Shelby Township Dentist Discusses Cost of Dental Care

Hi, this is Doctor Antolak from TheGentleDentist.com. We’re in Shelby Township, Michigan and our phone number is 586-247-3500. Some of you may know that I have been writing articles for the Senior Living News here in Macomb County and Oakland County, in Michigan. It’s a free newspaper for seniors that want to do things that are relevant for their age group. And I’ve been a columnist for about going on 11 years. And I always ask our senior patients what kind of questions they may have so that I can then create some questions and answers that are relevant. And the most recent questions I did have, and I’ve had it throughout the years is what is the cost of dentistry? Why is dentistry so expensive?

I want to just address that issue in a couple of ways. First of all, I’d like to talk about a little bit about the facet of the expense of providing quality dental care and also from the dentist’s perspective.

First of all, the cost of dental care is much more expensive than one would imagine just kind of walking into a dental office. And they think that there are no additional expenses beyond that. But the reality is it’s furthest from the truth. You know, to provide high quality care, we need really good people who work for us. And to do that they cost money. And every person who works at the dental office is compensated quite well. And now in addition to that, there’s the cost of doing health insurance; you know medical insurance with that and with all the other aspects that come along with employment issues. And those are usually one of our highest expense are the cost of employees.

Now we have also the condition that we have the cost of the facility that we provide our care in. It’s got to be a clean place. It’s got to be kept up to date, so that we are clean and it reflects our values and who we are at our office at The Gentle Dentist in Shelby Township, Michigan. Other things that are really important are to keeping up on high technology. High technology in everything has touched every part of our lives. And because it has touched every part of our lives, and dentistry is no different. You know, we have the technology such as our computers – we have to make things more convenient for you, our patients.

We have a paperless office which requires computers so that it makes it more efficient for you and there’s actually less waste in the environment that way. We have the cost of digital panoramic X-rays. What that does, it saves time and it saves radiation, so you’re not being exposed to that much. That all costs money and how we develop the cost of providing care. We have to provide high quality care for laboratories that we use for us at the office, we use somebody that’s local; actually someone who lives in Macomb Township and he does wonderful work. So, all the work and all the treatment are done with American made products by American.

Unfortunately, sometimes you find out at some of these low-cost clinics, is a lot of times they’ll send all their lab work out to China and then you never know what kind of inferior products you’re going to receive from that, too. In addition to that, the second part of that answer was the dentists themselves. You know as a dentist, I’ve been practicing for 26 years but those dentists who come out of dental school now, are at least 100 to 200,000 dollars in debt before they even begin and so they’re starting way behind the 8 ball. And not only that, is as dentists, number 1 is we go to undergraduate school and we go to graduate school. The combination of those 2 is at least 8 years of school. And so that’s 8 years of being out of the potential earnings that we would make up if we were, if we were employed.

So it may seem like a lot of money and these types of things- it is expensive. I’m not denying that for one moment. But the cost of care, the cost of keeping up with the government regulations, with Obamacare, these things are all impacting us as dental professionals. And by the way, would you want to go to somebody who’s cheap? Because usually what I find is patients who come to see us are those who have been at some of these cheap clinics who provide free care. And the reality is, its inferior products and many, many times it doesn’t work for them and they have continued failures with the process. So, you know you have to ask yourself the question, is it worth your time. Is it worth your money to pay a little bit more to get high quality care that is guaranteed, which we do in our office. And then you know that when you get something, you’re going to know that it’s done right and done well.

Shelby Township Dentist Discusses Cost of Dental Care

So if there are any questions, I’d love to answer them for you. You can contact our office at (586) 247-3500, or you can contact at your website, which is thegentledentist.com. Or if you want to, you can email me, which is drantolak@thegentledentist.com. Thank you and have a blessed day.