In case you or your family is having dental work done I wanted to share with you an experience I had with Dr Raposo of Alpine Oral Surgery so you don't have the same experience I did.
Dr. Raposo seems like a competent dentist, but beware the surprise billing - for me an extra $900 on top of the $500 I was told I would have to pay.
I took my daughter to Alpine for wisdom teeth removal, and we had our intake in the spring for an August operation. I was told when I checked in that the price to me would be just under $500 and the insurance would pay the rest. In August we went in and had the procedure and were very satisfied, and I confirmed that I had paid in full. Then two months later, out of the blue I received a second bill for over $900.
I phoned up and was told that in the end my insurance company did not cover as much as Alpine thought they would. I checked with my insurance and Alpine had not queried my coverage to confirm at any time in the five months or so between my check in and the procedure. Then someone from Alpine phoned me back and told me that, in fact, the staff person who did my intake was fired because she had been wrongly informing patients about their financial responsibility. In other words, Alpine admitted their staff person had misled me. So my position was - OK it's your staff person who gave me wrong information, it's your responsibility. They said, no, you pay up for it, or it goes into collection.
In the following months I have been trying repeatedly to speak by phone with Dr. Raposo and he has refused to set up a call with me. The best I have gotten is a voice mail message telling me to pay up. In other words - his staff admitted that I was misinformed by their staff and yet this surprise bill of nearly $1000 is on me. Compounding that is the disrespect and discourtesy of Dr. Raposo in not even being willing to set up a time for a phone call with me. I called him at least half a dozen times and he was always unavailable, and when I sent him times I was available for a phone call, he simply ignored me. So, I guess, either he thinks so little of his patients that he blows them off or he doesn't have the guts to talk and instead hides behind his staff. Aside from voicemail all I got was another notice saying that it was going into collection. Clearly it's the fault of Alpine that I was not correctly informed as to what my cost would be, and even so I offered to negotiate, but all I got back was a threat of collection if I did not pay up. So I would say, unless you don't mind the possibility of getting misled about what you are going to have to pay, and then being treated with disrespect and as a delinquent debtor, then you should go ahead and go to Alpine. However, there are many oral surgery options in the Boulder area so you might want to find some equally good practice which will treat you with professionalism and respect, not mislead you regarding your billing and surprise you with a final bill of about three times of what you were assured would be your out-of-pocket cost, and even though you were misled by their staff demand that you pay it, without even having the courtesy to discuss it with you. read more
