A Quality Dental Practice: No Chain, No Pitch, No Kidding

There is a quiet argument playing out in the practice of dentistry these days, and it has nothing to do with technology or new procedures. It is about whether stealthy sales-driven chains are going to completely take over dentistry. In Arizona, almost 15% of dentists now work for chains that have kept the name of the retiring dentist but are now owned and operated by Walmarts of dentistry. At 92nd Street and Shea, one practice is betting that patients know the difference between quality health care and the private equity machine.

Parkview Dentistry of Scottsdale is dentist-owned.  Patients seeing Parkview’s Dr. Linda Perkins — a dentist with more than two decades of practice who has earned Mastership in the Academy of General Dentistry — describe something that has become rare: no rush explanations before a procedure, treatment that is objective advice rather than a sales pitch and a focus on preserving your existing teeth rather than expensive replacements.

The public record bears this out. Parkview holds a 5.0 rating across more than 360 Google reviews, a figure that is difficult to manufacture and nearly impossible to sustain without earning it appointment by appointment. Read those reviews and a pattern emerges. Anxious patients say they stopped dreading the chair. They say the staff remembered their names, their concerns and their preferences.  A team trying to preserve your natural teeth, make you comfortable and not sell treatment.

Parkview is also bucking another trend in dentistry.  All specialty procedures like dental implants, root canals and extractions are referred to a small network of the best specialists. As Dr. Perkins explained, she treats every patient like her own family, and that means patients getting a specialist for specialty work.  You wouldn’t get a knee replacement from your GP – why wouldn’t you get a root canal from an endodontist who has spent two more years in school perfecting it? 

Then there is the schedule. The phones are answered as early as 4 a.m., with chair time beginning near dawn for busy patients’ schedules. Free covered parking, ground-floor access, round out an experience designed around the patient.

Scottsdale has no shortage of dentists. What it has fewer of are practices where the dentist seems genuinely invested in the patient. For residents of 85258 and the surrounding neighborhoods still looking for a family dentist accepting new patients, this one deserves a phone call.