A Dental Win-Win

This week we had a truly wonderful trip to the dentist, it was a bit out of the ordinary and one of the best all time dental visits that we have ever had.
  One of the things that I worried about when I decided to try my hand at an early retirement was the loss of our medical coverage. Dental coverage has gotten so expensive that it was one of our great fears that we would not be able to maintain our dental health. Add to this the fact that we are now hitting the age when most problems are likely to occur it was quite a leap to head out without a safety net.
  Not long after I retired, one of my fears became reality, I had a root canal that failed. My last dentist had given up her practice and I was in the middle of a dental emergency with no dentist. What to do. I called a couple of offices to see about an emergency appointment and was told that I could not be seen without first having an examination, which starts at $75.00 and goes up if there are x-rays needed. All of this to to confirm that the tooth that I knew was damaged was in fact damaged. I left the office that day $125.00 lighter and had an appointment for 2 weeks in the future to look at the tooth. Two painful weeks later and another $400.00 I had my tooth fixed. Luckily the specialist that they booked me with was the one who did the original work and I got it done for half price under warranty. I also had the bad news that I needed multiple crowns and should be booked for a more extensive checkup. I thought how are we going to be able to do this. Fast forward to January of this year.
   At the first part of January we decided to take a leap of faith and call Dalhousie Medical School and try and get an appointment in the Dental Clinic. The wait time was no longer than a regular dental office and we were scheduled in for the middle of February.
   It was a bit unnerving to head into the city with no idea of what to expect, but our fears were soon put to rest. We were in line with a group of other people in for the first time. We registered for our appointment, paid our examination fee of $55.00 each, were given directions to the clinic and went to the next desk. Once we arrived at the clinic, we were given a folder of standard forms and medical questionnaires to fill out. Once these forms were filled out we were assigned to our student. There are about 45 Third-Year Dental Students enrolled at Dalhousie and each one had a patient to examine.
   We were given a very professional dental exam, asked all the pertinent questions and then it was off to X-ray. The student lined me up in the chair and proceeded to take all the necessary x-rays of my mouth, the professors popping in to observe and comment. Then it was back to exam room where the x-rays were viewed and the more in depth oral exam took place, much as in any conventional office. After the student finished the exam, a faculty professor came in and double checked the exam and made comments to the student. My student had not missed a thing.
  After the exam and x-rays, it was time to get the plan for future dental work. Remember all those crowns that I was going to need, turns out that was not really the case. It turns out that I could have them if I want them, but my fillings are fine and strong for now. I will probably need to get them done at some point as they will deteriorate over time, but that time is not now. And the good news is that the cost to have them done at the school will be about 40% of the cost of having them done at a conventional office.
  Our next step will be for the school to assign us to a Fourth -Year student and a Hygienist to take care of any work going forward.  Our cleaning that we have scheduled will by about $100.00 as compared to the estimate I was given of $260.00 at the conventional office. Once you multiply that by 2 for the number of people in the family, it really paid for our gas to drive in.
   I am really pleased that we had a very professional experience at the school and also that the costs are going to be much less than we hoped. We came away from our experience with nothing but good feelings and impressions and it is a great added bonus to know that we also helped someone to get the practical experience that will help them later in life.
  This was definitely a win-win situation if ever I have seen one.

The phone number for the Dental Clinic at Dalhousie Medical School is 1-902-494-2101.