I am unsure why Yelp refers to this as a practice of oral surgeons. Dr. Singh operates a general dentistry practice.
The office staff is pleasant, the doctor is nice, the location is ideal. It's also clean and modern. So why only two stars? Because every time it has been necessary to schedule follow up appointments they are about three months out. As my spouse and I would come to learn the hard way, scheduling that far out can result in poor outcomes. (The Cliff's Notes version is that without any pain in any teeth, my spouse was informed as a new patient that multiple upper molars needed root canals because some decay had begun internal to the teeth behind a number of white fillings, which we belatedly learned were never intended to last the 10+ years that they had, as compared to the older silver type of fillings that seem to last indefinitely.)
Because my spouse and I like Dr. Singh and the staff, we continued to visit this practice until it finally became apparent that this may have been more than "bad luck" on our part. One day, we arrived for back-to-back cleanings only to be told I had to wait about 40 minutes after my spouse was seen because a patient who was supposed to be there for only a filling ended up needing a root canal.
While waiting, it dawned on me that like my spouse, the patient had likely been told they needed to follow up on an issue at a routine dental checkup but by the time they were actually scheduled it was months later. If in the midst of waiting for that follow up appointment anything whatsoever happened to cause the patient to reschedule, the initial three month wait could easily have ballooned into a six month or longer wait between diagnosis and service.
As new patients at the tail end of the pandemic, my spouse was left in a state of confusion over whether paying for thousands of dollars in root canals that might fail in as little as two or three years was the better choice vs. going to an oral surgeon to remove teeth that were causing no apparent discomfort in the knowledge that this would leave no remaining upper rear chewing surface until such time at least two of the removed molars were replaced with implants. While trying to line up consults with oral surgeons and to research the options on implants and private-pay insurance plans that might cover those services (most don't), my spouse continued to be scheduled at this practice an average of three months out for routine care. On one of those follow-up appointments, with the teeth still not causing any discomfort, Dr. Singh informed my spouse that time had run out and root canals were no longer an option.
That happened to be the same day I was left to wait while Dr. Singh attended to the aforementioned patient whose filling had morphed into a root canal. That's when I put two-and-two together and realized that with as far as this office schedules out, the prolonged wait time could very well become the difference between teeth that can be saved vs. those that cannot.
Our impression was further solidified when my spouse went elsewhere for oral surgery to remove the aforementioned molars, at which point they flagged the need for still more fillings, some of which were scheduled for follow up at Dr. Singh's office, but with the long delays we have come to expect. Fearing we were just one rescheduled appointment away from another round of irreversible mistakes, my spouse ended up having the other practice fill the cavities because they were able to book him in under two weeks and take care of all of the issues in a single visit.
In fairness, I don't want to say this is all on the doctor because patients have life events and are responsible for remaining on top of their follow up appointments. At the same time, if this practice had more providers and/or kept more in-office hours, it might be possible to avert a costly dental disaster.
Bottom line? It is likely we are not the only "new "patients who had somehow managed to go through many uneventful years of dental care only to end up in an extremely costly and unfortunate place, struggling to afford implants after losing several teeth, when it should have been possible to avoid worst-case outcomes. read more
