Dirty Dental Industry Secret
The Miserable “Spread it Out” Strategy
by Dr. Yenile Y. Pinto DDS
Jorge knew he had some major dental issues to fix. His smile was getting crooked and yellow but for years he just put it off and put it off. Eventually he got fed up feeling embarrassed in front of his clients. So, one day he buckled down and said, “I’m finally ready to do something about this!”
But no one seemed to want to tell him the whole story. He visited several dentists and they told him, “You have some gum issues we need to sort” or “You need a few teeth pulled.”
Jorge knew his issues were more extensive than that. “But no one would give me the whole picture of what it was going to take to get healthy, restore my smile and get my confidence back.”
Jorge’s complaint is one of the most common I hear about dentists. It goes something like this… “Every time I go to the dentist they find something new that has to be fixed. I feel like it never ends. I feel like I’ll always be going to the dentist for a procedure…not just cleanings and checkups! Are my teeth really this bad? Or is my dentist just incompetent and keeps missing things?”
Most people realize that dental problems don’t happen overnight. “If I have a big cavity now, shouldn’t my dentist have spotted a small cavity when I was here six months ago?”
Truth is that your dentist most certainly DID spot that small cavity. But decided to wait to tell you.
(Now, let me just say that only unethical dentists will have you fix something that’s not “broken.” There have been scandals involving dentists doing unnecessary procedures, but I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about ethical, competent dentists who “spread out” the dental work you need.)
How does this work? Well, if a guest comes into the office and we discover they need a lot of work, SOME dentists are afraid of telling you the WHOLE truth. They think that if they tell you everything that’s wrong, you’ll jump out of the chair, run out the front door and never look back. Or you’ll simply not believe them. Since no other dentist has ever told you the whole truth, they assume you’ll think, “This dentist is making all this up just so they can do more work and charge me more money!”
So instead the dentist just tells you what he thinks you can handle or afford at the moment.
He doesn’t tell you the whole truth…just part of the truth. It’s not unethical…but it is misleading and annoying and potentially dangerous.
Because with almost all dental problems, the sooner you have them fixed, the easier and less expensive they are to fix. Every week or month or year you lose means the problem gets worse and worse and worse. It’s like recommending a new coat of paint for you house and meanwhile your foundation is completely shot and your house is slowly falling apart.
After a while, your relationship with your dentist gets eroded by distrust and skepticism. It’s a lose-lose-lose situation.
And this “spread it out” approach is more common in my industry than I’d like to admit. It’s so common in fact that it is a frequent topic at dental seminars all over the country. Dentists everywhere are scared to tell you what’s wrong and what you can do about it. So, they make your decisions for you.
Our Whole Truth Promise to You: We will tell you the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth upfront. We won’t keep anything hidden. We won’t bait and switch you. We won’t prescribe band-aid solutions that will only solve your smile problems for a short while.
You will know, from day one, everything that’s going on in your mouth.
It will, of course, always be up to you to decide what to do and when to do it. But you’ll have ALL the truth you need to make the best decision for you. Not just part of the truth.
You’ll never ask me, “Dr. Pinto, why didn’t you tell me about that the last time I was here?”
I believe this is the most honest, most compassionate, and in the long-run the least expensive approach.
If you think you or someone you know could use the whole truth, I encourage you to call my team and schedule your new guest reservation today. 785-577-4180
