Dr. Federico G. Velez, MD
14445 Olive View Dr,
Sylmar, CA

Excellent hospital , good service.

I have posted reviews on many internet sites for years and never give below 4 stars, usually 5. If I didn't like something I let it go. I am posting this review as a public service, so no one ever has to go through what this office and this doctor put me through. Too long a story, but to summarize: I had my vision history sent to them as requested, they lost it twice ("the girl whose email it went to here goes home early so we can't get in to see it") but still charged me $1500 for the office visit. Scheduled surgery three months ahead. They insisted a pre-op covid test could be done only at a UCLA facility. I found the facility near me and the week before surgery (scheduled for Jan. 10) I started checking there to see if the test was ordered. It never was. Every day for a week I would call the test place and be told order was never called in and I called the doctor's office every day asking them to order the test. The office kept saying doctor was "hard to reach". What? Time running out, I called UCLA switchboard. "That doctor is on vacation until next week." Office lied every time I called. My surgery was for Monday. Still no test order by Friday. I called testing place that Friday begging to come in. They said "Your surgery is cancelled. The office cancelled it". Nobody called me or told me. Monday came, no call from them. I finally reached them. They said all surgeries were cancelled that day because there was too much covid in the building, though they never told me it was cancelled. If I hadn't called the test place I might have just shown up for surgery. I felt so bad for them re covid I wrote a nice email wishing them good health, asking them to reschedule me asap. The three months of waiting for that surgery had me change my flights to Europe and postpone my work, had me nervous about eye surgery for weeks as you can imagine, had me change my entire year's schedule. But ok. I stared calling to reschedule in February. "Oh, we're all booked up until May". What? Shouldn't I be put in early as my surgery was cancelled one day before? "I'll have a scheduler call you." Scheduler calls me and says, "Oh. You're the girl we cancelled because you didn't get a covid test". I said, "Were other surgeries cancelled that day?" She said, "No. Why would you think that?" I have to tell you, not only was this office inept, uncaring, careless, rude, and dishonest, but every time I called I was just rudely brushed off. If you go and look up current reviews for the Jules Stein eye center you will see the exact same facts I have just written here. Something is wrong there. The people working the desks should not be there. My entire year was disastrously scrambled due to the dishonesty and inefficiency of this office. I finally got great eye surgery from Dr. Luke Deitz, who saw me two months before surgery and insisted on seeing me again the week before to check on any changes. Dr. Velez saw me once without my eye history, and was going to just fly back from vacation three months later without ever seeing me again and just cut into my eye. This doctor is not dedicated to your health and well being, and his office people are people you would hope never to come across in your life. I am not a complainer. I don't give bad reviews. I am telling you: AVOID.

We had an amazing experience with Dr. Velez and his team. Everyone was very professional, the hospital was very clean and well designed, so much that it felt like a futuristic set. Our son had a strabismus surgery with Dr.Velez just a week ago and we are thrilled with the results.