{"id":43634,"date":"2019-08-28T09:23:22","date_gmt":"2019-08-28T13:23:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=43634"},"modified":"2019-08-28T09:23:27","modified_gmt":"2019-08-28T13:23:27","slug":"a-new-world-for-dentistry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=43634","title":{"rendered":"A new world for dentistry"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Dr. Stephanie McGann<\/strong>,\u00a0DMD FAGD, Columnist, The Times<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>It\u2019s a new world in dental care and most people just don\u2019t know.<\/p>\n

Online dental consultations, called teledentistry is here and here to stay. Have a question? Need advice? Don\u2019t know what to do? For a small fee you can go online to a number of different teledental sites, answer a few questions and get hooked up with a dentist licensed in your state. Needless to say this does not replace a visit to an actual dental office but it can be a great way to get started. <\/p>\n

Corporate dental practices are taking the industry by storm.\u00a0 What\u2019s the difference? First, once upon a time, you went to your dentist, a professional and small businessman (or woman) who owned the practice and cared for their patients. They may have grown and brought in an associate dentist or two but at the end of the day the owner was always there to be sure things were done right.\u00a0 Patient care and reputation of the practice was first and foremost. Dentists were able to charge a fair fee and made a reasonable living.<\/p>\n

Then came the \u201cnetworks\u201d dentists agreed to a much lower fee in exchange for the networks filling the extra time in their chairs.\u00a0 None of us foresaw the day when everyone would be in a network.\u00a0 These small businesses had to find a way to do more with less reimbursement.\u00a0 They found themselves having to hire more staff just to process claims and authorizations.\u00a0 More regulations meant more time out of the office for training, more overhead. The number of patients who \u201cno-show\u201d their appointments increased as the value of the services were diminished by network administrators. Dental practices as a small business are dying off as the costs of running a practice and providing care were starting to exceed the reimbursements.<\/p>\n

To stay in business many dentists look to DSO\u2019s (Dental Service Organizations) these corporate entities\u00a0 handle all of the non dental services for the practice, billing, payroll, accounts receivable, supply vendors and more. Because they handle the needs of many practices they can get a better deal on many services than a lowly small business.\u00a0 DSO\u2019s then increase their management role by demanding dentists make \u201cquota\u201d or are compensated on a commission basis.\u00a0 To do this they are expected to bill a certain amount per hour.\u00a0 Imagine the stress of a young dentist, graduating with an obscene amount of student debt and having to please their bosses.\u00a0 Some of these practices have names you recognize and some quietly keep the name of the practice they acquired.\u00a0 Just like the family physician with an office on the corner is now forced to be part of a \u201chealth system\u201d the same is happening in dentistry.<\/p>\n

Even more startling is the new do-it-yourself model of healthcare.\u00a0 Soon you will be able to walk into a CVS, get your teeth scanned and for a fraction of the cost of traditional aligner orthodontics,\u00a0 a company will mail you trays designed to straighten your teeth.\u00a0 Sounds like a great deal.\u00a0 Every dentist and orthodontist who has done aligner orthodontics knows, it\u2019s just not that easy to get a great result.\u00a0 The other big concern is will it do harm? Moving teeth in some cases may actually cause damage to the teeth or supporting bone. These kiosks don\u2019t have anyone looking at xrays or evaluating your dental history. Words to the wise, buyer beware. It will work for some patients some of the time, but it will not work for all patients all of the time.<\/p>\n

You want a real laugh? Go on Amazon and search for dental laminates or dentures. The \u201cfake dental stuff\u201d is impressive. Just please, don\u2019t buy it.<\/p>\n

There are many changes in dental care and many more to come.<\/p>\n

Dr. Stephanie McGann, who has more than two decades of dental practice experience, is a resident of the Unionville area and owns and practices at Rainbow Valley Dental, in Valley. She is a past President of the Chester\/Delaware Dental Society and she is a Fellow of the Academy of General Dentistry.<\/span><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Dr. Stephanie McGann,\u00a0DMD FAGD, Columnist, The Times It\u2019s a new world in dental care and most people just don\u2019t know. Online dental consultations, called teledentistry is here and here to stay. Have a question? Need advice? Don\u2019t know what to do? For a small fee you can go online to a number of different […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43636,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245],"tags":[2100,404,7426],"class_list":["post-43634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","tag-changes","tag-dental-health","tag-featured"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43634"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43635,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43634\/revisions\/43635"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43636"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}