I will be honest, as a prior dental hygienist I am extremely hard on dental offices. I expect a great deal not only from the dentist, but from their staff. This review is more about the staff than the dentistry. I was referred here by several friends after my dentist retired. I saw Dr. Charity Duncan. I needed multiple fillings re-done as the previous fillings were 30 years old. Dr. Duncan was great. She was thorough, explained everything well and was highly competent. I cannot complain about the quality of her work as she did a tremendous job. However, during the course of my work, the person who gave me the initial quote on my work left employment at the office. My initial quote gave me a breakdown of the work needing to be done, my insurance portion, and what my portion would be. They also recommended a dental guard due to teeth grinding and told me it would be covered if I waited until the next calendar year. I would have to pay 20%. I went in the following January, and had the dental guard made and paid my portion. Over 6 months later, I received a statement billing me for the full amount. They had never gotten verification from my insurance company of coverage. So I got hit with an unexpected $485 charge. I was furious. Calling to confirm coverage is literally the bare minimum in this situation. If I had known, I could have made a decision on if I wanted to pay out of pocket or not. Once the work is done, you no longer have that choice. I was not offered a discount on the device until I made a big stink about their error. After this, we had a few other issues. My husband was referred to another provider for an extraction who was drunk. Yes, it wasn't at this practice but they did refer him to this other provider. And we got hit with several other bills for other family members 6 to 9 months after the work was done when we were not expecting these expenses. The only statement I ever received was for the night guard, the rest we would be asked to pay at our visits. For work done over 6 months ago that we barely remembered had been done. The final straw was that I have a difficult schedule as I am also a healthcare provider, and waited 7 months for my next cleaning appointment. I was called a few weeks before my appointment and told that the practice would no longer be open on Friday and they would be moving all their appointments to Wednesday. I can't come on Wednesdays because I have a full patient load on those days. Other providers would have honored the appointments they already had scheduled instead of just closing those days down, and stop booking further appointments on Fridays and transition their new appointments to the alternate day. But not this one. They had no consideration for the needs of their patients and their schedules at all. When my daughter went in for her cleaning and was asked to pay $145 dollars for prior dental work yet again without a statement, I was done. I asked her to call and request a full statement with charges, insurance paid portion and our portion listed, and instead they sent a receipt of payment. It just didn't sit well with me because it felt like they weren't being honest as to the charges they put on the patient. I decided to go to another dentist. I contacted Innovative Dental Concepts 3 times. Once by text, once by email, and once by regular snail mail letter to request that they send the dental work records to my new dentist. I expected that they would contact me and tell me their was a modest fee to send the records, but instead they never contacted me and my new dentist was unable to obtain the records as well. It's a shame, as I think Dr. Duncan is a fine dentist and I would have continued as her patient if I felt the financial integrity of this practice was honest. read more
