New Patients

What to Expect

Your first appointment

When you arrive for your first visit, please be prepared to complete all insurance and health information forms that will allow us to begin your dental treatment. We understand how that may seem like a laborious thing, but we truly need information to be able to serve you better. HIPAA requirements are adhered to in our office. We appreciate your help in establishing your dental records. You can speed this process up by filling the forms out before you come in. We’ve conveniently added our forms here online so you can download them, print them, fill them out, and bring them with you to your first visit. Here are the form required:

Patient Information
Medical History
Insurance Info
Condition of Treatment

Your initial exam may last approximately one hour. We perform a complete examination, necessary X-rays and, in most cases, we will also clean your teeth on this visit and provide an evaluation that will outline your existing dental problems and proposed treatment.

Some new clients have extensive dental needs, and we sometimes request a return visit for a co-diagnosis appointment to outline possible treatment options and treatment timelines.

Your Examination

We check and evaluate your teeth with all existing restorations, your soft tissue including your gingiva (gums), throat, tongue, muscles and soft tissue of the mouth. We may examine the muscles of the head and neck, your jaw joint (TMJ). We examine all tissues for oral disease including oral cancer and oral manifestations of undetected systemic diseases. Radiology (X-rays) helps us detect decay, bone levels around the teeth and other diseases. We will take necessary X-rays on your initial visit to enable us to make a thorough diagnosis. At re-examination appointments, we may not take X-rays every time. Guidelines for full-mouth or panoramic X-rays are every 3-5 years and periodic bitewing X-rays 6 months to 3 years, patient dependent. These guidelines, of course, could vary from patient to patient.

Planning Your Treatment

We may offer you more than one plan for treatment. One treatment plan may address immediate needs with active decay, broken teeth, gum problems, etc. The other treatment plan will address not only your immediate needs, but take into account, cosmetic questions that can improve your smile and appearance, orthodontic situations and any other issue that could be addressed by modern dentistry.

Our Goal

Simply stated, we will always do our very best for you and yours. We will offer you the opportunity to make the decisions on your own oral health. We will generally prescribe the ideal or optimal treatment and allow you to choose alternatives. We want you to receive the best care for a fair fee.

What to Bring

Your first appointment we will need a bit of information. You can get these things ready before hand to save you time when you get here. You can print and fill out these forms below:

Patient Information Form
Medical History Form
Insurance Info Form
Condition of Treatment Form

Also you will need to bring some payent options if your insurance is not covering your appointment. You will need:

Form of payment (we accept credit card, check, and cash)
Form of Identification