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Welcome Everybody!
Why we do what we do the way we do it.
As a father of 3 little boys (1, 3, and 5 years old), I have recently become a "regular" in the local emergency room. From cuts on foreheads, to injured elbows I have spent at least 10 hours waiting in the emergency department for different things in the last few weeks. Not only have I had the pleasure of these hospital trips, but invariably each injury then requires follow up visits with different medical specialists (plastic surgeons, orthopedic guys, you name it). One thing that I have consistently noticed for each of my trips to the doctor is simply how poorly people get treated in the medical world today.
Okay, I'll cut the emegency department some slack. Our injuries were, on the grand scale, small time, so the interminable waits were one thing. But couldn't someone at least have smiled at us or asked us how we were doing the entire time? What I have found much worse is the treatment received at the specialist's offices--and not from the doctors. Rather the process of making appointments with office staff and then the way we were treated as new patients in each office was truly alarming. Each office I have visited had huge office staffs --seemingly hopelessly overworked. In between each interuption on the phone or in person, the staff members made me feel like I was interupting a very important part of their day, and were only willing to throw whatever paperwork was needed out at me as fast as possible so they could try to catch up with something else that was obviously more important than me or my kids. (I was tempted several times to stop them and remind them, that without patients, they would have no job, but I could never find a way to say that in a nice way.....). When I tried to ask one particularly harried lady why I needed to fill in the address, phone number, and insurance contact information on the new patient form, when she had JUST photocopied my insurance card that had all of that information on it she kind of glared at me with eyes that would give a kid a nightmare and did not say a word.
I concluded that the medical world has largely sold their souls to the insurance companies. [Of note, on a trip to Kentucky by train that I took with my family last year, we all marveled at how the biggest buildings in each city we passed through had the names of prominent insurance companies on them.] So the insurance companies seem to be doing just fine. But by forcing medical doctors to practice volume style medicine, PEOPLE get lost in the shuffle. There is simply no way a doctor or his front desk can possibly get to know each of the 60 people they see in a day, when the next day, another 60 will be walking in the door.
Luckily, in dentistry, we still have a choice. We can still choose to do high quality and low volume work. I am very proud of the choice that I made almost 15 years ago when I took over my dad's practice. My father had always practiced one person at a time dentistry; and I chose to do the same. While we are not perfect, Martha, Erika, and I all hope that your experience with us in our office is certainly far different from what you are likely experiencing in the rest of the medical world. If not, please be sure tell us. Your opinion matters.
Have a great day!
Dr. Bard J. Levey
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