dental assistant

patient services representative

orthodontic assistant

dental hygienist

dentist

Chord Specialty Dental Partners

I came in as a new Orthodontic Assistant, with no previous experience i was trained on the job. Some what. Training was 6 weeks long. Which was fine, in ortho everything is hands on so i would eventually learn it at one point or another. However, during my early stages of training i could definitely tell that my Trainer seemed to be frustrated at everything i did. i just simply took it as she is just one of those people who just cannot train. which is fine, not everyone is meant to train people. As time progressed she began to bad mouth me to co-workers in front of patients and their parents ( while i was in the operatory with them). There was one instance my trainer put me to do a direct bonding U/L 6-6, however, at this point i have never seen my trainer do a direct bond  6-6 U/L. kind of threw me to the wolves who have not ate in 3 days. boy did those wolves tear me up!. i had no idea what i was doing, no idea what ETCH was!!!! and how important it is! Afterwards, multiple brackets came off the teeth, i insisted that i be the one to repair the brackets and fix them since i was the one who put them on. my trainer yelled at me and downgraded me as an assistant in front everyone on the clinic floor. as much as i want to curse her out i kept my pride and mouth shut and insisted that she help me or coach me through the process so i can do this correctly. the patients parent reported her to the onsite supervisor (front desk). of course nothing was done i was just told that she just needed time to warm up to me. FALSE!!!! just another poor excuse. as time went on it never ended meaning she never warmed up to me lol. she constantly belittled me and made me feel so stupid and dumb on a daily basis that the patients were noticing her attitude towards me. she never helped me succeed and be better. again management will never do anything about it. i am not the only one she liked to push around and verbally abuse there were many other girls and they too had reported her behavior. once again, nothing, no consequences. just goes to show they rather have someone with experience and nasty attitude than to have someone who wants to excel in this field and be better and has a positive attitude. 
forget going to lunch on time. every patient is seen no matter the time of day. always expect to stay late. if you have a family good luck. i traveled a lot with this company depending on the office by the time i left work around 6 ish, sat in rush hour traffic through 222 and picked up my kids from the sitters and got home it would be around 730 8 at night. even later if it snowed.  never received travel pay for all the offices i went to. when it adds up i spent a lot in gas. depending on location you can expect to see 75 to 250 patients a day. which means hurry and hustle which equals to lack of patient care! so if your'e passionate about teeth and your patients oral health just forget about it. this company does not care!!!
this place runs on constant changes to Informed consent, clicks and favoritism, rules and regulations will change every 3 months so never get adjusted to doing something the right way.
this is a good office to work at if you need experience or your'e just plain out desperate and want stress in your life. If you are experienced do not work here, look elsewhere!
then when you try to leave is when they want to listen to your concerns and figure out how they can make it a better work environment. that too is temporary and does not last. this place has a HIGH turnover rate. do not be that person, turn around now.

Work-life balance
Work-life balance at Childrens Dental Health is terrible. 
 At CDH they work their employees like dogs! They pack the schedule so full you have no time for a drink of water or bathroom break. They don't value their employees and the patients are just seen as dollar signs. Its a get them in and out factory style setting only with children. You have no time to appreciate and take care of your patients. Run away as fast as you can or you will regret it when you have no time for your family  when I started we were off fridays they have since made friday mandatory and have us starting a hour earlier. With no regard to how their staff will get their kids off to school or find day care that early. Its figure it out or leave. This wouldn't have been as bad if we were at least able to get out of there at a decent time. But because the schedule is so full and staff so low were playing catch up all day usually running hours behind while the manager sticks in a few extra patients here and there so she can meet her quota for a bonus. So when you should be leaving by 530 your not getting out until 7:30. I have left work as late as 8:30 at night.

Pay & benefits
My pay and benefits at Childrens Dental Health are decent you get 401k and health benefits as well as free dental care but don't expect much of a raise though. So if hired ask for a bit more.

Job security and advancement
In terms of job security at Childrens Dental Health, I think they have a everyone is replaceable mentality. In one of their offices the staff was so upset with how the manager was treating them that within 2 months  everyone had quit. Upper management never tried to intervene or fix the issue they just kept hiring new people.

Management
In general, managers at Childrens Dental Health very difficult to express your concerns to.

Culture
Collaboration with my colleagues at Childrens Dental Health is great the back staff team is amazing at the office I am at. Such hard working and loyal women.

Overall
My experience working at Childrens Dental Health has been a challenge. To see it go from such a amazing place to then become all about the money was terrible. They had a amazing group of women but they just kept making it more and more impossible to have a good day. The fact that they would have 3-4 staff members seeing over 85 patients a day (thats 5-6 patients every 30 minutes ) is very troubling.

Money over quality and 10 min prophy’s (even special needs and behavioral issues)=Burnout(supposedly normal apt times per regional management in dental offices), High risk CRA’s with no time for home care instructions or nutrition/habits, Overbook with one or two hygienists on staff, RDH’s also expected to take X-rays and chart with Dr exams so you end up running even more late cause assistants are too overwhelmed and busy, Writing and signing hygiene notes happen after hours, Regional management had no dental experience or knowledge in dentistry and just trained by corporate as some office managers, EFDA’s perform 3 mos prophy’s w/out RDH/Dr seeing pt at all, RDH/EFDA take final impressions/cement/fabricate fixed appliances on children, Not M-Th (not like they advertise-if they want you to work, you work on other days), No respect for Hygiene degree (cleaning machine that makes them $-honestly if they could they probably wouldn’t have hygienists and just EFDA’s so they could pay them less and make more money), Work over lunches a lot, Leave late a lot due to running late a lot, No positive reviews cause that would mean a raise plus they don’t want you to gain confidence and leave for something better, Negative environment (Staff meetings=You give your all and it’s never enough), Understaffed (High turnover w/ trouble finding new hires), They just tell you what you want to hear to please you so you don’t quit and then don’t follow through. It’s more like a clinic than private practice with high stress and drama. But maybe it’s better since I left since for years they kept saying it’s going to get better but it just kept getting worse during my time.

I knew that pediatric dentistry was fast paced and I was very excited to start this new chapter as a pediatric RDH. The manager assured me during the interview that there would be plenty of staff to support me as this was a high volume office. Boy was she telling me what I wanted to hear. Every day was overbooked with 4-6 columns of hygiene, 2 RDH’s on staff and one assistant if we got lucky which means about 10 min per child with X-rays (RDH has to take) prophy, exam, and treatment notes. Forget ever going home on time and if you
have little ones you won’t have any energy left at the end of your 10+ hour shift. Every week I kept asking if we are getting more assistants to help with taking  X-rays or doing treatment planning with the dentists and every day was the same lame excuse “yes help is on the way.” They tell you what you want to hear so you don’t quit..it’s a factory, it’s all about $$$. They have so many children with special needs that require extra attention and TIME to do their cleanings properly and it literally broke my heart every day that I worked there that’s how poor the quality of patient care was. I would never bring my children to this office for any treatment. This job is only good if you are straight out of school and need some experience. Please don’t consider working here if you are experienced as a RDH as they will low ball you on the money and you will burn out quickly and dread going to work every day. The only thing that kept me going was helping those little kids but I am ashamed I even took this job. It was quite awful and I’m glad I left and definitely won’t be using this on my resume.

Applied assurance and support for patients by scheduling accurate patient appointments.
▪Prepared and oversaw inventory control and ordering, increasing efficacy in production .
▪Facilitated patient payments for dental procedures, producing  multi-task oriented environment .
▪Effectively utilized various dental office systems such as: Dentrix, Suni, ACE, Patterson Eagle Soft, Microsoft Word,       Excel   and Power Point.

Prepared and delivered dental materials while providing   customer satisfaction, with finish results of a dental case.
▪Provided clear and concise post operative instructions while working in a fast pace environment.
▪Familiarized in pouring and trimming models as well as performing other laboratory procedures
▪Supported in the removal of excess cement used in filling process to ensure quality and performance
▪Aided the Dental Hygienist in Periodontal Charting and room preparation to guarantee team success.
▪Exposed and processed radiographs to conduct diagnostic treatment.
▪Maintained and prepared treatment rooms, instruments ensuring high quality performance.
▪Supported the dentist with chair side assistance during patient treatment, ensuring timely completion.
▪Assisted in a number of dental  procedures; such endodontics, prosthodontics, extractions, restorative, dental crowns and pediatric dentistry.

During my time at Chord I witnessed firsthand how ineffective leadership can undermine even the most talented teams. The biggest issue by far is the management structure—disorganized, unaccountable, and often completely disconnected from the day-to-day realities employees face.

Management of the Talent Acquisition team consistently failed to communicate expectations clearly, made major decisions without consulting or even informing the people affected, and seemed more focused on maintaining their own egos than supporting their teams. Feedback loops were nonexistent; concerns raised by staff were routinely ignored or brushed off. There was little to no transparency, and favoritism played a huge role in retention and getting any sort of constructive feedback. During my time with Chord I saw multiple employees get terminated. One senior TA specialist even recognized the disarray early and left on their own accord within only a few months of being hired.

There are smart, hardworking people at this company, but unfortunately, they're held back by leadership that lacks vision, consistency, and basic people skills. Until major changes are made at the top, I wouldn't recommend this place to anyone serious about professional development or long-term growth.

Work-life balance
If you are up front they can be very flexible with you. I have had to leave early or come in late and they worked with me.

Pay & benefits
I had an accident and I have the work insurance. I’m wondering what the heck it even covers because I have an almost $1000 bill from the ambulance, $200 from emergency, and a 1400 from a doctor visit. So I’m wondering what is covered??? I’m in network too.

Job security and advancement
They train people who want to learn and show initiative to learn. You can come from no dental background and start from the bottom.

Management
The management isn’t really any different from most. There’s is favoritism in the management circle. They don’t like to talk to you and find out what’s going on, just get you into trouble for mess you didn’t even do. Gets to a point where you just wonder what’s the endgame.

Culture
They are very diverse in the clinical setting.

Overall
A week in and I wondered if all hygienists are just rude, self entitled witches, till I came to Delaware. Nothing was ever done about this person but EVERYONE knows who I’m talking about when they hear about my accident. Sad. 
I try hard but I don’t anticipate enough times and I am working on it but to be told that because of that I don’t warrant the title of DA. A title I worked so hard for, people telling them that I left without helping my team. I would never do that.

This workplace suffers from deeply toxic leadership and a culture where employees are treated as disposable. Morale is consistently poor, and management seems more interested in superficial gestures like pizza parties than addressing the real issues driving burnout and turnover.

Patient care often feels secondary to internal politics and cost-cutting decisions. Leadership frequently appears disorganized, inconsistent, and disconnected from the realities staff face every day. HR does not function as a safe or trustworthy resource for employees, and many staff members are afraid to speak openly about concerns because retaliation or favoritism feels common.

There is also a noticeable culture at the leadership level that influences operational decisions in ways that can come across as unnecessarily harsh, unsympathetic, and unfair toward both staff and patients.

Leadership is heavily driven by corporate and financial decision-makers who appear to make operational choices based entirely on spreadsheets and metrics without understanding what actually happens inside the practice's day-to-day.

If you value supportive management, transparency, or a patient-centered environment, this is probably not the place for you.

My manager was the best part of my job. Other than that, hours were bad and the pay compared to most places, also bad. Benefits were good and in expensive. Corporate does not understand what it’s like to actually be in the office because they haven’t worked in one in years. Expect you to harass people for appointments, even go as far as call them at work to schedule an appointment. Even if you called them to schedule an appointment that same week, they want you to call again. The system is supposed to be up to date with how much an estimate for a copay is, most time it is very off and parents wind up paying an excessive amount more, and we would get yelled at by them. If the schedule falls apart, they expect you to fill the schedule and ask the parents why, when it’s none of our business why. They say they have a generous PTO policy but they do not, little to nothing. The best part of my job was my coworkers, the kids, and parents who were appreciative. I would never recommend anyone to work here. You will not be appreciated and it’s revolving door of when the next person would leave. 

PTO is TERRIBLE! You only get about 6 hours every month, which is 72 hours for a year. Not even a full two weeks. You work 8 hour shifts, for five days a week and you barely get any PTO. Additionally, they don't even give you any PTO to start with, you have to start accruing from ZERO. PTO/sick days are the same. If you get sick, good luck! You better hope you have PTO. It's also hard to get unpaid time off, even though you're already willing to go unpaid just to have some extended time with your family. If you're going on a week vacation, don't get sick or else you won't have any PTO left to use! For this reason, maternity leave is terrible too.

It is short-staffed most of the time, especially for the dental assistants and techs who have to find their own time to take breaks if there is no float to help. However, nurses do get covered for their breaks, unless you're in the PACU then you have to find your own time. 

Supplies are always running low and being replaced with cheaper quality products.

Co-workers are wonderful people, however many people are leaving due to their bad benefits. 

Top Job Titles	Average Salary
Dental assistant 248 salaries reported	$24.27 per hour
Patient services representative 154 salaries reported	$18.29 per hour
Orthodontic assistant 80 salaries reported	$20.69 per hour
Dental hygienist 70 salaries reported	$48.28 per hour
Dentist 91 salaries reported	$296,429 per year

Working at Chord Specialty Dental Partners: Company Overview and Reviews

Chord Specialty Dental Partners

Chord Specialty Dental Partners Ratings

Popular jobs at Chord Specialty Dental Partners

Salary Satisfaction

Job Seeker Tools

Employer Tools

Browse

Stay Connected