Dr. George Rene Elias, MD

Do Not Go To this Doctor if You have Insurance that is accepted by him because they will not file with insurance correctly and then they will sell the debt to collections. I have been seen to Dr. George R Elias for over 3 years in DTLA. He is a good doctor but the billing service is absolute garbage and nobody in the office knows who is responsible when you ask, it’s a game of phone tag and lack of professionalism. Dr. Elias showed up on my insurance list of doctors accepted by my insurance and since he was close to me I decided to try him out. The office visits were short and Dr. Elias was nice but the billing department was an absolute mess. To give some background I have been to 5 psychiatric doctors since I was a kid and never had the billing problems I have now with USC which is now ruining my credit score. I am in the process of suing USC and many lawyers think I can win thousands for their fraudulent billing practices. After going to see Dr. Elias for a year I started to… receive collection notices from an outside collection firm that I owed USC $425 for each 20-minute office visit we had where he asked me how I was doing on my medications and basically just prescribed me more. The collections notice shocked me because I have full insurance coverage for Dr. Elias and physiatry services and my insurance company gave me a list of accepted doctors with his name on it. When I went to my insurance companies website and pulled up my Explanation of Benefits(EOB) for each of the corresponding visits I discovered that USC and Dr. Elias were not compliant with the insurance companies request to provide an itemized bill. The EOB also said for each of those visits the insurance would pay when they received the itemized bill and that I as the patient owed $0. Well USC ignored the itemized billing instructions and just send my bills to collections. I had to open cases with 2 credit agencies and pay them to have them remove 3 of the 6 claims they send to collections but they still show up one of the three credit agencies and the debt collector says they won’t remove anymore until USC Keck tells them they can even though they are liable for the billing errors. My credit score was an 820 and now it is a 670 all because of USC’s fraudulent practices. I will be suing for the decrease in my credit because it affects my ability to get a low rate mortgage which I am qualified for.