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Wednesday, June 5, 2013

A DENTIST IS A DENTIST part II


A DENTIST IS A DENTIST part II
 
When we last left the Cranky Old Man, he was forced to leave his long trusted dentists in order to continue his insurance coverage. 

If you missed yesterday's post it is not too late to catch up here:
 http://joeh-crankyoldman.blogspot.com/2013/06/a-dentist-is-dentist.html

OK, now on to part II

One year ago, I had a tooth start to act up.  It was a tooth that had a root canal done on it years ago and now had a slight infection.  Two years before, Dr. Dembinski had given me some anti-biotic for the same tooth when it "acted-up" and that did the trick. 

I went to my new dentist, Dr. Patel, hoping the same anti-biotic would again do the trick.  I had seen Dr. Patel only once, for an insurance required referral for an extraction.  He signed the referral very well.  Mrs. Cranky thought he was a "little creepy."  I ignored her woman's instinct for "creepy" and said, "come on, a dentist is a dentist." 

Dr. Patel told me my problem was I had a very unusual tooth.  It had a fourth root that was missed by my previous doctor and not treated.  That was what was causing me my pain.  It needed another root canal and a crown, an expensive and time consuming procedure. 

I was about to go on a two week vacation and asked for the anti-biotic to stem the discomfort until I returned.  I thought it unusual that my trusted dentist of over 35 years would miss a root in an ex-ray.  Dr. Patel wrote a prescription and told me to return after vacation to fix the tooth for good.

I did not go back. 

That tooth has not bother me since, but I recently had another tooth act up.  I had forgotten Dr. Patel’s number, so I looked it up on the internet.  Here is what I found:

Metuchen dentist charged with falsifying dental records of 3 children, grandmother killed in South Plainfield fire –

Dr. Patel had been committing insurance fraud and was caught because of faulty dental records used to identify victims of a fire.

Then I looked for reviews of Dr. Patel’s work: 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
3/8/12
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and.... now he's in jail for malpractice...busted! http://www.MyCentralJersey.com/article/20120308/NJNE...|mostview 
Paid/Co-pay: $1111
10/24/11
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Stay away from this guy. Rip offffff... Glad I met dr. Susan krutyansky in metuchen. 
Insurance: Aetna
9/21/07
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I am the same person that have rated here Dr.Patel as good doc on 09/14/07. I should say what happened to me after that. The waiting was pathetic at the room for the root canal procedure say about 55 mins. After giving the numbing injection he said after 15 mins he will be back, but i saw him after 55 mins. Please be very careful and make sure several times that the prescribed medication is for the right purposes. Eg: He told me to take antibiotics & wrote down painkiller medication only but did not include the antibiotic. The receptionist was trying to defend that the doc prescribed the antibio in the paper, but i got the copy of the prescribed paper from walgreens & YESS the doc was wrong. I think he knows what he's doing but VERY VERY CARELESS . Good luck..... 
Insurance: Aetna

   

10/24/12
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This Doctor ruined my mouth.....he split my tooth in half while putting in a crown then was forced to do extraction. While doing extraction he broke a peice of my jaw off and left it under the Gum. A year later I had excrutiating pain went to another dentist and he was the one who told me my jaw was broken......guess what another surgery. I am debating whether or not to sue but now I think he's in jail? 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

Hmmm…Maybe a dentist is not always a dentist.

I went back to Noonan and Dembinski.  If I can’t get different insurance I will just have to find a way to pay.  I would rather lose the money than lose my mouth!

And I am going to take a wild guess that the other tooth does NOT have a fourth root!

15 comments:

  1. Oh god, it's makes my teeth itch just reading this! I've had two bad dentists - one who didn't use the right adhesive to secure a cap on a broken tooth and it had to be repaired 5 times in 3 weeks resulting in a little more tooth being taken each time to give a 'working edge' - in the end I had to have a post put in the tooth. the other was when I had a root canal - 7 injections and I still felt every bloody thing for 40 minutes - total agony!

    On the plus side - I now have a fantastic dentist called Sarah :-)

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  2. Just hearing the word "dentist" makes me cringe. Which is kind of sad because the dentist I have now is very good. But the dentist I had as a kid. A butcher.

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  3. You need to listen to your wife's intuition more. I wonder where...ahem...he went to dental school? I'm guessing he wasn't an honors graduate.

    K has gone throuhg several dentists in the past few years before she finally found a good one. My dentist retired and I haven't needed a dentist since, but when I do I'm going to K's. No sense reinventing the wheel.

    S

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  4. yikes!

    (and don't give me grief about stringing out a cattle egret catching a grasshopper into several posts. i take too many photos. at least i'm not yammering on about teeth and jaws, etc.) :)

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  5. There is absolutely NO way even a bad dentist could have missed seeing a fourth root in an xray!!

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  6. Good move. I've never had dental insurance, and my mouth currently is the equivalent of a Jaguar. No regrets.
    I use dental insurance for my grand kids. A new experience. The statement for services blew me away. I go in for a cleaning and x-rays, less than 200. Their cleaning under insurance: 1000, less a bunch of discounts and write offs and insurance was still billed about 400 each. Something's wrong here.

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  7. How scary that a quack like that still practices! Thank goodness you have good gut instincts.

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  8. There are good and bad in every profession. Unfortunately the bad are what we hear about the most.

    An extra root missed on an x-ray? I agree with fishducky on this one. Not even a bad dentist could miss that, unless they were on a chemical cloud or something...

    I look up everything online. Add in the word "Complaints" and oh boy do you hear it all if there is anything to hear. One or two- take it into consideration that you just can't please everyone. Several complaints- you might want to look elsewhere. Just a helpful tip here from a bad pixie

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  9. Wow! It never occurred to me to look up reviews online for a dentist. If I ever have to leave my dentist, I'll definitely research my next one. I'm so glad you didn't get that unnecessary root canal. Ugh!

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  10. Good thing your psychic instincts kept you out of that guy's clutches. I would let a dentist do anything as long as he gave me gas. Even waking up with my shirt untucked, like Jerry Seinfeld, to see dentist Tim Whatley zipping his pants, would not make me think twice. Which might be why my first root canal left me with no feeling on the right side of my lip, chin, and lower jaw for six months.

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  11. Something tells me your wild guess is spot on.

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  12. AAARGH! As if they're not scary enough with the drills and tools and the leaning over you wth the BRIGHT LIGHTS!

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  13. Dentists give me terrors to begin with. The dentist of my childhood must have been trained in interrogation tactics, he was brutal, and he strongly disliked children... especially if they were afraid. I've also had some shoddy dental work done as an adult, most of which eventually crumbled and had to be redone. So glad you "smelled a rat" on this one, and decided not to let him go for that extra root. I'm sure his bank account was aggrieved. Great story, scary reality!

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  14. That's almost as bad as when my mother in law learned that her beloved doctor of many years was in jail for having performed his own special gynecological examinations for some of his sedated patients.

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  15. Well, that is awful. What if you will encounter a dentist like this?

    @Josie: You are right. Especially that most of us, like me, I love to leave my child to the dentist if I have something to do. Now I have learned. Or at least got warned.

    Thank you so much for this post...

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