Highland Family Dental Group

This doctor considers an exam to be sticking the mirror in your mouth for about 8 seconds. That’s it — no poking with a metal instrument, no gum tissue check, no pocket check, nothing.
He then tells me that my cleaning is actually only a polishing and plays dumb as I ask him about scraping, flossing, removing plaque, etc… a CLEANING. We go back and forth about what a real cleaning is and I explain 3 times what my experience has been like at every other dentist office for about 40 years, which is to say that the polishing is merely just one step of it.
Apparently, he goes from a polishing to a «deep cleaning» with nothing in between. He spends no time and gives no effort on the service that is actually covered by insurance, and then jumps to a very expensive procedure that is not covered and is probably not necessary much of the time, if he would just do a normal cleaning every 6 months. It feels like such a sham.
After about 5 minutes, by which point he is suddenly sweating (probably because I was clearly not an idiot and I was challenging him) he invites me to return to my old dentist, which I would have loved to do, btw, if I could have. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough.
After calling my insurance to file a complaint, I am told that they have no control over the dentist’s practices and what they consider to be an exam or a cleaning. It is up to them to give what they want to give as their service.
Doesn’t that seem wrong, though, that there are no insurance definitions of what covered services officially include so that we, as patients, understand what we should expect and demand, if necessary, as a minimum? The insurance companies apparently have no standards for doctors to meet. I guess I didn’t realize this. It may seem silly, but I’m about to write to my congressman.

It is hard to say just how little this dentist and his assistant care about doing a good job. I arrived a little early for my 10 am appt., to leave time to fill out paperwork. I was not the first patient of the day. There were a few kids before me (it’s primarily a pediatric dentist’s office). The dentist arrived at 10:15, without a word of apology or explanation or any sort of notice from anyone that this might be unusual.
I went for a cleaning, exam, and to have an on-​lay re-​cemented. A «cleaning» here is just a polishing that takes under 2 minutes. A proper cleaning is termed a «deep scaling,» which has a $ 160 co-​pay from my insurance. There was no exam by the dentist at all. None. With the re-​cement, he didn’t explain to me what he was going to do, or even take the time to talk to me at all. He did no real exam of the on-​lay to make sure it was seated properly. The assistant was left to clean the excess cement off my tooth, and when I told her there still was some, that I could feel it with my tongue, she told me I was wrong, that it felt different because I now had the on-​lay back on. (I know my mouth; I’d had the on-​lay in until about an hour before my appt., when it came out when I was flossing.) I insisted that she clean it off, and, as she was having a look, still insisting that she was right and I was wrong, she found the cement stuck to my tooth and cleaned it off. I pray that the on-​lay holds. I’m never going back.

I called to see if they were taking new patients. The woman who answered the phone sounded like she was in a bad mood and had horrible customer service. I informed her of what insurance we had and asked if they also took kids. Her response was something like «Well yeah we do, but they (referring to families with HMO insurance) make appointments and don’t show up for them.» Why that was a necessary comment was beyond me. I asked how many dentists they had on staff and she just wasn’t having it. I didn’t even bother taking my kids or going myself. Your front office staff say a lot about your business.
So flash forward a year and my hubby gets insurance. He goes there and is seen by the dentist who is just as unprofessional as his front desk staff. Doesn’t seem like he likes what he does. …or doesn’t like HMO patients.