Dental tourism is a very divisive topic. On the one hand the advocates of dental tourism espouse the financial savings that can be made, while on the other hand its opponents often talk about poor quality work being carried out abroad. Unfortunately for everyone involved hard facts are very difficult to come by.
Last August the Irish Times reported on a Consumer Choice magazine report which said that “Dentists were found to be 29 per cent more expensive in Dublin compared to Belfast“. A couple of weeks later the Irish Dental Association released the results of their own survey which said that “More than three out of four dentists have had to treat patients for problems linked to treatment received abroad“.
A previous dental tourism survey carried out by us here at RevaHealth.com showed high levels of satisfaction with the treatment received, but worrying levels of education when it came knowing in advance exactly what treatment was needed.
So Where Do We Go From Here?
Ideally we would like to see everyone involved in dentistry in Ireland, whether at home or abroad, publish information and minimise spin. Putting the facts in the public domain should help everyone involved; patients will be able to make better informed decisions on where to be treated, and dentists will be able to make better informed decisions based on what patients want and need.
Luckily, we’re in the position of being able to ask thousands of patients both before and after their treatment about their expectations and their experiences. We already ask patients on an ongoing basis about their post treatment satisfaction levels. We intend to expand this into other areas of questioning and share the results as soon as we can. As a start, here are the results of surveying all RevaHealth.com’s users from Ireland who had dental treatment outside of the Republic in 2009.
Survey Results
There are a number of things I would point out about these results. We believe there is a natural tendency for people who have travelled abroad to slightly inflate their satisfaction scores as a means of self justification. That said, the scores do indicate a high level of satisfaction across the board.
One change I would like to see to this survey is to do with the question of quality of work. I think this topic is actually contained in the “Overall Satisfaction” score, but for the sake of clarity I’d like to see it broken out into its own section.
How You Can Help Us Help You?
If you are involved or interested in the industry, this is where you come in. Satisfaction levels are one thing, but what questions would you like to see answered by Irish dental patients? Over the coming months we intend to publish the results of our survey of Irish patients who were treated in Ireland, as well as continuing to publish more information from Irish, British and overseas patients in general.
If you have questions that you think would add to overall quality of information available about the Irish and British dental industries, or another international market, please leave a comment below or email me directly at pboyle@revahealth.com. I look forward to hearing from you.
Hello Philip
As the owner of the consumer website http://www.SaveAFewBob.ie, I welcome your reporting on this matter.
I am acutely aware that our users would like to see far greater transparency when it comes to dental fees.
When it comes to any health matters, we certainly would not be advocating to go down the low cost route. Customers must factor in the level of professionalism, quality of service, access to after care.
However, if dental professionals in the Republic feel that their prices are justified for the service they provide, surely they will be happy to publish their rates for standard procedures?
Niall Mc Henry
Managing Director
SaveAFewBob.ie
Hi Niall,
Thanks for the comment. I’d certainly be in favour of more price transparency in dentistry in Ireland, but for the purposes of discussion it’s only fair to give the dentists side of the argument here too. These are reasons I’ve heard or read over the last couple of years for not publishing prices.
1) Dentists often fear that publishing prices will lead to competition based on price alone and as a result falling standards due to cheaper materials and instruments being used.
2) They would also often be of the opinion that comparing their prices to prices abroad or in the North isn’t really fair as their fixed costs are higher here in the Republic.
3) Lastly they would also say that there is no way to price standard treatments as each individual treatment varies so much from case to case.
I can’t say I agree with using these points as reasons not to publish prices, but there are reasonable discussions to be had around each of them.
i would like to comment on the above blog, as a member of the Irish dental industry. Firstly, Philip, how would you propose that patients who have had treatment abroad ascertain wether their treatment received is of a good quality or not?
I would say that it is impossible for a patient to know wether their treatment is of a good quality for some time after the treatment. Most of the work abroad is crown and bridge, this type of treatment can be fine for a number of years and only start to deteriorate after that period. Most dentists would quote a crown to last between 10 and 15 years, I have not seen any work from abroad which would last this length. Admittedly it is only the bad ones who come to me with problems. It is almost impossible for another dentist to follow up on these procedures, we have no idea what lies beneath the crowns.
A major area of problem is poor root canal treatments, these fail and then the crown on top has to be removed and the whole treatment has to be repeated. Good quality dental treatment requires time, it is not possible to do this on a holiday timescale.
My dental practice has its price list visible, it has done since we opened in 1997.
Another comment on the media attitude towards dentistry here. The prices in Northern Ireland are cheaper. Their practices are partially funded by NHS. They pay the basic running costs by their annual patient capitation. In Ireland we do not have this luxury. If patients want cheaper dentistry here, then they need to contact their T.D’s and pay a heap more tax. Unfortunately with the recent removal of the PRSI scheme and impending removal of the medical card dental scheme, I can only see prices increasing.
Time will tell.
Hi Deborah,
Thanks for taking the time to comment. It is much appreciated. I agree that quality should be a concern for patients travelling abroad, but so should it be for patients who get treatment here in Ireland. There is good and bad dentistry at home and abroad.
Ascertaining quality after treatment is the same in both cases – you have to live with the results. Time will tell as you say. What I’d like to see happen here is a valid survey that finds out how many patients are treated outside of the Republic and how many of these have complications after 1 year, 5 years, 10 years etc, and compare these figures to the same figures for treatment at home. Unfortunately neither set of data is available at the moment.
Ascertaining quality before treatment can only be done by researching the clinic and the dentists in question. This goes for the local dentist when you move town as much as it does for a clinic in Hungary or Poland. Whereas here you can ask your neighbours or friends, for clinics abroad it is less easy. We hope to gather patient feedback for both scenarios and publish as much of it as possible here on the site, along with details of qualifications and accreditations of the dentists and clinics in question.
One of the surprising results of our previous survey was that around 50% of patients who were travelling abroad hadn’t been to their local dentist prior to travelling. This means that not only did they not know what treatment was necessary for them, but if they needed preparatory treatment like root canals or gum surgery they could have been rushed into accelerated treatment abroad without knowing what the standards are at home. This is obviously a problem and one that discussions like this can hopefully shine a light on.
I would love to see and publish studies into these issues, whether the results were positive or negative for dental tourism, and the same for dentistry in Ireland, but hopefully remove the spin that is normally attached to either side.
Finally, in relation to prices, I can certainly sympathise that there isn’t a level playing field between the Republic and the North, and I think it is a scandal that the PRSI scheme and medical card scheme were targeted for cuts. It is an issue that both the Irish dental industry and its patients should be contacting their TDs about. Price increases at this stage would be a disaster for oral health in the country and for the dental industry itself, as price is already the number one reason why patients chose to go north or abroad, or avoid treatment altogether.
Thanks for taking part in the discussion and hopefully we’ll hear from you again as it continues in the future.
Dr. Mitchell Josephs is hosting a one-day Marketing Summit in Ft. Lauderdale, FL on May 14th, 2010. We would like to know if you are using social media marketing to promote your office and what kind of results are you having.
I would like to make a comment on the quality of Irish Dentistry. The question that is regularly asked about European treatments is how does the person receiving treatment verify that the treatment is of an acceptable standard. I see that ‘most Irish dentists will quote a crown to last for upto 15 years’.
I dispute this protection of over priced Irish dentistry at the expense of cheaper European options. Two examples to shown my frustration at this ‘taking a risk’ non-sense.
#1
I received a bridge 5 years ago from an Irish dentist. The bridge became loose after 12 months on one side only. Two dentist recommended that I keep an eye on it and come back ‘when it gets loser’. I know have a bad abscess on the tooth due to its openness to decay from the poor seal to the bridge. The tooth now needs root canal and a third dentist has told me the bridge should have come off a long time ago and being replaced.
#2
A friend of mine was recommended that he needed close to €1000 worth of work done on his teeth by his local dentist. In trying to save cost he got in contact with the dental school in Dublin. After his check up here with the schools professor, he was told he needed no work and that his teeth we in very good condition.
I now need work completed on my teeth to resolved my loose bridge issue. This work will cost me in the region of €4000 with my local dentist. I am looking abroad and I have found a clinic in Hungary that has had its worked verified by British and Irish dentist as a very high standard. This clinic is quoting me €1600 to complete the work. As far as I can see, you are taking just as much a risk with Irish dentists as you are going abroad.
I agree that there is a huge need for transparency on the entire dental system, being qualified as a dentist does not make one a good dentist, or a moral sound one at that and it is these dentists that turn people to Europe for cost reasons. If the quality was here, as many dentist are arguing, then most people would stay here to get the work done. Either way, Europe or Ireland, its all a gamble as far as I can see.
Hi Michael, many thanks for taking the time out to share your story, and I’m sorry that you’ve had so much trouble with your bridge work. Your story highlights a great point that isn’t talked about so much – sometimes things go wrong at home too, and when they do it can be just as difficult and expensive to get it fixed as if you’d had poor treatment abroad.
Sites like ours try to help take some of the gamble as you put it out of getting treated, but we can only do this with contributions from the public about their experiences. We’re working hard to encourage more people to share their experiences so it becomes easier to find clinics with regular successful outcomes who really care about their patients.
Good luck with your upcoming treatment, and please consider coming back to the site and sharing a review of your new clinic once the treatment is complete.
& Michael
im sorry to hear that you had so much trouble with your bridgework. But even that was not a good experience, i wouldnt judge the “whole” irish dentistry. There are good and bad ones, if you like to travel i recommend to find a dental office which is “transparent” in a way you can read about previous experiences. Nowadays there are a lots of clinics worldwide which can provide that kind of informations.
Hi there, nice post and discussion. I´m a dentist in Brazil and if some of you come to our country you can visit my clinic to make some implants and teeth withening….
…. just kidding … imagine you going to Copacabana Beach to drink some caipirinhas and eating some lobsters just after you placed a dental implant.
First i want to send some greetings to Dentista SP , heard a lots of good stories about dentistry in brazil, as its seems compared to many other countries brazil is very progressive in technology and skills.
Regarding the upper posts,In general i want say that the major problem
of dental tourism is, that patients cant really judge the quality standard of their own work, i heard a lots of stories, where patientes were really happy about their work, but after taking a more precise look into the mouth, it became obvious that theres not a porsche in the mouth.
@ to whatclinic.com – would it be possible that theres any independent institution in uk or maybe in all developped countires, where patients can go after their treatment,
wheter they expect their work is good or bad, to make treatment mistakes, black sheep clinics more transparent?
Probleamtic is also that story: I heard from one patient, he visited a clinic in thailand, started to threaten the clinic, and so far i know he got a quality treatment, stole several thousand dollars in not paying the bills, pulling back payed amounts. Unfortuntaley the clinic owner is scared to investigate as he was threatened that the patient will do mismarketing in case there will be any further investigation.