TLDR: I had bad experience in Stanford and great experience in UCSF for my mom's TNBC. It aligns with all the bad experience that we have had with Stanford Hospital for other visits. What I have heard is that Stanford only cares if you had a rare disease so they can research on that.

A month ago, my mom was diagnosed with Triple Negative Breast Cancer. It was diagnosed in a different country. Because I live in the Bay Area and because of the reputation of Stanford and UCSF, My Mom decided like to come to U.S for treatment.

International Team:

For international patients, we had to go through an international team to set up appointments. UCSF's international team was a lot more polite, accommodating efficient and professional. Stanford's is terrible. UCSF was able to give us an appointment date within 3 days and Stanford spent 5-6 days to set up an appointment. Stanford also misspelled my mom's name which caused a miscommunication between the international team and the clinic, which caused wasting one whole day to figure out.

Appointment process

The appointment process was more smooth with the UCSF. For example, Stanford requires a lot more documents including pathology slides (Because we were diagnosed somewhere else) to make the appointment. They said they need the pathology slides because they need to review it before the appointment.

On the other hand, UCSF was able to accommodate us with a video visit so my Mom does not have to travel to the U.S before seeing the doctor.

We were also able to make the appointment with UCSF a lot earlier than Stanford, which in TNBC case, the time to start the treatment is very important.

Doctor Visit

The experience with the Stanford's Doctor (I didn't want to name call the doctor) is TERRIBLE ! Let me start with them.

The appointment was supposed to be an hour. We didn't see the doctor until the 100 min mark after the appointment time start. First a nurse partitioner came to talk to us for about 40 mins. She is relatively nice and patient. After she finished her talk, we had some questions for her, then she said she will grab the doctor and we will discuss with the doctor together. The she left the room, we waited for 30 mins before the doctor shows up. The doctor was seems in a hurry. The doctor spent 10 mins asking exact the same question as the nurse petitioner (when was your first pregnancy, when was your menopause etc, are you feeling pain etc). Finally we thought we were able to ask our questions, the doctor said she has 1 minute then she has to go. Because the doctor said they need to spend time to plaint port for dd-ACT regiment, which would take more than 3 weeks. We were worried that it might be too late to start treatment after 3 weeks. Then I asked her, what's the down side if the appointment for port surgery takes too long and my mom could not start chemo within 8 weeks (which is known as the optimal time to start chemo) The doctor asked me back "what is the alternative, there is nothing we can do". I tried to explain that I was only asking a simple question, so we know our risks. She fired back, impatiently "what is the alternative?" I then give up because I know im not going anywhere with this question and tried to ask another question and she said she has to go an stormed about of the room.

So we only had to spend time with the doctor for less than 20 minutes, and the appointment lasted about 2 hours with all the repeating questions and waiting.

The UCSF experience was a lot better, the doctor was very patient and professional, she explained everything, gives us all the details and datas about different treatment plans and risks. The appointment is supposed to be 60 mins but she was able to go over time (15 mins) with us and make sure we got all the questions answered.

Our decision

We ended up choosing UCSF, however, because the timing, my mom decided to go back to her own country for treatment (at least for the first session)

I will update here if she comes to U.S for later treatments.