Gentle Dental

Months later after my partials were finished I received a bill from Gentle Dental saying I still owed them $626.46 because my insurance would not pay for the procedure. So why did they tell me what my portion would be and what my insurance would pay when I first asked about the price of partials? My only income is Social Security and I do have a retirement fund. I normally am very careful about my budget and have good credit because I pay my bills. Now I find I owe $626.46 which I did not budget for. Gentle Dental is not an honest business. Do yourself a favor and look for another dental business to deal with. I believe Gentle Dental is unethical and they should write off what they told me my insurance would cover.

When I contacted them, the SAME woman, said it must have been someone else that I talked to.. Nope, same woman. It was at THIS POINT, the manager said "I am going to be brutally honest with you. This office has been through 9 dentists, in the last three years. We now have one dentist one day, twice a month. I don't know whether that's from the main office, or what." You folks better read that. So, last week one of the remaining teeth broke off, on Thursday, and put me in a ton of pain. I called them Friday, and said I need to either come in, or get some pain medication. I was told the manager would call the Dr., get it OK'd and call me back... Nope.

So, I called Saturday, and left a message about courtesy, and respect for clientele. So, they left me, in agony, over the weekend, for what? This morning I get a call from the manager and let her have both barrels. Yes, I was pretty nasty, with her. She MORE than deserved it. I told her that according to their "plan" I should have been done several months ago, and that they had driven so far off the trail that even they had no idea of where they are or what to do.. I also let her know that I do not have the time, disposition, or patience to put up with phony lip-service, and a diet of horse manure. I told her she is lucky I don't come into the office and absolutely humiliate her, in front of clients. I may yet. So, I told her to have a plan in order and call me by noon, today with it. There's more, but let me tell you: beware of this outfit. Deadbeat company.

My favorite asked me to acknowledge that holding my mouth open for a prolonged period of time could make my jaw ache. Another asked me to acknowledge that medications (not a specific medication but medications in general) can have side effects. Really? Final straw: this practice requires payment in advance even if you have insurance. After they refused to bill insurance first before billing me, the camel’s back broke and I left, never to return.

I needed a cleaning and reluctantly agreed to the deep clean. It was miserable and required 2 appointments, not because of my teeth but because that’s what insurance allegedly requires (my insurance denies this). Both times I left with half my face numb for 8 hours, leaving me unable to work, talk, eat or drink without issues the rest of the day - for a cleaning. Twice.

The first time I had the root canal and prep for the crown first, stupidly agreed to fill one of the “bad” cavities” and then had half the deep cleaning. My bill, with insurance coverage according to their billing department was over $1300. And it still left me with $195 to pay for the other half of the cleaning. Everything dealing with payment is very rushed, for what should be obvious reasons to anyone who’s fallen victim to their billing practices. I’m not ignorant; I’m a government attorney and represented a major federal hospital. I’m intimately familiar with insurance billing practices and collections. But when someone stands over you with a clipboard that gives you the ability to finish your dental work, you sign and pay.

Once I got home I immediately saw I’d been overcharged, even by their own estimate, because they failed to bill my insurance at all for the filling. That was (according to them) and overcharge of $60.90. I was told I’d have a credit. I said I wanted a refund but was told I’d have to wait for insurance to pay the claim and then see if I “owed anything.” That’s illegal. You can’t knowingly overcharge a patient and hang onto the payment on the off chance insurance doesn’t pay what you hope to receive. Insurance is a contract. If the practice accepts a policy they agree to accept the amount the policy pays as well as the patient’s responsibility as payment in full.

I received my EOB from my insurance a week before my second half cleaning appointment, which I was already dreading anyway. Not only had I been overcharged for the filling, I was charged $88 over the agreed price for the crown itself. And the filling? I wasn’t owed $60.90; I was owed $98.90. In total I was owed $191.90. My upcoming appointment was going to be $195.10. I showed my EOB and the billing staff claimed they hadn’t been paid by insurance and offered to credit the $60.90 to my bill that day. I knew if that happened I’d never get the correct amount refunded so I declined. They showed (unsurprisingly) an amount due from insurance that was about $100 over what insurance was going to pay them. Well, that might be due to their bill being off by several hundred dollars at minimum (it stands to reason their amount submitted isn’t the negotiated amount).

Last time for my root canal I paid $700 and they still came to me asking for $90 more a month later. And I can see this is standard practice. I got the staff to admit all new patients get deep cleanings (which is a huge foul when it isn’t clinically indicated - I have no periodontal disease per their own exam). Their next level billing department admitted to me that they overbill this way to collect so patients don’t refuse to pay post procedure. Again, there is zero legal basis for doing this because the billing errors don’t justify holding the correction and refund hostage waiting on insurance to pay. That’s utter and complete crap. I’ll stick with getting my exams from the military when on reserve duty, even if it is only offered once/year. I had a dental emergency that led me down this ridiculously expensive path and was thoroughly fleeced for my trouble. I won’t go back again.

Several weeks after the so-called resolution of my billing issue (in which I still overpaid completely unfairly), and me telling them I would never go to their clinic again, I got a call from Gentle Dental saying "can you come on Tuesday to start on your crown?" Like really?? This crown was never on my treatment plan, by the way, and I never heard about it before. The bottom line: I would not recommend trusting your teeth or your finances to this company, as they might mess up both.

There is no grievance dept for gentle dental in AZ... New manager took over has no clue what to do.. Told me to call other gentle clinics.. Been a runaround is what I went thru---3 years. Still asking for more refund.. Not near what I had to pay for correcting the crooked post- new bone grafting and so on... 3 years of running around they gave me. Old manager says she wants to help me. I have to drive 100 miles round trip...How many more trips will that take to resolve the problem??? Is that called help. Give me my money back uuugghhh. I left gentle dental in a flash.. Again stay away- save yourself grief- runaround- high turnover of dentists, I must have seen 4-7 different dentists while going to gentle dental over 3 years. Each time I went I a new face, go to a different place.