I was a patient of Dr. Chi's from May '2023 thru December '24. I paid her $36,000 to provide a…read moresinus augmentation and then to place five implants in my upper jaw as part of an "All on Five" permanent denture. The denture portion was done by Dr. Bryan Katz at Corner Dentistry. Including Dr. Katz's $15,000 fee, the total cost was $51,000.
Before I proceed with what I feel is a long but a necessary narrative to explain my poor review, I will say that Dr. Chi seems to be a fairly decent person, as is her staff. The office is bright and pleasant, and the facilities are clean.
However, I had a very bad and upsetting experience with her.
It began with suspect procedural decisions made at the start, that resulted in unnecessarily extending the duration of my procedure with resulting pain and suffering for myself.
Dr. Chi typically offered very confusing and/or contradictory post-op instructions to what was provided in writing. I developed a very strong lack of confidence in the experience level and/or training of most of her very noticeably young staff. Dr. Chi's more than occasional confrontational tone was disturbing, and most upsetting...her near complete tone deafness for my frustration and upset. I also feel she has a pronounced lack of empathy or understanding of the perspective of the patient sitting in the chair.
In my case, the implant that was placed in the synthetic bone (every other Oral Surgeon that I consulted with advised that they only use the patient's own bone as it is far less likely to reject the implant) did in fact fail. This was only found out after 14 months and mere weeks before Dr. Katz was to install the permanent denture device.
At that appointment, which I assumed would take a few minutes, it ended up being a very painful, confusing and very upsetting two hours. After enduring that with no explanation as to why it was happening, Dr. Chi came into the examining room after reviewing the radiograph of my jaw.
I assumed it would be a professional delivery of bad news. It was anything but. Dr. Chi came in and without acknowledging me, proceeded to run around the room, repeating "This never happens to me!!" and "I don't know why this happened!!!??". I was stunned, offended and very angry. To the point where when she stepped out, I asked the assistant if I was actually hearing and experiencing what I was.
To add insult to injury, upon checking out, the office manager cavalierly told me that I needed to schedule an appointment to come back in for another round of placing bone and then placing the implant again. I was told with no empathy, no apology, that it would be another year. I never received an apology from anyone.
I decided that I did not want to endure another 12 months and asked the team if it could work with the four implants that took. This turned out to be true and after a final check up with Dr. Chi, Dr. Katz installed the device in late December. Without asking, Dr. Katz provided me with an appropriate refund given the smaller device.
I reviewed Dr. Chi's $36000 bill and concluded that a fair reimbursement to me would be $10,000, $7000 for the failed implant (the averaged cost of five) and $3000 for the first surgery for the synthetic build-up, which failed.
I presented what I felt was this fair settlement to Dr. Chi, who did not agree with me and felt only that it was appropriate to offset any remaining balance I had by reducing it by $1600, cost of the failed implant. This was entirely not acceptable to me.
I am not litigious, but $10,000 is not a small amount of money, nor is the $36000 I had paid Dr. Chi.
I consulted with a lawyer who feels that should I pursue a lawsuit with Dr. Chi, I could reasonably expect to win the case, securing in the area of $200,000 in pain and suffering. I relayed this to Dr. Chi, and she still declined to do the right thing.
At this point in my life, I don't imagine that I care enough about money to pursue a lawsuit. But what I can do is provide this scathing review and strongly advise anyone considering Dr. Chi to go elsewhere.
