Complaint Review: Theodore Ritota

My daughter saw Dr. Ted Ritota on 4/17/12 for an abscessed tooth. She was in an extreme amount of pain and her dentist could not see her for another week. She has Metlife Dental insurance and Dr. Ritota is listed as a network dentist with Metlife (the only reason that we called him). Per Metlife - dentists are only permitted to charge the Preferred Dentist Provide fee, but he told her that day that she needed to pay $350 and they would refund her the difference after they got the EOB from Metlife. Because she was in severe pain, she paid him $350, hoping the money would be returned by the end of the week. It was not refunded by the end of the week, and she could not pay her. All of this was explained to the dentist but he did NOT care about her financial plight.

The EOB was completed by Metlife and the amount of money paid to the dentist was $198. The EOB states that the patient responsibility is $68.40, meaning that the dentist owes my daughter $281.60.

He refuses to give her a refund because he "helped her" and "he told her that $350 was the fee". This is a breach of his contract with Metlife and we would have NEVER picked him if it were not for his contract with Metlife. He is willing to give her the amount that the insurance paid him ($198), but when she protested that it was not what he owed her, he refused to give her the money because she had a bad attitude.

I tried to speak to him calmly, but he got quite rude and irate with me. He insisted I take the $198 as that was the "only way to resolve this". When I stated that there were two ways of resolving this (Give us the refund of $281.60 that we or owed, or we file a complaint/suit against him) he refused again to give her the refund she is owed, thereby forcing us to file the complaint with Metlife and potentially a suit in small claims court.

On their website - they said that patients are their priority, but I think this proves that MONEY is their priority and they don't really care what happens to their patients.  Unless you want to be overcharged for services and treated like scum when you try to get back what is rightfully yours, I would avoid this dentist at all costs.