John Humphrey Jr., DDS, LLC

I am truly sorry that you have felt misled, as this is not
our intent in any way. I take great pride in the level of ethics that is upheld
by myself as well as all of my employees and I have 100% confidence that in no
way have we ever tried to mislead or deceive you or any of our patients.
Again, I will point out that our reminder system does not
send out multiple text messages to a single patient that has multiple
appointments, but instead sends out one single reminder for the start time of
the first appointment. This prevents patients from receiving multiple reminders
which could lead to confusion as to what time they need to arrive.
The main frustration you have seems to be that you feel you
only scheduled one appointment. I understand that it might be confusing as to
why we would say that you have two appointments so I will try and help explain
our perspective. Your first appointment was with a hygienist for your cleaning
and exam. Your second appointment was with me (Dr. Humphrey), in a different
room for fillings. When there is a change in providers and rooms we consider
that to be two different appointments and they are scheduled in our software
program as such. We do not break up each individual procedure into separate
appointments, such as in your case you were scheduled for four fillings in my
operatory, this is considered one appointment rather than four appointments. The
maximum number of appointments a patient could have would be two as we have
only two types of providers in the office (hygienist and dentist).
Again, I can understand how this might be confusing from
your perspective and why there’s a misunderstanding as to how many appointments
you had scheduled. I sincerely hope that I have helped you be able to see how
we look at this situation as I know my eyes have been opened to looking at it
from a patient’s perspective. This is not something we’ve dealt with before but
moving forward we will continue to try our hardest to communicate clearly with
our patients in all situations.
Sincerely,
John Humphrey Jr DDS

I am writing in response to a complaint from my previous patient,
[redacted]. We take this very seriously because we deeply care about our
patients and the experience they have while they are in our care. First, I will
say that we have emailed Mr. [redacted] prior to him submitting this complaint...

stating
the following:
“In no way did we ever want this situation to continue to
escalate and still be a concern for you. I believe the best way to dissolve the
situation is to disregard the balance for the missed appointment fee. I will
take the charge off of your account and mail you a copy showing a zero balance.
We hope that you have a better experience at your future dental office.” 
Secondly, we have an email from Mr. [redacted] stating the
following:
“Hey – I need to make an appointment for a cleaning and
finish up fixing my fillings. Can you give me dates / times for open slots?”
I am assuming Mr. [redacted] must have forgotten that this was
his original request, as it was back on September 15 that this email was sent
to us. To clarify, Mr. [redacted] requested an appointment for both a cleaning and
for fillings, which requires time (1 hour) with a hygienist and time (1 ½ hours)
with Dr. Humphrey in a separate operatory. We responded to his request with an
email stating the following:
“Good morning [redacted]! I’m assuming you would like to have
the cleaning and the fillings done in the all the same day. Dr. Humphrey has
the following openings…”
I am attaching all the emails correspondence with this
response, all showing that both Mr. [redacted] and our office were aware that there
were two appointments scheduled at his request, one for his cleaning and the
other for fillings. Mr. [redacted]’s concern of email and text confirmation of only
one appointment is easily explained, as our software program that sends out
those reminders does not send out multiple alerts when a patient has multiple
consecutive appointments on the same day, as this would be a possible source of
confusion.
As to the charge for the missed appointments, here is our
policy:
Appointment Policy
An
appointment in our office is reserved specifically for you and the doctor or
hygienist.  To give full attention to
you, we do not “double book” our schedule. 
We also leave room in our schedule for “emergency” patients who have
urgent needs.  Leaving this open space
will create minimal impact on patients who have reserved an appointment.
If you are unable to make your reserved time, we
ask you to call our office during business hours at least 2 business days (48
hours) in advance.A “no-show” appointment is simply one where the
patient does not call our office or leave a message in accordance with the
above guideline.On the first no-show appointment, you will be
charged a cancellation fee of $45.After two no-show appointments, you may be
dismissed from the practiceIf you are running late for an appointment, we ask
that you call us to keep us informed. 
This will allow our schedule to flow as smoothly as possible.  We will do all we can to adjust our schedule
to get you in for your treatment.  Our
scheduling coordinator will work with you as needed.
As you can
see, our fee for a missed appointment is $45, which would be doubled for
missing two appointments. In a desire to be gracious, we reduced the fee to $50 rather than charging $90.
 
We are in no way trying to be deceptive with Mr. [redacted] or
any of our patients, but rather we are trying to provide excellent care for all
of our patients. This does require our patients making good on the commitments
they make to us, something I do not think this is too much to ask. We are
completely aware and thoughtful that life brings unforeseen circumstances, and
in those times we are always willing to be understanding and flexible. However,
we do appreciate our patients being thoughtful of our time and energy that we
put into caring for them. We have been completely respectful of Mr. [redacted]
throughout this process, in spite of being threatened of losing patients that
are co-workers of Mr. [redacted].
I hope this helps clear up and concerns and/or
misunderstandings. Again, I am attaching copies of the email and mail correspondence between
Mr. [redacted] and my office as well as a copy of the Dentrix Office Journal. Please
don’t hesitate to let me know if there’s anything else needed.
Sincerely,
 
John Humphrey Jr DDS