Smile Center

Make appointment on phone for cleaning and checkup plus fill cavity. more

I brought my client there to get their teeth cleaned. They had not had this done in 2 years due to hospitalizations. We were right on time and checked in. The secretary said we were supposed to be 10minutes early for paperwork and that they left a message the night before. They made us wait an hour because they said we were 10 minutes late. My client was on oxygen and had a trache. When I walked up to the desk after an hour they thought it would be another half hour. Another hour later I went up and said we were leaving. Then they said a hygenist would be ready for us...we went back and the hygenist said that no dentist had time to clean my clients teeth..She said she apologized for our wait of two hours..the dentist that was supposed to work on my client was sick and not in that day which was why we had to wait. Not because we were supposedly 10 minutes late..A dentist then came to do a check looked in her mouth and said no tooth decay and said she could fit us in an hour...My client needed suctioning and we needed to go...This was awful..I could of looked in her mouth instead and say she was fine. The dentist was rude and told us to come back when she was not sick. Pros: nothing Cons: no privacy, rude dentist, scheduling team rude as well more

I started going to The Smile Center in Big Lake a few years ago when I did not have dental insurance and it was an emergency. That summer my whole mouth started to act up with gum disease and bone infections, a dentist should know that this is one sign of diebetes and yet they continued to pull teeth and gave a hint as to why my mouth continued to not heal and have problems. It was clear from day one that this dental office is one of the few that accepts all kinds of medical assistance and state paid dental insurance programs as well as others that do not have insurance. There is nothing wrong with that in any way, but over time it became clear that this is a operation that moves these people in and out and uses them to milk the state programs with perhaps not their well-being in mind, for instance I am sure there are a lot of dentures and partials( which they make there on site) and teeth extractions going on when perhaps if the patient had better insurance or if they were well shod, there would be other alternatives. Its very sick and sad. If you have to have a lot of teeth pulled as with dentures, they do NOT send you to an oral surgeon, but instead only deaden with novocaine and gas if you INSIST on gas and pull them all there! I have never heard of this before. Most of the examination rooms do not have walls and most of them you have a clear view of the patient in the next seat getting work. They actually pulled one of my teeth while a young girl around age 8 sat in the next chair and watched in horror as it was a hard tooth to get out. Most of the dentists are from the middle east, which again, is not a bad thing in itself, but they have no credentials such as dental college accreditation from a certified college or dental school that I could recognize here in the States. They operate on the bare minimum of equipment and god forbid if you want a refill for pain killers, some dentists there flatly refuse to refill and tell you to take over the counter medications while waiting for the appointment to extract it due to time constraints on the patients part, I was refused on two separate occasions for a second refill or just a few more when the pain was excruciating. You will call in and get a call back after hours being told the dentist flat out refuses to give more and to get some over the counter pain medication, with no explanation. It was painful and humiliating. I wonder how they would feel if it was them in the pain, hmmm as well as the fact that no known history of abusing , just a normal pain threshold almost forcing you to make the decision to have the tooth extracted rather than look into having it saved some other way. They are quick to suggest extracting teeth as the first solution to the problem and I have known one patient that got a set of dentures that to this day are still painful to wear because they were not fit right as well as a few others that got great amount of teeth extracted only to be told by another dentist that it was unnecessary. I feel sorry for the patients that have to go to this clinic because its the only choice for medical assistance cases in the area . Intend to make complaints to upper management, the American Dental Association, and a local news station on possible scams, discriminating care of those less privileged on assistance while taking tax payers money and not giving quality choices of care plans and instead extracting teeth to make room for dentures or just no teeth at all, etc. Do not believe the good reviews on here, think they were set up, or the patient was very lucky or are not wise to the game. There are other places , please use them. Pros: Maybe in a dire emergency when no-one else will take you.. Cons: Read the review. more

I went to the Smile Center on an emergency basis, my regular dentist was booked. There was no privacy, you could hear everyones' apppointments, as there is a row of chairs with no barriers. They took an x-ray and then the dentist came over to look at my tooth. He declaired after about 10 seconds ""have to pull it."" There was no explaination as to why, he didn't tell me what was wrong with my tooth or if I had any other options. I told him I couldn't do it right then, as it frightens me greatly and would need to go somewhere where I could be sedated. At that point he walked of without another word, no discussion of what was wrong or what I could do for the pain. The hygienist offered me a copy of my xray and that was all. Waste of time and no ""bedside manner."" It would have been nice to have been treated more like a person and less like a number. Pros: weekend and evening ability, same day emergency visits Cons: the dentists are rude, no bedside manner, and don't seem to care about patients more