My former dentists merged their practice with Sun West about 5 months ago and the experience has been very poor since then. Each of my 3 visits in that time has had some form of a "fail" in my opinion--mostly from the front-office staff. And that's too many fails for me. I'll be finding a new dentist.
This is probably TMI, but I feel like giving the details might help people decide if this the right place for them (and maybe help SunWest fix some personnel and process issues):
On the first visit, after my hour-long cleaning & check-up, the office manager assumed that I wanted to extend the visit with filling a cavity they just found and proceeded to get me to fill out the necessary forms while I was still in the dental chair. There was no introduction like "since you need a filling, we can do that today or book for another time since you probably didn't plan for this in your schedule." She assumed that I was going to do it then and there. I hadn't planned for the extra time so I had to quickly intercept and make it clear I couldn't do the filling right then and she seemed a bit miffed that I wouldn't do it right then. I'm not sure if this is standard practice with this office--to assume fillings should be done in the same visit as the check-up--but the previous office had never done this and it felt like a grab for money vs. really making sure me and my schedule were being taken care of.
On the second visit (for the filling), as they were about to get me prepped for the local anesthetic, the technician made some mention of a second filling they were going to work on that day. This was news to me. We had only discussed one filling on the previous visit. And as I asked some more questions to understand what was going to happen, I realized that the second filling was a cosmetic filling to "fix" a chip on my front tooth--not a cavity. This was something that we had never discussed before and something I had no care to fix as it's not very noticeable and wasn't a concern for cavities from any previous dentist I had met with. I had to get a bit brusque with the technician to make it clear that I hadn't been informed of this second filling and that I didn't want to take the time or money to do a purely cosmetic procedure. Once she pulled the dentist in to discuss, he was very apologetic and understanding and moved right along to the single cavity filling that I had originally come in for. (So that was a good part in the experience!)
On the third visit, there was a mixup between me and the front office regarding rescheduling my cleaning. They had called the day before to try to reschedule due to some conflict on their end but I was slammed at work and unable to call back. The voicemail they left was ambiguous and I made the mistake of assuming they were just calling to confirm I was still coming (as normally usually do). I showed up at the originally scheduled time but no front-office staff were there and had to wait for the office manager to arrive. When she did, she was very rude, putting all the blame on me for not having called back so I could have known the appointment needed to be rescheduled. I wasn't in a great mood at this point (from having to wait and her initial attitude) so I wasn't inclined to take the blame. I stated that I had received the voicemail but there was no indication in it that I needed to reschedule. She (very curtly) said HIPA laws disallowed them from saying that on the VM. I guess that makes sense, but the tone was not necessary. I then simply asked if I could still do the cleaning then or would need to reschedule. She was able to get me in (so that was cool) but still had some attitude in the process.
The doctor's are fine here, though you'll likely not see the same one's very often. They rotate a lot. But I find that typical of a lot of dental offices these days.
One huge plus for SunWest: Juan (one of the dental hygienists) is awesome. He does a great job with cleanings AND he's super friendly. If it weren't for him, I would have found a new dentist already.
Overall, I think if SunWest could get some friendly, customer-minded front-office staff, they would be in a much better position and would not lose my business. But at this point, it's too little too late.
Best of luck, guys.