South of the Border

[QCkid]

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The Today show had a piece on dentists south of the border this morning. Massive amounts of people cross the border everyday for dental services. They simply park on the U.S. side walk across the border and get their work done. No appointment needed. This way patients can get their dental work done and pick up their perscriptions all in one go. They showed some dental offices, all of which looked like brand new and very modern practices (on the inside). They showed a dentist using full universal precautions with a gown, gloves, face mask, and full face sheild. They interviewed several people all of which strongly supported coming down to mexico for their work. Finally, they capped off the piece with an interview of a guy waiting to get his work done who claimed to be a retired dentists. The retired dentist said the work was top quality and that he would even pay to fly down here if he lived in Alaska. Overall, the piece was very pro mexico.

A couple of points:
1. In almost any country outside the U.S. (mexico included) both medical and dental schools are more like technical degrees. You go right into it out of high school and go for four to six years and graduate. I have had a facilitator here for some of our cases that was educated in Sweden or Switzerland or something like that and when it comes to medical stuff she has know idea whats going on.
2. If John or Jane Doe wants to practice in Mexico regardless of their training, whats to stop them? If I had assisted for a few years and practiced on a typodont could I go open a practice down there? If its like everything else in Mexico it seems like their would be no prblem. I'm sure they have laws against it but since when did that ever matter in Mexico. On top of that, a little cash to the local police cheif would silence all opposition.
3. I can see how doing simple medical or dental procedures on healthy patients might not be a problem down there but what if their is a problem? Then what? Even something simple if misdiagnosed can be a real problem.

 

[Demeter]

Dental Schools in Europe are not like technical schools. The European education system is more difficult then ours (until you get to college).
Our high school education is worthless as compared to German gymnasium.

The European education system is split into 2 tiers. You have hack which prepares people for technical education and you have the gymnasium which prepares students to enter the Universitaet. If you graduate from the gymnasium you can go directly to study Medicine ( takes about 6yrs). In Germany for example you have to pass the several years of medical school before you can specialize in Zahn Arzt Medizin. ( Dental Medicine).

I saw many patients that returned from Mexico with very poor Dental work.
If you are going to charge 50-70$ for a PFM you need to make up for that with high patient volume, quick workand inexpensive lab work. When you use cheap labs you get cheap lab work in return. "**** in **** out".
It also means that dentists find ways to cut corners in their work. I have seen people return with their crowns in hand, because their mexican dentist cut the tooth down in the shape of an inverted ice cream cone. I am sure that there are some very good dentists in Mexico, but from the work I have seen there are an amazing amount of bad work being done across the border.

 

[wannabedr]

imho:

this is going to just take off in the next ten years. everyone on the west coast and southern states near mexico will cross the border for dental work. it is alot cheaper.

cosmetic vacations are growing each year. brazil is now the new place for cosmetic surgery.

the world's going to be a real different place in the future!!!

 

[dentwannabe]

imho:

the world's going to be a real different place in the future!!!

😱 Wow! And here I am thinking NOTHING would ever change. 🙁