Business ProfileforSmiles Restored

Have you ever been asked to leave a service for expressing your honest opinion about that service? Well I have and it involved a root canal that went bad in 13 months. Things like this happen of course. But in a private conversation with the assistant to one of the dentists, I expressed my view that if I had another root canal that turned bad by the same dentist, I would select another dentist in that office. This is not an unreasonable position! I received a letter telling me that I lacked "trust" in their service and that I should go elsewhere. I did not lack trust and said so, even writing a personal letter to one of the doctors familiar with me regarding the issue. He never took the time to answer me in any form. This felt like "punishment" for speech that did not allow for opinion about the service, an attitude so common today. I would not select these people. They did not put me, the patient foremost, but the opinion of the assistant. You can do better in selection by going elsewhere, and I am compelled to send this perspective everywhere. Truly, Larry D* *******

Dear Unhappy Patient, You have been coming to our office for about 6 years and we have done some dental work for you. Each of the initial visits to diagnose a problem you were having, you brought in a treatment plan from another office and were a bit upset that we would have to charge to take x-rays and an exam in our office. The very last conversation with the assistant that I overheard was that you could not understand why we would need to take new x-rays and do an exam when the other office you had seen before coming to our office had already done those things and diagnosed the problem. The assistant explained that we can't treat a patient based on the diagnosis of another Dr outside our office and especially without seeing current x-rays and doing a clinical exam. You then said again that you "can't understand why we can't just do what the other office treatment planned when they looked at everything." She tried several times to explain but it seemed you didn't understand. When I came in the room after talking to you for a few minutes you finally agreed to allow us to take an x-ray and do a clinical exam but you were upset that we were charging you for that "because the other office already did those things." Since you were going into the other office first then coming to see us after and then complaining that you would have to be charged for the things we were doing over and over again, we felt it would be best to let you just attend the other office indefinitely.