"Worst Dentist Ever" -- My wife…read more
I can't recommend this practice at all.
Our first contact with them sums up our total experience. My wife had an appointment for a chipped tooth. On the day of her appointment, my wife called to see if she could be seen a bit later in the day. The office staff told her "Boy am I glad you called before you came in. We can't see you today because the staff is out of town for a seminar." Are you kidding me? How could they not know ahead of time? What poor, poor planning.
Later, my wife and I both had cleanings and new patient exams, about 4 months apart. In both cases, the cleaning took over 2 hours. That is not at all acceptable. The cleaning was intolerably long, especially when considering it was during the daytime, when most patients need to return to work. 90 minutes is ample time to do an intake, check insurance benefits, take x-rays, do a cleaning, check margins, have an exam by the doctor and create a treatment plan. They failed sadly on that front.
In both cases, we were required to make payment at the time of service, even though we both presented insurance cards from our employers. In both cases, the preventative care is covered 100% by our insurer. In the past 15 years, we have had new dentists due to moving a lot. In every other case, the dentists' office staff call the insurer at the time of arrival, or while you are in the chair, to find out the level of coverage, and then bill accordingly.
However, each time at Dr Carter's office, we were asked to overpay for service immediately. This is just a lazy process on their behalf.
Over 40 days passed after my service, and I still hadn't received a bill or statement from Carter's office, let alone my refund for overpayment. I had to call them and request it.
In my wife's case, we are still waiting for them to give us a refund from her service which was over 5 months ago. She was billed 100% at time of service. Nice racket.
As for the level of service, the office is nice, the staff is friendly. It was a little odd to see them still using bitewings instead of digital imaging. (If you move around a lot OR need additional work with endo's, etc, you'll appreciate the transportability of digital.)
Shorter version: Billing issues, l-o-n-g office visits, lack of up-to-date processes/procedures mean we wont be returning.
UPDATE: I made a courtesy call to Dr Carter, to politely inform him that we were leaving the practice, due to the process/operational issues. As a business owner, I appreciate that type of feedback as it is invaluable to the success of my company. However, the doctor was defensive, disagreeable and made reference to a 'missed appointment'. Very unprofessional.
Also earlier in the day, after numerous reminders, the staff finally called to tell us they had finally submitted my wife's claim, albeit 5 months late.
Oh, and they won't release our records directly to us, citing 'technical" and HIPAA reasons. That's so 2002.
