The unexpected and high costs of services and treatment are the most common complaint that patients have about dental practices, according to a survey by DentaVox, followed closely by the quality of those services and treatments and long waiting times. Overall, the top complaints included:
- Unexpected high costs of services and treatments (20.9%)
- Quality of dental services and treatments (19.3%)
- Long waiting times (15.4%)
- Post-treatment complications and adverse reactions (7.6%)
- Adverse incidents during treatments (5.6%)
- Poor hygiene (5.6%)
- Delays in diagnosis (4.8%)
- Inappropriate behavior of dental staff (4.8%)
- Use of old technology and methods (4.5%)
- No or too little explanation about services and treatments (3.9%)
- No or too little consideration of patient desires (2.9%)
- No or too little consideration of patient symptoms (2.8%)
Some of these issues matter more than others, explained DentaVox, which also asked its respondents which complaints were the most serious. According to the survey, the most serious complaints included:
- Quality of dental services and treatments (18.2%)
- Poor hygiene (13.6%)
- Post-treatment complications and adverse reactions (10.3%)
- Unexpected high costs of services and treatments (9.5%)
- Adverse incidents during treatments (9.2%)
- Use of old technology and methods (7.0%)
- Inappropriate behavior of dental staff (6.5%)
- Delays in diagnosis (6.2%)
- Long waiting times (5.0%)
- No or too little consideration of patient symptoms (3.4%)
- No or too little explanation about services and treatments (2.9%)
- No or too little consideration of patient desires (1.9%)
- All are equally serious (5.0%)
So how many complaints would cause patients to choose a different dental practice? DentalVox crunched those numbers too:
- Several serious complaints (40.6%)
- One serious complaint (23.3%)
- Many complaints (16.1%)
- Several non-serious complaints (14.9%)
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