PORTLAND, OREGON - ACCEPTING NEW PATIENTS
It has been six years. We are not going to say a word about it.
Your first visit is a full exam, six low-dose X-rays, and a printed treatment plan with fixed prices in your hand before anyone picks up a drill. We have written 4,212 of those plans since 2011 on SW Alder Street. Not one of them changed without a second signature from the patient.
Takes 40 seconds and does not ask for a card.
In network with seven major PPO plans
Open two Saturdays a month
Free parking behind the building
In network with all seven, and we file your claim the same day, not the same week.
In network means you pay the negotiated rate rather than our full fee. No insurance? The Alder Row membership plan is $29 a month and covers both cleanings and all your X-rays. Full terms are in the price list further down this page.
Delta Dental
PPO and Premier
Cigna
DPPO
MetLife
PDP Plus
Aetna
PPO
Guardian
PPO
Ameritas
PPO
Principal
PPO
Almost nobody avoids the dentist because of the drill.
You see, the drill takes four minutes and you are numb for all four of them. What keeps people out of the chair for six, nine, eleven years is what happened the last time they sat in one. We asked 340 new patients what had kept them away. Three answers covered 81% of them.
You get the lecture first
Chair goes back, light comes on, and before you have said anything you are hearing how much bone you have lost and how this was all avoidable. You leave feeling worse than the tooth felt. We do the talking with the chair upright and your shoes still on the floor, and the gap does not come up.
The quote moves
The estimate said $1,400. The statement said $2,190, because a build-up got added mid-appointment and nobody stopped to ask. Every price we quote is signed by both of us before treatment starts. If we find something extra in there, we stop, we show you, and we re-quote. You decide with the drill switched off.
Your 2:00 was really 2:40
You took a half day, sat in the waiting room for 40 minutes, and got 20 minutes of care. We book 60-minute first visits, 45-minute check-ups, and 60-minute hygiene slots, each with a 15-minute buffer, which is why our median wait past appointment time is six minutes. It is a scheduling decision, not a miracle.
Three things we put in writing before anyone touches your teeth.
Ask any practice for these in advance. The ones that hesitate are telling you something.
01
A fixed price, signed by both of us
Your plan lists every procedure, the code, the price, what your insurance is expected to cover, and what you actually pay. We both sign it. That number cannot move once treatment starts without a second signature from you, and if we were wrong about what was under the filling, we absorb it or we stop and re-quote. Your call, not ours.
02
A plan you can take down the street
The printed plan is yours, with the X-rays on a USB stick if you want them. Take it to two other practices and compare. About one in nine of our new patients does exactly that, and seven of those nine book their treatment here anyway.
03
A stop word
Raise your left hand and everything stops. Not nearly done, not finishing the drill first. Suction out, hands back, chair up. Say it once at the start of the appointment and every person in the room knows it. It is the single thing nervous patients tell us mattered most.
Same street since 2011. Same dentist in the room.
Dr. Ruth Okonkwo bought the practice in 2011 with one chair and one hygienist, and she is still the one holding the mirror. In fact, three of the five people who work here now were patients first.
4,212
Fixed-price treatment plans written since 2011
6 minutes
Median wait past your appointment time, measured across 2025
1,880
Same-day ceramic crowns milled and fitted here since the mill arrived in 2017
4.9 / 612
Google rating across 612 reviews, none of them paid for
Print this and hold us to every minute of it.
Sixty minutes, and you know exactly what happens in each of them before you arrive.
0:00
You arrive
Forms were emailed to you the day before, so there is no clipboard. Coffee and water are by the window. If we are running late, reception tells you at the door and gives you the real number rather than saying just a few minutes.
0:05
We talk with the chair upright
Shoes on the floor, nothing in your mouth. What hurts, what you are worried about, what your budget actually is, and what your last bad experience was. This is where you tell us your stop word. Ten minutes, and no instrument comes out of the tray.
0:15
Exam and six low-dose X-rays
Digital sensors, about 80% less radiation than the film your old practice used. Full charting, gum measurements, and an oral cancer screening that takes 90 seconds and happens at every exam here, including the ones where nothing hurts.
0:35
You see what we see
Intraoral camera on the wall screen, your teeth at 60x. We point at the actual crack rather than describing it. If everything is fine, we say so and the visit ends here.
0:50
The printed plan
Every recommended procedure, ranked by urgency: needs doing now, needs doing this year, optional and cosmetic. Fixed price on each line. Insurance estimate on each line. You take it home. We do not book treatment on the same day you first hear about it.
A crown in one visit, not two.
The usual route: numb you up, grind the tooth, glue on a temporary, then ship an impression to a lab in Beaverton. You chew on one side for two weeks and take a second morning off work to come back and have the real one seated. We mill your crown here instead, out of a single block of ceramic, while you sit. Average chair time is two hours and ten minutes and you leave with the permanent crown bonded in. There was one catch though. The milling unit cost $118,000 when we bought it in 2017, which is why most practices this size still send the work out. We priced the crown at $1,290 anyway. The two-visit lab version quoted around Portland runs $1,500 to $1,700, so the version that skips the second morning off is also the cheaper one.
3D scan, no impression putty
The tray of setting putty that made you gag is gone. A wand scans the tooth in about four minutes.
Milled from one ceramic block
Single-piece e.max ceramic, color-matched to the tooth next to it under this room own light rather than a lab one.
Bonded before you leave
You go home with the permanent crown fitted, so there is nothing to fall off over the weekend and no second numbing appointment on the calendar.
5-year written warranty
If it chips or debonds inside five years under normal use, we replace it and you pay nothing.
See what a crown costs at Alder Row
The waiting room
Eleven seats, and on a normal morning two of them are in use.
Look at the room before you sit in it.
Every photo below was shot on a Tuesday morning in March, in this building, with nothing moved or staged. If you want to walk through before you book anything, come by between 8 and 9 on a weekday and someone will show you around. No appointment, no pitch.
Treatment room two
Window faces SW Alder. The ceiling screen is what your X-rays come up on.
The milling unit
Where your crown gets made, forty feet from the chair.
The front
Ground floor, ramp access, and the lot behind the building is free for patients.
From people who had put it off longer than you have.
Pulled from Google, unedited apart from trimming length. Full reviews are linked under each one. 4.9 across 612 reviews.
I cried in the parking lot before I went in. Nobody said a word about the eleven years. Dr. Okonkwo asked what I was scared of and then actually did the thing she said she would do about it, which was stop every single time I raised my hand. Four visits later I have still got all my teeth and I book my own cleanings now without anyone reminding me.
Marisa T., Sellwood - 11 years since her last visit
Read the full review on Google
My old dentist quoted $1,650 for a crown and two appointments three weeks apart. Alder Row quoted $1,290, signed it, and I was back at my desk by 1pm the same day with the real crown in. The bill was $1,290. I have been telling people about this for a year like I am on commission.
Dan R., Beaverton - cracked molar, needed a crown
Read the full review on Google
I switched the whole family after the last place billed us $380 for sealants they never mentioned. What sold me here was that the price list is just sitting on the website where anyone can read it before they call. My 7-year-old asked when we are going back. Still processing that one.
Priya K., Northeast Portland - two kids, 7 and 10
Read the full review on Google
Every price we charge, published on the open internet.
These are the real numbers, before insurance. Call three other practices in Portland and ask them to quote a molar root canal over the phone. Most will not, and that is the whole reason this table is here. Prices last updated August 1, 2026 and held through December 31, 2026.
Book a first visit - $79
New patient visit
$79
Full exam, six low-dose X-rays, oral cancer screening, and a printed fixed-price plan. Normally $214. If we find nothing that needs treatment, the $79 comes off your first hygiene visit.
Hygiene visit
$128
Scale, polish, gum measurements, and 15 minutes of actual technique coaching. 60 minutes, not the 20 you are used to.
White filling
$245 to $390
Priced by number of surfaces and quoted exactly on your plan before we start. No silver amalgam has been used in this practice since 2014.
Same-day ceramic crown
$1,290
Scanned, milled, and bonded in one visit. Five-year written warranty.
Root canal, molar
$1,450
Rotary endodontics under a rubber dam, usually one appointment. A front tooth is $980.
Emergency exam
$95
Same-day where we can, with an X-ray. It costs more than the $79 first visit because the slot sits empty until someone needs it, and it comes off whatever treatment follows that week.
Membership plan
$29 a month
For patients with no insurance. Two cleanings a year, all X-rays, two emergency visits, and 20% off all other treatment. There is no deductible and no annual cap, cover starts the day you sign up, and you can cancel in any month.
The questions people email before they book.
If yours is not here, text (503) 555-0142 and a human replies, usually inside the hour during office hours.
I am genuinely frightened of the dentist. What do you actually do about that?
+
Three things. You get a stop word and we stick to it. We book nervous patients into the 8am slot when the building is quiet and there is nobody in the waiting room. And we offer oral sedation, a tablet an hour before, $180, which leaves you awake and able to answer but a long way from panicking. You will need someone to drive you home. Around 14% of our patients use it and nobody here thinks it is unusual.
How bad is it going to be after this long?
+
Usually less bad than the story you have built. Of the 340 lapsed patients we surveyed, the median plan came to two fillings and a deep clean. About one in six needed nothing at all beyond a hygiene visit. Whatever it is, you find out at the 35-minute mark on the screen with us pointing at it, not in a letter afterwards.
Can the price on the plan really not change?
+
It cannot change without you signing again. If we open a tooth and it is worse underneath than the X-ray showed, we stop, bring the chair up, show you on the screen and re-quote. You can say no, and we place a temporary filling at no extra cost while you think about it. That has happened 61 times since 2011, every one of those re-quotes is on file, and every one carries a second signature.
Do you take my insurance and will you file it?
+
Those seven wordmarks near the top of the page are the plans we are in network with, and in network means you pay the negotiated rate rather than our full fee. We file the claim for you the same day instead of handing you a form. Out-of-network plans still usually reimburse 50 to 80%, and we run a free benefits check before your visit so the estimate printed on your plan is a real number.
Do you see children, and from what age?
+
From age one, and we do a free five-minute ride in the chair for under-fives so their first real appointment is not their first time in the room. Family blocks are bookable so two or three of you go back to back and only one person takes the morning off.
I am in pain right now. How fast can you see me?
+
We hold two emergency slots every weekday, one at 8am and one at 3:30pm. Call before 9am and you will nearly always be seen the same day. The emergency exam with an X-ray is $95, and it comes off whatever treatment follows, so if you go ahead that week the visit itself costs you nothing.
The next two Saturday slots are September 13 and September 27.
Booking takes about 40 seconds and asks for a name, a number, and whether anything hurts right now. It does not ask for a card, there is no deposit, and nobody calls back to sell you a whitening package. If Saturdays do not work, we open at 7:30am Monday through Thursday so you can be in and out before work.
Book a first visit - $79
40 seconds, and it does not ask for a card
Or call (503) 555-0142
Someone picks up between 7:30 and 5, Monday through Thursday
Prefer to text? (503) 555-0142