Dental 4 Less – Complaints About a Dentist
Question: I have a dental HMO insurance plan where I have to choose a dentist from the plan’s network of providers. I live in an area where I had about a dozen dentists to choose from, so I picked the dentist that was closest to me. The issue I have is that the dental office was not as clean as I would have wanted. Also, the staffing was rude to me and I had to wait over 45 minutes after my appointed time. I did not mind the dentist. He did good work. It is kind of hard to mess up a cleaning since that is all I needed. I am upset that even though my plan let me change my dental office, I was out another month before the change would come though. I wanted them to credit me for the month since I was not able to use the plan, but they would not. I think they should, since it is the plan’s fault for having bad dental offices on their list. Mad about waiting and would like to complain about this dental office so that other people do not choose them. Should I tell the insurance company about my problems?
Reply: It is not unheard of that dental appointments run late. A suggestion to help avoid that in the future is to call about an hour before your dental appointment to confirm if they are running on time. I am not sure what the real issue is. Is it with the dental office or the insurance company? You stated you did not like the staffing of the dental office and the place was not as clean as you would have wanted it to be. Yet the dentist was nice enough and did a good job. Therefore, you had some work done at the time of the visit. However, due to the issues you had, it sounded like to me that you had the insurance company change your provider. Typically, a change like that will be effective the following month. Unless there is a dental issue that needs to be addressed ASAP, it really should not be an issue due to you already having your preventive care done. How do you find any benefits? I really do not see the issue with the insurance company. As far as the dental office, I guess you can complain to the dentist about the staffing and how the place was not clean, but since you changed to a different provider, I do not see the point of complaining. I say chalk it up to a bad thing and hope the new provider is a better fit for you.