing health-wise or left a message saying she wanted to check on my well being (not that she should be asking me those questions, but it showed that calling my son under the pretense of concern was just a ruse to help her to secure payment). Every message she left was just about needing the $1750 I owed them.
My son called me frantically, worried that I was dead because she called him under the ruse of concern about my well being. Their office dropped the ball by not addressing the money on the front end, then handled it very unprofessionally one-day post-op by harassing a patient still in recovery . After I made payment via phone 24 hours after the initial phone call, I addressed the lack of professionalism with her in how she handled the last 24 hours. She continued to claim that she contacted my son out of concern because they were unable to reach me; when it was clear they were trying to cover their ass ASAP for not asking for payment up front. As I said, Dr. Ahn is an exceptional surgeon but he needs to teach his billing department some professionalism because they are seriously lacking.
