New Ortho Patients

Yes, you may. Patients are assigned a “home” office for treatment, either Clayton or Cary. Patients can be seen in either office on an occasional as-needed basis.

Treatment intervals for patients undergoing conventional orthodontic treatment vary depending on the type of treatment and the stage of treatment you are in.

Patients who are in active treatment with braces or clear aligners are usually seen 4 – 8 weeks apart.

We schedule as many appointments during the after-school time as we can; however, longer specialized appointments must be scheduled during times when the doctor can properly focus on the patient.

Appointments are set up on a 4- to 8-week interval. In the event you miss your appointment, a makeup appointment during your most desired time slot may not be available for some time. Thus, having to reschedule at the last minute can result in prolonging treatment.

We are often asked if we can squeeze a patient in, but in many cases, this is not possible, as unscheduled patients who are squeezed into the schedule will cause a backup resulting in regularly scheduled patients waiting 15 – 30 minutes for their appointment.

It is our goal to respect every patient’s time. Please help us keep this goal by keeping your scheduled appointments.

We understand that traffic and other issues may cause late arrivals, so we encourage you to come 5-10 minutes early for your appointment. Patients who are a few minutes late will typically still be seen and we will accomplish as much as we are able during your appointment time.

If you arrive over halfway through your appointment, you will most likely be asked to reschedule. Each appointment has an action plan that we have already outlined.

We want you to complete your orthodontic treatment in a timely manner. However, having to reschedule appointments or not being able to accomplish our entire action plan during your appointment may result in delaying the progress of treatment.

Patients who have a habit of regularly arriving late are unlikely to complete their treatment in the number of months we originally estimated.

Please give us a call if you think you might be late, and we will try to maintain your appointment while still staying on schedule.

No — most Fridays our administrative staff answers phones from mid-morning until lunchtime. Most Fridays the doctor is dedicated to treatment planning and completing paperwork.

There may be exceptions to this around holidays and vacation times. If you do not have an appointment, please always call us before dropping by to avoid any inconvenience.

Currently no — only one orthodontic office is open at any given time. Our team rotates between offices, therefore, only one office is open each day.

Yes — our lunch hour is generally 12:20 PM – 1:20 PM. However, a team member is usually available by phone.

Generally, we have a rotating schedule between Cary and Clayton. Dr. Matthew normally sees patients for orthodontic care four days per week on a rotating schedule.

There are no fixed days, which allows patients to have scheduled appointments on a particular day of the week M-TH that works best for them.

In the event you do not have a confirmed scheduled appointment, please call and confirm with a team member whether we are open and which location we are in on that day.

Yes, we do have scheduling restrictions in order to allow the doctor and our team to provide the highest quality treatment to our patients. We are often asked to schedule putting braces on — or — removing them in the late afternoon or to have a lost retainer re-made in the late afternoon.

Like the vast majority of orthodontists, Dr. McNutt is, in general, not able to accommodate these requests. Longer appointments that are very technical are generally scheduled in the mid-morning and early afternoon.

This allows patients who are in active treatment to be seen for their regular visits early in the morning and in the late afternoon. This is for the good of everyone. Please note that we cannot accommodate patients who require only after-school appointments.

During our normal clinic hours, we have appointment slots for comfort repairs, for example, when a brace is loose or a wire is uncomfortable. These types of repairs are not normally taken care of on the weekend. However, in the event of a rare true dental emergency, patients will be seen.

The doctor or a clinical team member is sometimes available on Friday mornings to see patients to alleviate discomfort (full repairs are not performed, only alleviation of discomfort). Please call before dropping by to ensure that the doctor is available.

Our team generally does a good job staying on time, which is important to us all.

However, when we run behind on scheduled appointment times, the most common cause is patients showing up for a planned appointment and surprising us with broken appliances or brackets off the teeth.

Each regular appointment has an action plan that the team has prepared for in advance, and they have prepared the necessary materials and instruments for that particular procedure. The materials and setup for repairing braces are different.

Changing to a totally different procedure takes time and slows us all down. There are days when we are just unlucky and have 3 or 4 teens show up at the same appointment time with broken braces, and their parents did not even know.

Everyone benefits when our patients give us as much advance notice as possible to alter our plan, even it’s is only 30 minutes in advance.