Dental fees

[aquamarine2]

I attended a dentist in May with radiating tooth pain. The cost.of this emergency appointment privately was £95. The dentist wasn't sure which tooth was causing the pain and said we would have to wait and see. Fast forward to now and I now know which tooth it is not due to pain but sensitivity and a slight crack. So.i ring to book follow up appointment and they want another £95 even though appointment two weeks away. They agree it is not an emergency but try to justify high cost due to dentist having to re examin and decide on course of action. This seems extortionate to me. I'm fuming but had no choice other than to pay

Because there is little or no NHS dentistry, the private ones have you over a barrel.

It costs to run a room , in a private practice , in a not expensive area , upwards of £180 an hour .

Most practices will book out a minimum of 30 minutes for a private toothache appointment because the setting up , seeing the person, writing up the notes and cleaning down afterwards will take at least that amount of time and normally longer.

NHS practices are leaving the NHS because what the NHs pays will , in increasing number of cases , not pay the practice expenses , even though they are cheaper in a practice that does mostly NHS work.

Lollygaggle, a normal private appointment at my surgery cost £54. This includes follow up appointments which I think mine was, so do not understand why they demanded £95

Get private dental cover with Denplan for going forward. Far more worthy way of spending income than hair/nails/eyebrows etc.

At my dentist, the £54 appointment would be designated as a routine checkup, where they aren’t necessarily expecting to spend more than about ten to fifteen minutes examining you. The £95 appointment isn’t costed based on seeing you any sooner but based on knowing it’s going to more than likely be a longer diagnostic appointment where emergency (meaning unplanned, because they don’t know what it is until they see you) treatment and temporary relief will probably need to be carried out. I suspect your dentist has the same approach, they just haven’t done a very good job of explaining the difference to you.

You say you have a crack in the tooth so perhaps the extra fee is for x-rays? I broke a tooth which looked OK if you looked at the tooth but the x-rays showed that the break went right down below the gum and so couldn't be filled. One extraction later and my bank account is lighter but I don't have any pain!

But you're not booking a normal appointment, you're booking an appointment for a cracked tooth which will require (at minimum) x-rays as well as potentially more complicated treatment.

My DH's gold onlay fell out recently. He got an emergency appointment to have it (luckily it fell out into his hand) cemented back in. £95. It's par of the course. If he was charged, say, only £20, he'd be questioning the quality of the work. Things are expensive, that's all there is to it. I'm sorry about the pain.

Thanks to all for your replies. What you all say makes sense and I don't feel so annoyed about it now!! That said 2 x £95 is a lot for someone on minimum wage!!!

My dentist is private and it's £65 for an appointment, unless you're in London £95 sounds steep

It is expensive but dental care isn't cheap unfortunately - we're just used to free treatment unfortunately, so the real cost comes as a massive shock.

Going forward you could try something like DenPlan.

Brightyellowflower I am on Denplan,I pay £11.00 pm for 2 checkups per year.However I had pain and needed an urgent appointment £100 .00! Denplan does not cover emergencies apparently!

It depends on your level of cover - I never pay for any of my appointments including any emergency ones.

That is what dentists do. If that isn't normal, what is?

Fieldsofbutterflies thank you . hadnt realised! Only been with them a year or so as my dentist went private . I will check mine out

If a dentist does an oral health examination (check up) , they know what they are doing and can plan the time appropriately. A new patient check up will take a lot longer than a routine check up.

With an emergency appointment you do not know what you will see, what you will have to do, what investigations will need doing. Therefore a dentist will book out a longer time to allow for this.

As said before in a middling area one room in a dental surgery will cost upwards of £180 an hour to run. Therefore every minute has to be accounted for to cover practice costs . An emergency appointment will be booked out for a minimum of 30 minutes in a private practice and will often take longer than that. This will be a linger amount of time than a check up where there are no problems.