By Dr. Stuart Curry, DMD
I’ve been practicing dentistry at Stuart Curry Dentistry on Cahaba River Road since 2007. I grew up here, went to dental school here, and spent three years in the Air Force before coming home. So when a neighbor asks me how to pick a dentist, I don’t give them a sales pitch. I tell them what I’d want to know if I were the one looking for a new dentist.
Here’s that conversation, written down. Short on time? Scroll to the bottom, screenshot the list of questions, and bring it with you. The rest is just why each one matters.
1. Drive time matters more than distance
Every article on this topic says “pick somewhere convenient.” That’s useless advice in this part of Birmingham, where three miles can mean eight minutes or twenty-five depending on the hour. Cahaba Heights sits right off 280, and 280 at 5 p.m. is its own kind of appointment.
Do this instead: pull up the practice’s address and check the drive from wherever you’ll actually be leaving from, work rather than home, at the time of day you’d realistically book. Then ask yourself whether you’d still make that drive for a cleaning you don’t feel like getting. Because that’s the visit people skip, and skipped cleanings are how small problems become crowns.
2. Ask how the office handles insurance before you ask if they take yours
“Do you take my insurance?” is the question everyone asks. It’s the wrong first question, because the answer changes depending on what you mean.
Some offices are in-network with your plan. Some are out-of-network but file your claims for you and apply your benefits. Some hand you a receipt and wish you luck. All three can honestly answer “we work with your insurance.” Ask which one it is, and ask whether they’ll give you a written estimate of your out-of-pocket cost before treatment starts, not after.
If you don’t have dental insurance, ask about payment options up front. Plenty of practices work with CareCredit or offer in-house arrangements. There’s no reason to be shy about it. Every office has this conversation ten times a day.
3. Look at the hours, not just the phone number
This is the most underrated item on the list. A practice can be excellent and still be a bad fit if you can’t get there without burning a vacation day.
We open at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays, which means you can be done and at your desk by nine. We’re closed Fridays. Neither of those is better or worse than another office’s schedule. The point is that you should know before you fall in love with a practice. Ask what the earliest appointment of the week is, and ask how far out they’re booking new patients. An office booking three months out for a cleaning is telling you something about how easy it’ll be to get seen when something actually hurts.
4. Ask whether you’ll see the same dentist every time
I’m biased here, so I’ll say it plainly: I’m the only dentist in my practice, and I think that’s an advantage.
When one person has looked at your mouth for fifteen years, they notice things a chart doesn’t capture. The tooth that’s been quietly shifting. The crack that’s a millimeter longer than last spring. The fact that you grind when work gets stressful. Continuity isn’t a luxury feature. It’s most of what diagnosis actually is.
Larger practices have real advantages, including broader availability and more hands on deck. But ask the question. If the answer is “whoever’s available,” decide whether that trades away something you care about.
5. Find out what happens in-house versus what gets referred out
There’s no right answer, but there is a right way to find out. Ask directly: what do you do here, and what do you send me elsewhere for?
At my office, the work we keep in-house includes preventive care and cleanings, fillings, crowns and bridges, dentures, implant restoration, veneers, whitening, root canals, and clear aligner treatment. Some things I refer out when it’s genuinely better for you. A severely rotated bite is usually better served by an orthodontist, and I’d rather tell you that than take it on. Every honest dentist has a version of that boundary. The ones worth trusting will tell you where theirs is without being asked twice.
One question parents should ask specifically: do you see children?
A lot of general dentists don’t. It’s not a knock on them. Treating kids is its own skill set, and some practices simply choose not to. But it means that if you’ve got a seven-year-old, a fifteen-year-old, and a husband who needs a crown, you may end up managing two different offices, two sets of paperwork, two insurance conversations, and two separate trips across town for what should have been one Saturday morning.
I see families, parents and kids at the same practice, same day when we can manage it. That’s not the right answer for everyone. Some children genuinely do better with a pediatric specialist, and I’ll tell you when that’s the case. But if you’re choosing between practices and nobody’s mentioned whether your kids are welcome, ask before you commit.
6. Ask what happens at 9 p.m. on a Saturday
Nobody thinks about emergency care until they’re the one holding a piece of their tooth. Then it’s the only thing that matters.
Ask how the office handles after-hours emergencies. Is there a number that reaches an actual dentist, or an answering service that tells you to visit an ER, where they can give you antibiotics and pain medication but generally cannot fix your tooth. Ask whether they hold same-day slots for existing patients. This is a two-minute question that will matter enormously exactly once, at the worst possible moment.
7. Notice whether they explain things before they do them
This is the one I care about most, and it’s the hardest to check from a website.
Some of the most frustrating conversations I have are with people who arrive holding a treatment plan from somewhere else that they don’t understand. Four crowns, a deep cleaning, a referral, and a number at the bottom, and no one walked them through why. Sometimes that plan is entirely appropriate and just poorly explained. Sometimes it isn’t. Either way, the patient can’t tell, which is the problem.
You should leave a first visit able to describe your own mouth. What’s healthy, what’s being watched, what needs attention now, and what can wait. If you can’t do that, either the dentist didn’t explain it or you didn’t feel comfortable asking. Both are worth paying attention to.
What to actually bring to your first appointment
📋 Screenshot this
- Will I see the same dentist at every visit?
- Do you see children, or can my whole family come to you?
- What’s your earliest appointment of the week?
- Are you in-network with my plan, or do you file out-of-network?
- Will I get a written cost estimate before treatment starts?
- What do you handle in-house, and what do you refer out?
- How do after-hours emergencies work?
Any office that gets annoyed by that list has told you something useful.
A note on reviews and awards
Read reviews, but read them for substance rather than score. Nearly every practice in town has a good average, so the useful signal is specificity. A review describing an actual procedure or an actual problem solved tells you far more than five words of praise. And notice who gets mentioned. The hygienist and the front desk matter more to your experience than I do.
Worth knowing too: some offices ask every patient for a review, and some don’t. That’s a difference in marketing, not in dentistry.
On awards, know that not all dental recognitions mean the same thing. Some are peer-reviewed by other dentists. Others are directories a practice can apply to directly. Either way, they tell you less than what your neighbors say about their actual visits.
If you want to come see us
We’re at 4851 Cahaba River Rd, Suite 101, and we’re accepting new patients. A first visit includes a complete exam with an oral cancer screening and a cleaning, and you’re welcome to email records ahead to office@currydentistry.com so we’re not starting from scratch. Call us at (205) 972-3831 or request an appointment online.
And if you read all seven of these and decide somewhere else fits your life better, good. That was the point. A patient who chose deliberately is a better patient than one who picked the first name on a list.
Dr. Stuart Curry, DMD is a Birmingham native who graduated from the University of Alabama School of Dentistry in 2004 and served three years of active duty in the U.S. Air Force at MacDill AFB, where he was named Dental Officer of the Year in 2006 and 2007. He has practiced in the Vestavia Hills area since 2007 and is a member of the American Dental Association, Alabama Dental Association, and Birmingham District Dental Society.