This was the most uncomfortable dental visit I've had in my life, and this review is for anyone who is drawn by the high rating this place has.
There is some serious issue with the hygienist Elizabeth. She is rather rude, and has the worst bedside manner and behavior I have ever seen from a medical professional.
I don't know if she was just having a bad day, or personally disliked me. I remained polite and respectful with her.
From the start of the visit, Elizabeth began repeatedly scolding me that my most recent dental visit was 8 months ago rather than 6 months.
It will sound like I am exaggerating when I say that I had to hear her tell me this nearly every 5 minutes... "that's why we recommend every 6 months" / "yeah if you're here every 6 months you won't be in as bad of shape and this will go a lot faster", seemingly bemoaning the cleaning she had to do.
Elizabeth also repeatedly made negative comments about the appearance of my teeth (color, shape), and tongue also. Beyond what was medically necessary - there were probably 20-30 comments about how bad my teeth were. I laughed it off, but a lot of people are self-conscious about this, and you will have a really embarrassing experience with her if you are.
After describing how bad my teeth were over and over again, Elizabeth brought up a front desk person while I was still laying on the chair to have me sign to pay an extra fee for the cleaning - when I had been told upfront my insurance would cover the visit. The explanation was that according to her, my teeth were in such bad shape that I had to pay $60 out of pocket to cover them.
This is really interesting because I had a cleaning at a different dentist just 8 months ago, which my insurance fully covered, and there was no extra charge, nor lecture about some horrific state of my teeth. Neither my eating nor dental habits have changed - if anything they've improved. All my dental visits in my life have been really positive experiences, and I have never been charged extra. I think this maybe just came from whatever personal issue she had with me.
Everything she said, she would repeat a minimum of 10 times. For example, maybe it's prudent to tell a patient: "be careful not to grind your teeth," once or twice during the exam. Elizabeth would loop, and keep lecturing me not to in a condescending tone of voice every few minutes, and when I responded that I did not think I did so, she continued each next repeated lecture insinuating I did.
After hearing a lot of these various negative descriptions of my teeth, I finally asked her what specifically she advised me to do or not to do dentally to fix what she was identifying. She responded that she could give me no advice because she's "not the doctor" and we have to wait for him.
Well the best part is... the doctor finally comes in, and starts remarking about how good the condition of my teeth is!
He looks in detail for 5-10 minutes and identifies basically no significant dental health issues - contrary to the various many Elizabeth said I had.
Elizabeth is deferent to him, but does eventually try to insist to him "but isn't this color a problem?", to which he responds it's fine and within the normal range. She was real quiet after this.
So I've endured an hour of insults for no reason, and am out $60.
I have visited many dentists and medical professionals in my life and I've never had someone treat me this rudely, it was extremely uncomfortable, and I would recommend not going unless you would like the experience I had. I will try to be fair and grant that maybe she is in fact very competent and skilled at the technical parts of her job, but she is horrible at patient communication. I want to emphasize that my issue isn't with her being critical (that is a part of her job) - it's how annoying the incessant repetition of everything she would say was, and her very condescending tone of voice and attitude throughout the entire visit.
It's a shame too because the dentist himself (Dr. Lamancusa?) was really excellent! He's very competent, polite, efficient, professional. The front desk staff are also very nice and pleasant too. If I had simply had a different hygienist it would've been a great experience.
(There's a lot of other bad stuff I'm leaving out, but one last great gem of this visit: it was very hard for her to get the X-Ray photos she wanted, so she did maybe double or triple the amount of X-Rays required to correct the errors. This felt terrible and I'm a bit uncomfortable with the triple radiation dose, but I empathize it's probably hard to do on her side. According to her, I was the problem causing this. The only control I have is biting down on the uncomfortable large jutting plastic thing you put into my throat. At one point the sensor falls on the floor, and she reacts in a rather sarcastic tone: "oh...! expensive sensor falling on the floor... yeaahh we don't want that... ") read more