Dr. Ladd M Horvath, DDS

This review should have been written long ago. Dr Horvath's work was not the problem, but the treatment I received from one of his orthodontic assistants was. She was always polite and friendly when interacting with other patients who were white children, but with me she was consistently impatient, disrespectful, and unprofessional. I remember getting my braces tightened and needing to change out by bands and being asked to select a color. I took a moment to decide and the assistant sighed loudly and rolled her eyes. She was working with another patient prior to me and did not do the same while she took time to pick out her color, she was smiling patiently. On another occasion I had to take an x-ray and she asked me to take out my hair tie because of the metal. I let her know my hair tie did not have metal, it was all rubber and she screamed at me to take it off. On another occasion I was brought back and laid in the chair for an hour before she came to work on my braces. I can confidently say that I was treated this way due to my race. I wish I had said something to my parents and advocated for myself so that I could have been treated with respect and professionalism as a patient, but I was only 10 years old at the time and did not think to do so. If it happened to me today I would have said that I did not feel comfortable having that particular assistant work on my teeth because of the way she both talked to and treated me as a patient. Racism should not be tolerated anywhere and employees should not be able to act out on their racism in their place of work. It reflects poorly on the business as a whole. I am hoping that things have changed since I was a patient.