The Dental Chair

I took a personal day today to go have a crown started and do a filling. I have gone to this dentist that I really like for 3 years, and I have always paid my bill in full.

The young dentist now joined another dentist and they hired an office manager, Mr. Heavy, the bill collector. It is almost as if the provider is good cop, and that guy is bad cop. He is 6 feet four inches and about 220 pounds. He is very aggressive about being paid.

I came in for the 815am appointment, and handed them a check for $150 to be a down payment on the rest of the crown. We both have had a lot of dental work done this year, and I knew this final crown would cost us about $1,000 out of pocket.

I was in the dental chair in a prone position, all numbed up and they had already drilled out the decayed tooth. The dentist had stepped out for a minute, and this office manager pops his head into the room and exclaimed that he needed to talk to me. He launches into this speech about did I realize that we were out of dental insurance for the year, and, if I could not afford the whole thing,  I could just get a temporary crown until January. I cut him off, and said no temporary anything--we finish this thing. I asked with irritation if he wanted to be paid in full today, is that what this is about. He backpedaled, and set he was just making me aware, and then fled the room.

We got the filling filled and the temporary crown in. As I left the receptionist at the front desk said the office manager wanted to see me in his office. I went to see him, and he whips out this prepared statement for over $1400 that we owed. Minus my check for $150 and a 10% free discount--which I thanked him for--he pointed out that I owed him $1262. I said we will have it paid off by November, 1st. That concluded, I turned to him as I left and said I really did not like him intruding right in the middle of a procedure to talk financing. He did not apologize, and did not promise not to do this in the future.

The next time I go to the dentist, I will make it clearly understood that Mr. Heavy can lay his reality on me before or after, but not during the procedure. These young dentists, his bosses, that allow him to interrupt procedures will lose clients and hurt their business. They seriously need to rethink this horrible business strategy.

People are anxious about going to the dentist. Drills and big needles in your gum are stress enough, without this looming character standing over you when you are lying prone in a vulnerable position. It feels intimidating, it adds stress to the situation, and if it is meant to get my attention: it did. It infuriated me. It will not force me to pay up any faster, but made me mad enough to consider switching dentists--hopefully the next one is not quite so aggressive about being paid. I will give them another chance.

This guy, in the long run, will cost them business. I told my wife about it, and she was horrified.

I am just finishing up a workers' compensation claim, and the 250 pound weight-lifter chiropractor would barge in during treatments and complain about not being paid. I am done with him now, and would never  go to him again, not for failure to provide excellent treatment, but due to the heavy-handed pressure and inappropriate communicating over payment.

These providers are for profit businessmen, and they should make money and need to make money. They should be paid in full in a timely manner for services rendered. I always pay my bills, but that does not seem to matter with this new generation of providers.

To me it is another sign of decaying and dying America. Graciousness and that illusion of comity and good will that was once commonplace between provider and patient now seems to be passe. Wait until the patient and vulnerable in the middle of treatment, and then shake him down about coughing up what he owes or will owe. Nothing like a captive audience to send that message home.

That such practice is the height of professional rudeness, tackiness, tastelessness never occurs to these boors. Angered and offended customers are not good for repeat business.