I do like Dr. Waterman a lot and I would give him 5 stars if this is only for him. He has the experience and knowledge and I do trust him as a doctor and who is very sweet and true gentleman with lots of compassion and he has been very good to me. So I have nothing to complaint about him.
1. Customer service:
So it saddens me to write this about his staff, especially the office manager... horrible...I would give minus stars if I could. I had Flexible Spending Account (FSA) and they asked for a receipt that shows date of service for each service charges, which should be standards, but she did not understand why I was asking and gave me a hard time and it took several email and phone calls to get those corrected. Ok I could let that go and other stuffs that I don't have the time or energy to bother with.
2. Billing:
But this I must say!!! I had been his patient for several years and had 3 gum surgeries with Dr. Waterman and needed to do more. One day, when I was in their office for dental cleaning with a hygienist, and as I making another cleaning appt, I told one of the office staff I should see Dr. Waterman at some point to see if I'm ready to do another gum surgery (as I needed to redo the same spot again). One day, one of his staff called me and we set the time. Great. But I thought this was follow-up appt but I got a bill for $270 and it said for "previous balance". The office manager said, since I came earlier in the year (which was surgery follow-up), I have to pay this time. Dr. Waterman did look at the area for very briefly and said it looks great and we could go ahead with another surgery and rest of the time, we just talked about treatment options we could consider.
Ok. First of all, if they told me that when they called me to set-up the appt, I would not have agreed to come in at the end of Dec when we could wait for few days until the new cycle in Jan for insurance billing. This wasn't in any way urgent and why would you not tell me that I would have to pay for this when they called me to make this appt? I thought this was a follow-up appt which is supposed to be at no charge. She said she was on vacation therefore, she did not know that another staff scheduled me for December.
3. Manners:
I called the insurance company and spoke to a rep who said that this should be considered a follow-up appt because it was to see if that surgery area healed ok and to consider next surgery and I should let them know. So I called the office manager and she said the insurance does not have any right to determine what service this should be and she got all upset and defensive and would not let me talk ...which I don't quite understand her level of emotional reaction??? If anybody should be upset, it should be me. So I asked her to calm down and pleaded with her to give a message for Dr. Waterman to call me and she said she will. But no calls for more then 3 weeks, so I called again and this time she said she IS the office manager and I could ONLY speak to HER. She said even if I were to speak to him, he will say the same thing. Again her rationale was that since he spent time with me therefore, I should pay, treating me as if I'm expecting something for free for no reason. To top the cherry on the cake, she ended our communication with a nice threat...either I pay for this or else she would send this to collections. lol. How nice~
Too bad. I need to have several more gum surgeries but I will no longer go to Dr. Waterman whom I will miss. I don't want any negativity with Dr. Waterman but what's right is right and what's wrong is wrong...this is matter of principle. There's got to be some transparency to this billing problem ... at least the bill should list the date of service, type of service, and description instead of just "previous balance" and if the patient needs to pay for that particular service due to insurance billing or whatever, they should let you know prior to or on the day at least instead of surprising you with a bill a month later. read more
