Newport Coast Cardiology

Wonderful first visit. Dr is caring and competent. Felt very comfortable.

My experience here exceeded my expectations. Most of the staff are friendly and focused on you. Dr. Bassi is incredible. He actively listens and clearly describes what is going on and what the next steps are. He responded to tests personally within a day

I'm sure the doctors are great however their office support staff needs to be managed better. Especially a man named Carlos. I followed their protocol as a new patient, filled out the new patient form through their website. Emailed my PPO insurance accordingly. Was told I would receive a phone call back the next day to schedule. I did not receive any phone calls back, in fact I had to follow up myself 2 days later. Carlos is a juvenile, unprofessional office manager and refused to check the status of our insurance. Blaming me for being rude when I wasn't. This is unnecessary drama when we just wanted to schedule an appointment with Dr. Dipti Itchhaporia, MD.

Dr. Blankenbaker was the first cardiologist I ever saw at Newport Heart. I instantly liked him because of my phobia of doctors in general. He was kind, accommodating, and honest. I figured he would be my cardiologist forever. But, he left California and I was forced to find a new cardiologist. I met Dr. O'Bryan at Newport Heart, and I was grateful that I had found a doctor who cared as much--perhaps more--about my health. So...when my wife started to have cardiac problems, I naively suggested that she should see Dr. Blankenbaker, who had (for whatever reasons) come back to California. At first, he was extremely accommodating. But after our initial visit--and clearly without a remedy for too many weeks waiting for him to mitigate my wife's BP problems--we threw up our hands and decided to go elsewhere. I hope your own experience is better than ours. I truly believe in Dr. Blankenbaker. But I feel his priorities in his patient's lives have changed.

Dr Blankenbaker is a competent and nice physician however.....I was not pleased when I was told because of an outstanding balance I had with his office they refused to see me in office or refill my vital medications until I paid half the balance in full. Now I understand that Doctors need to get paid but they billed my insurance, so they got paid something, and I would have and tried to make arrangements to pay the out of pocket balance I had with them. They wanted half in cash upfront before they would see me or make me an appointment. That came to $350 and I could not afford that. I have never been just dropped by a physician like this for inability to pay out of pocket expense. I had a life threatening episode of Afib about a year ago the doc was treating me for and recently I have been having heart palpitations again and needed to get checked out to make sure everything is okay and to get medications refilled. Now I have to find a new cardiologist because even though I offered to give them $150 in cash as a good faith payment, in addition to my co pay for the office visit, that was not good enough.....So go see Dr.Blankenbaker. He is a good Cardiologist. Just don't owe them money or if you do pay it off immediately or you may run out of your medication and not be able to get a refill.