Silvio del Castillo, MD

Dr. del Castillo is just like every other HMO doctor, just pushing patients through like an assembly line. I wanted to like him, but after he had his face in his tablet through my entire apt and acknowledged NONE of the concerns or questions that I had, I realized that he hadn’t listened to me at all, let alone even cared.

Dr. Del Castillo is awesome! Every time I leave his office I am reminded how lucky I am to have found him. He always makes me feel so comfortable and I can ask him anything. Caring, thorough, and knowledgeable! I highly recommend him!

Dr Del Castillo is great, a traditional Dr. That stillbtakes the time to listen. He really cares and that is worth its weight in gold.

This review is long overdue. After today’s visit, I realized that i had to make time to help others find a great Dr. and staff.
I was surprised to read the other negative comments about Dr. Del Castillo & his staff. I’ve been going to him for about three years and I couldn’t be happier. (You sometimes have to take these negative reviews with a grain of salt. I can’t help but wonder how some of the reviewers treat others yet expect excellent service.)
Rarely do I wait to be seen. If I do wait at the most 20 minutes total (including waiting/​patient room), I chalk it up to him spending quality time with other patients the same way that he does with me. Believe me when I say, I’m super impatient. He’s in the credibility for me to give him the benefit of the doubt that he’s not taking advantage of my time.
Having an HMO, I’ve dealt with crappy medical groups and doctors who are dismissive, make me wait a long time on a regular basis, and seem annoyed if you bring up more than one issue because are trying to rush out to get to the next patient. IHave never experienced these issues with him. I have also dealt with the type of staff that leave you wondering why they would have that type of job because are not approachable and their behavior comes across as though they’re doing you a favor to see the doctor or get certain paperwork. Ive never dealt with that. The front staff, especially Lily and Alex, are friendly, approachable, and helpful. His nurses/​medical assistants are professional.
I don’t have any serious medical issues so when I do go when there are minor things. Today i went in for three different things. I thought to myself that he must think I’m a complainer And I even apologized for the request that I had/​issues that I have. He quickly corrected me and said that that’s what he’s there for. Never once have I felt that he has been dismissive to any of my issues regardless how minor they are.
He’s approachable, but sticks to business. Don’t expect small talk. While im a chatter (aka Talkative Tina), I can appreciate that he is focused on taking care of my issues. I’ve had the friendly talkative doctor but yet didn’t feel taken care of. Therefore, i wouldnt change anything about him.
No need to keep looking. You’ve found the best Dr.

This review is based MOSTLY on his staff, however, they say you can tell about someone by the people that surround them…
Dr. Del Castillo is an average to below average doctor based on my limited experience with him. I have seen him a total of 2 times and he has never once even hinted at the elephant in the room… my weight.
From day one, my previous doctor was on me to lose weight and made sure that she gave me whatever information and encouragement was necessary to lose it.
Even though I went to Dr. Del Castillo for an injury, he could have mentioned it.
His staff is another story altogether.
From day one in his office, they were bad and only got worse.
I had just changed my insurance from HealthNet to United HealthCare and they billed HealthNet for my 1^st visit.
The referrals I got in the mail also had HealthNet on them.
Once the insurance issue was cleared up, he had to move the girl doing referrals up to the front office because she was so bad and the girl that he replaced her with was only marginally better.
Because of the incompetence of his staff, I am still waiting on treatment for an injury that I saw him in February about… it is now the end of August and I have given up with this doctor and I am moving on.
To be fair, part of the problem is that Dr. Del Castillo is part of Lakeside Medical Group, but that is another story.

Dr. del Castillo is a perfectly nice guy, but I felt he was dismissive of my health concerns and he said some things that I know to be factually incorrect.
Blue Cross switched my PHP to Dr. del Castillo after my old GP, Dr. Bruce Stark, left to practice elsewhere. I scheduled an appointment because I was taking a hot bath and had a bizarre incidence of increasingly blurry vision that went away within minutes when I left the bath. When I looked it up to see if it was a blood pressure thing, I saw that exact symptom used to be used to diagnose MS. That startled me because I have had several other symptoms in the past, like recurring numbness in my arms every few years for a few weeks, extreme bone-​crushing fatigue, and sensitivity to heat, but I did not have health care at the time to get those things examined and they went away in a couple weeks. I wanted to talk about those things.
Dr. del Castillo did not seem to have heard of blurred vision in a hot bath being a symptom of MS. When I said that I was concerned because I had heard it was, he was dismissive (not rude, exactly) and said that if I had MS, that would not be a first symptom. He said instead I would have trouble gripping things, or I’d feel weakness in my limbs.
I have since then confirmed with multiple people who are knowledgeable about MS that what I experienced is very common as a first symptom, and that the symptoms he mentioned are symptoms of progressed MS, not early MS. Furthermore, you don’t have to ever have any sort of weakness in your limbs to have MS; depending on where the lesions are, your motor skills might be uncompromised.
He didn’t give me any opportunity to bring up past symptoms and rushed me out. I have a lot of sympathy for GPs because they are overworked, and I am sure it’s difficult to keep up with all the possible symptoms of all possible diseases. I get that GPs are under pressure not to refer for expensive things. I don’t think Dr. del Castillo is a bad guy or anything. However, as a patient I’m obviously going to look for someone who doesn’t have these problems.
I might have simply had an optical migraine or something, and there are plenty of causes for all the other symptoms I have had in the past. I’d rather not have an autoimmune disease and I’m not a worrier, so if Dr. del Castillo had said it wasn’t MS for some accurate reason, I wouldn’t have any qualms.
However, I am switching GPs for the following reasons:
1. If I were to have MS or something similar, I am not comfortable that Dr. del Castillo would recognize such a thing as a possibility until it was far more progressed, and the referrals might be off-​target.
2. It’s not comforting to hear your doctor state factually incorrect information. For all I know this kind of mistake is rare from him but no patient can be expected to stick around after something like that. Especially for someone like me, who has recurring disparate symptoms that could be anything, you really want to feel that your doctor is knowledgeable. This sort of thing makes me wonder if he’d be equally unknowledgable about early, non-​obvious cancer symptoms or something.
The alternative is that he was just pretty sure that it wasn’t MS and said something easy to understand to make me feel better. That reflects better on him, but as a patient I do not want to be talked down to and it backfires; if a patient researches something and the doctor says something the patient knows isn’t true, they’re not going to feel better. They’re going to feel like they need another doctor.
3. I would much rather have a doctor who doesn’t dismiss my concerns so quickly. I get that doctors probably have to deal with a lot of hypochondriacs and it’s tiring and asking about other symptoms might just make them think they have something. However, I don’t think it’s great to assume every patient is a potential hypochondriac. If he had questioned me about other possible symptoms, I would have been able to tell him quite clearly which ones I’ve experienced and which I haven’t — and I haven’t experienced plenty of them. As it was, it just gave me the impression that he didn’t think very much of me or care very much about finding out what was wrong. More likely he was just overworked and it’s not personal, but when someone has a health issue, they want to see someone who makes them feel comfortable.