5/15/26 Came to the office as a walk-in for a pre employment physical. First- the office is…read morebeautiful. Second- all three front office staff are very professional, friendly and welcoming. Third- the assistant who helped me through the process was very good and very skillful with the blood draw. And lastly, Dr. Ishaaya was great. If i didn't already have a primary care physician, i would definitely choose him! Great job all!

Dr. Ishaaya himself is great but there's something off about the way the practice is run. The staff…read moreis very confrontational, not helpful, and difficult to try to get access to medical records. I would advise to go elsewhere to avoid the headache you'll receive dealing with this office

Dr. Jiang helped my Mom with her COPD and gave us some incredible advice that no other doctor had…read moreever mentioned. It worked and I am grateful. He's very good!

I saw Dr. Jiang in Spring of 2020, at the beginning of Covid. He showed me my x-rays and carefully…read morepointed out features that were important. It was a relief to talk with a well-trained, very thorough specialist. Dr. Jiang was patient, kind and caring. Great doctor.

Update, after 7 years I'm still seeing Dr. Buchfuhrer and I've been symptom free the whole time, I…read morecan't imagine what my quality of life would be without his unique way of treating RLS.

Doctor is very nice and listens to you. He is though and has given me great care over the years…read moreI've been going to see him. O

Exceptional. I really can't say enough about this incredibly talented Dr. The time, and…read moreconsideration she gave to my case, asking very detailed questions and exhausting all possibilities. She was also very personable and friendly. I wish all Doctors were like her. Highly recommend!!

Dr. Amin, Was a…read moregreat lovely dermatologist. I was running late and she still made time to see me.

I don't know what to say! Dr Kahlid el Tawil is great. Was a pleasure being his patient. Office…read morestaff is a nightmare to deal with. My referrals have been a mess. Every hiccup in the process of obtaining CPAP device is due to this office. They are eager to take messages but they never call back. Insurance reviews and approves treatment faster than Aurora picks up that paper of approval to fax it to supplier. They take sleep so seriously that they literally sleep on paperwork. Sorry to be mean but waking up every morning sleep deprived waiting for a treatment that's taking forever is beyond unpleasant.

Been coming here for the past 5-6 years since I was diagnosed with sleep apnea and I been seeing Dr…read moreRasic here and every time I go the service has been great. I hardly wait for my appointment and check in is pretty easy and the doctor attends quickly and listens and talks to you and gives you the time It's a great place if you need to here for your lungs

cold. callous. he treated a critically ill family member…read more He never returned calls. He acted like he was doing us a favor when he did talk to us and would not answer questions. He did not even inform us or come in the room to meet us when our family member died.

I actually want to give a shout out to 2 of Dr Eltawil staff members Laurie and Lorraine who always…read morego the extra mile to help patients! They're both professional, very patient and friendly Sincerely Andy

Like Terrie M., I highly recommend Dr. Defren. He's the only pulmonologist I've ever seen, and I…read morecan't imagine a better one. As Terrie said, he's highly intelligent and very caring; he also treats you as an equal. He takes so much time with you at each appointment (up to 45 minutes - 1 hour in my case): summarizing the results of the last appointment, doing the exam, and explaining future options / plans etc. His nurse told me that on days that he was in his office, he never scheduled more than six patients! He likes to spend considerable amounts of time explaining lung function, using interesting metaphors to make it easy to understand. Unlike patients with chronic lung disease, I was OK in the lung department until 2007. I became totally exhausted due to the fact that the company I worked for moved so far away, I had to commute a total of four hours to & from work. After about eight months of this commuting I came down with what looked like regular pneumonia, diagnosed by my internist via a chest X-ray. I went to the hospital for five days to get intravenous antibiotics. I met Dr. Defren towards the end of that visit. Since I no longer had a fever, he explained that the active infection had been killed off, but there was still lung damage. He said that I would need to rest at home for a month, then my lungs would heal themselves. This would have been true if it had been regular pneumonia. I went to Dr. Defren's office a month later for a follow-up. Listening to my lungs, he said that they were no better, they were actually a little worse. I only had 68% lung capacity, based on a breathing test where you exhale into a machine. Because of the way the chest X-ray had looked, he thought I might have a rare lung disease called "bronchiolitis obliterans with organizing pneumonia." The bronchioles are the next-to-the-smallest airways deep in the lungs; they get clogged up in "organized" looking rows. Since the treatment for this condition is a steroid drug, it was necessary for me to have a surgical biopsy of bits of my lung tissue to make sure that I really had this condition. He recommended an excellent thoracic surgeon (Dr. Clark Fuller) who did the biopsy surgery. Sure enough, the problem was what Dr. Defren suspected that it was. He explained that this condition is so rare that no studies have ever been done about how to treat it, since there have never been enough people with the condition to study at any given time. There are only a few medical journal articles by doctors who had one patient with the condition. Based on these, Dr. Defren planned a six-month treatment protocol with a steroid medication. I started out on a high dose and gradually reduced it. During this time, I kept seeing him for follow-ups. After six months, I was totally cured as was shown by a perfect chest X-ray. Dr. Defren said I was fortunate I got this particular disease, because there are 100 rare lung diseases, and some of them are death sentences -- people take steroids but never get better. After I was all better he said that the breathing test showing I had only 68% lung capacity had "really scared" him. I was touched by this statement, because many doctors may have similar feelings about very ill patients, but never admit it to the patients, wanting to keep "professional distance." Dr. Defren is very professional and very caring at the same time. My lungs have been fine ever since; I decided to retire at that time so I'm not exhausted & stressed out anymore.

I have been seeing Dr. Defren for a couple of years now. He is amazing. Such a great doctor,…read moresuper intelligent, but caring, too. He really knows what those of us who suffer with severe lung disease go through every day. He does everything possible to improve our quality of life. I understand that he has another office in Beverly Hills. If you have lung issues, he is the doctor to see. I drive all the way from Acton to see him, and wouldn't even consider changing to someone closer. He is worth the drive for me. He makes me feel safe, he helps me to understand how to make my life more bearable. I don't have enough good things to say about Dr. Defren.

Amazing! Simply the best!!! Excellent doctor who…read morecommunicates, cares and spends time. Rare.

Dr. Schroeder was great. He was kind, patient, and very professional during my pre-operative exam…read more I felt completely comfortable and well taken care of. Highly recommend.

Absolutely positively courteous Professional caring giving Doctors. Thank you..May God bless your…read morebusiness

If you value good service, DO NOT COME HERE! So I get there…read moreon time but I must wait 30 minutes to be taken in because, as the receptionist told me, they are triple-booked for all time slots--RED FLAG 1 I get taken back by Freddy, the person taking my initial symptom-information, and he's asking me whether I'm having trouble breathing, to which I respond, yes, I have pulmonary hypertension and I am visiting the doctor to get an approval for a thoracentesis as my file states. The person had no idea what a thoracentesis was--RED FLAG 2. If you go to a mechanic who specializes transmissions, and his assistant has no idea that a transmission needs transmission fluid, RUN! In addition, this person speaks so loud that you could hear him from the waiting room discussing your private medical details since the office he works from shares a wall with the waiting room. They place me in a room so I can wait for the doctor, and a medical student is sent in. At the moment, I had no idea who she was or what her qualifications were, but she has all my medical info so I play along. She starts asking basic questions about my condition, the medications in taking, and then says that she'd like to run some tests before the nurse practitioner comes in. So I take a closer look at her name tag, and it says Chapman university. I ask who she is and why she wants to poke and prod at me. She says she's learning and that it will help her--RED FLAG 3. I got mad but remained calm. I said I want to see the doctor so I can get my day going. It had over an hour by that time. The student goes and gets the nurse practitioner, some huge fat guy, who's making judgements about my breathing, stating that I look fine, to which I asked, have you seen me walk or have you listened to my breathing? He seemed to become irritated and attempted to listen to my breathing. I'm wearing several layers of clothing including a jacket, and the jerk places the stethoscope over my jacket and asks me to breathe deeply--RED FLAG 4. I play along, hoping that he'll just sign off on the approval for me to get my procedure done, but he says, your breathing sounds fine. I ask about signing off on my approval for my procedure, to which he replied that based on how my breathing sounded, it would be unlikely. Before I started cursing, I got up and left. IF YOU VALUE QUALITY SERVICE, AND IF YOU VALUE YOUR HEALTH, DO NOT GO TO THIS OFFICE!!

Malcolm Smith pulmonologist is a joke and I wish I had gone online to read all of the negative…read morereviews years ago as this office, in its entirety is abusive and combative. The front office employees hover over others with full blown conversations right in front of you, typical of UCLA, so there is no respect of privacy for the patient and very little to no regard for optimal patient treatment. Dehumanizing is certainly one way to put it. And not to mention some of their sour attitudes in both their verbal and nonverbal communications with you. When I tried communicate to the office manager, jasmine jack, about how inattentive and dismissive the doctor is, and how he really does not make much of an effort at all, all she did was to continue gaslighting me and defending her employees to her customers, even after this became an established behavioral pattern in the doctor, years after year. And UCLA wonders why people don't bother complaining to them! I wish I did not stick around for the several years that I did. At first I thought that maybe the doctor was having a "bad day" but the next time and next time and next time I saw this man, he would completely ignore me giving answers to his questions, even though I reiterated my answer to him - FOUR TIMES! Still ignored me! Complete Silence on his end, and again, established behavioral patterns. Yes, that's how Much this fella "cares." And yes, the office mgr still gaslighted everything. They do not try to help you, especially when you don't tell them what they want to hear, they rarely to never return phone calls, letters you wrote in the mail, etc., and if they do, depending on their various different mood swings, they are not helpful. They never leave their names when leaving messages and receiving incoming calls. One time, I tried to humor the office manager to set up an additional phone appointment with the doctor since his communication was inefficient the last visit. I ended up being transferred, put on hold numerous times, Long wait holds, etc., I spent more than an entire hour trying to connect with the doctor for a phone appointment, and never got to connect because this man does not listen and nor does this office. All this because this fella is inflexible with not wanting to do Doximity or zoom. Other doctors are Much more agreeable than this and when there is a problem, others will try to find workable Solutions, but not this doctor and not this office, for sure. Also, I cannot make an endless amount of doctor appointments just to get my basic questions answered just because the doctor failed to be communicative during all The times I already see him For follow up Visits. And especially when I already have 50+ appointments per month just to stay afloat and wait hand and foot on all these offices that really find no helpful solutions to incurable illnesses. Interestingly enough, my spiritual counselor commented on how at least four or five other clients of hers complained vehemently about the abusiveness of ucla to her within the same week I had mentioned all this office's abuses. These complaints and negative reviews of this doctor's office are some of their most accurate and honestly authentic accounts of having to deal with such abusive offices like this one. Adhering to the wisdom of these negative reviews is strongly advised if you don't want to suffer from its wear and tear of all this office's antics. This group, typical of ucla offices, has no shame, on every level of the word. And not a care in the world about us. When encountering the occasional employee that is respectful and trustworthy, that is a rarity inside ethe UCLA affiliation. Thankfully I am in much better care with a different doctor. But now this office does not want to send me a copy of my own medical records to me now too. Note Regarding signed authorization forms: When the patient provides the entity with his own signed authorization form to obtain a copy of records and go over policies like insurance coverage, communications, and the like, the entity is obligated to accept the form that the patient provides over their own forms. Any form of manipulation and coerciveness and pressure to sign their forms in addition to the ones you already provided them is unlawful under the Privacy Rule and these are bad business practices on their part. Under any circumstance, do not succumb to their abuses and intimidating tactics to strongarm you into al their phishing schemes to find excuses to know things about you that is none of their business and as they try to look for excuses to withhold sending you a copy of your own medical records to you. WE must be steadfast and persistent in knowing our rights as patients as these entities will stop on no account taking away what little rights we have in the first place, even when they are in the wrong. Report them to the Office of Civil rights but be ready to stay in the saddle with them for the long haul.

I have seen a few doctors within the UCLA family and have had nothing but good experiences…read more As a sufferer of severe RLS and CFS, I would give 0 stars if I could to this center in Santa Monica. Given the advanced stage of my Restless Legs Syndrome, I have been prescribed very strong drugs including Methadone. Without this medication, I cannot sleep and have to walk all night with pain in my arms and legs. This cascades into insomnia, which triggers migraines, which causes me to miss work, risking my high level job. As a highly controlled substance, I have to have the doctor call right around when I need a refill. Twice now, my doctor at this center has been impossible to reach and does not return calls in a timely manner. This week I had to call 5 times over 3 days to get my prescription taken care of. This is horrible patient service. When I asked why it took so long to get help, I was given a string of excuses about how busy he is. Then don't take on new patients if you can't do something as simple as fill a prescription or call your patient when she is having issues with her medication. I won't be going back to see Dr. Padilla and I advise you not to see him either if you need responsive care for your RLS. According to Yelp, the UCLA Westwood center gets poor reviews as well. I'm going back to my old doctor. The hour drive for appointments is worth it when refills are placed the same day and medication issues called into the doctor are returned the same evening.