Forward Dental is ruining my relationship with my dentist. I've been seeing him for more than 20 years and believe him to be an excellent practitioner. Recently he decided to eliminate his office help and transfer his practice to Forward Dental. I don't blame him because back office can be a distraction for a man who wants to be a dentist first, a family man second and a businessman a distant third.
But things started getting ugly the minute he changed. First, the new Forward Dental office started requiring paperwork. LOTS and LOTS of paperwork. I signed at least three forms each time I visited for the first several visits. Many of the forms were redundant from previous visits. The first receptionist, who was a very disagreeable person, couldn't explain to me why I had to keep filling out the same health history, payment agreement, waiver of liability, insurance assignment, etc. Over and over again.
Then, while actually in the dentist's chair I have been required to sign up to 3 additional forms. (On one visit I went home with 7 signed form copies stuffed into my pocket! I felt like I should have brought a briefcase and an attorney!) These comprise treatment plans with agreements to pay, information on drug reactions and (as I recall) a waiver of responsibility of some kind. These people take CYA to a frightening new level.in my view the chair should be a "sterile" environment—I don't want my dentist distracted by forms he has to get signatures on when he should be thinking about the procedure he's doing! And I don't want him effectively communicating to me "I'm going to do this procedure on you, but if anything goes wrong you've got to agree that it's not at all my fault." If I didn't trust my dentist so much, I would have run screaming from the treatment room. Further, my insurance handles all of my billings very well and I've always paid my balances in a timely way for more than 20 years, so no need to keep strongarming me on the payment thing.
Also, FD requires me to pay in advance before I can see my dentist. They claim I have to pay $X up front (always a random amount), but I've never had to do this before, and my insurance often doesn't require payments for certain treatments (cleanings, x-rays). Consequently, I've had positive balances on FD's account. I'm currently running a positive balance from more than a month ago. FD claims they are going to refund my money in a check, but when I called today the receptionist (yet another new voice) said that payments have to run a circuitous approval process and it could be another month or more before it arrives. I'm betting I won't see it by Christmas (today is October 27).
After my first series of visits related to a cleaning, x-rays, fillings and a crown, FD billed me in one lump sum, together with charges for my wife's cleaning visit. There were no explanations of charges, and no explanation for why what I paid in the office wasn't sufficient and why I wasn't charged before I left, as they often do. I knew I was being overcharged but the note on the bill said "insurance has paid, this balance is your responsibility." I waited a month and, sure enough, insurance paid down the balance.
By then another charge had appeared for another visit of mine, also one where I had prepaid at the counter, and also with no explanation of what services were rendered. (Yes, I had a lot of dental problems around that time.) I looked over my insurance coverage and checked my Notifications of Benefits from my insurance company and realized FD was overcharging me again. THis time I contacted FD asking for a breakdown of the bill. I got a note back with a highlighted invoice saying I was 60 days overdue and insurance had paid all, but no breakdown.
Calls to the receptionist du jour (the receptionists change constantly even though there is theoretically one assigned to just my dentist) weren't clarifying anything, so I wrote another letter to FD's central office in Brookfield; one copy to "Payables" and another to the "Directory of Community Relations, " a woman whose picture made her look like a Getty stock photo from the "beauty queen" category. I never got a response to either letter.
Another invoice arrived informing me that I was seriously overdue etc, etc, but no breakdown. Finally I wrote yet another letter, this one to my dentist personally. A breakdown eventually arrived. During all of this the insurance paid again, reducing my balance, and FD made two adjustments to the bill (unexplained and unrequested on my part) which reduced it to something that seemed closer to the right amount. I never did get a completely satisfactory answer to what some of the billing meant, but the balance was close to what I felt I owed.
I also asked them to stop billing my entire family in one invoice with no identification of patient; they are still doing this.
They are also still requiring me to prepay various random amounts at each visit—amounts the receptionist can't justify. Her computer just says I have to pay $X and she has to charge me before services can be rendered. The last time I had to pay something like $30 before my cleaning. My insurance covers cleanings at 100% and my entire out-of-pocket was paid for the year, so this is very confusing to me.in fact, I think it borders on fraud. As I noted, I'm currently running a positive balance with them, which they are aware of and are delaying refunding me.
Also, annoyingly, FD has a computer system that sends out various spurious mailings at seemingly random times. For example, three weeks after my recent cleaning I got a letter saying I was overdue for a cleaning and that I should make an appt right away. Today I got two identical letters saying I need to use up all of my insurance benefits for the year if possible to avoid making a copay in the next year (huh? But they charge me a copay with every visit including cleanings!), and that I should book a visit with my dentist right away if there's something that needs to be done. I HAVE already used up my benefits for this year—many weeks ago. I'm not sure why they sent me two identical letters but didn't send one to my wife. A call to the receptionist indicated that she has no control over this and she doesn't know who I can talk to to get these "marketing" mailings stopped. I have gotten other mailings from FD encouraging me to do other things, too. I never received or needed mailings like this from my dentist before.
Interestingly, all of the receptionists I've spoken with about my billing problems and the mailings have indicated in one way or another that FD is a frustrating place to work (might explain the irritability of my dentist's first receptionist and the seemingly excessive turnover since then), and that they often can't help patients and often don't know to whom patients should be referred in the central office. I also did a Better Business Bureau check and came up with some dismaying results. So it's not just me.
As much as it really hurts to think about giving up my dentist, I'm likely going to switch dentists before my next visit. My main fear is that FD will charge me an exhorbitant fee to get my treatment record and will probably delay that by months, too.
Unless you've got no other choice, I would avoid these people like the plague. My belief is that any dentist who would hook up with this organization probably isn't very professional in her/his work, or is just looking towards retirement.
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