I once took a family member to get a second opinion when said family member had been told there were several fillings required, after a substantial illness. Unfortunately, the dentist was correct, according to the second dentist, and even identified all the same teeth, but at least I felt even more confident going forward.
“frugaldoctor: As an example, I treat alcoholics in my other specialty of addiction medicine. I successfully treat these patients with a drug that cost $2500 per month with staggering positive results.”
Yikes. I just can’t get past this. Mindboggling cost. Wow. Stunned.
[P.S.I haven’t had a drink in 25 years and never even think about it, unless something like this nudges my memory. The Lord was good to me when He helped me get free when I got serious about stopping. And it didn’t cost a dime.]
"To what do you attribute the increase? Is it the increasing incidence of obesity? "
I’m positive that it is obesity. Interested to see what the doctor will say. I can’t tell you how many people I know who say they breathe better after losing weight.
"Shellfell: When I went for my last physical in Nov 2017, I was asked to fill out a survey relating to symptoms of depression and anxiety. My dr said they had to do that now (she’s a solo practitioner part of an umbrella group). The kicker was when I was billed for the “Depression Screening”. I called the business office to complain about being billed for something I had to fill out that the dr barely looked at. It was removed from my bill, but next physical I won’t even bother to complete the survey.
When I googled the medical code for the screening, the first hit that came up was (I’m paraphrasing) “how to increase revenue”.
I think they have been required to do this since Obamacare kicked in. I know my eye doctor was required to take blood pressure for a time.
Come on. Let’s blame every billing abuse on Obamacare. Speaking of blood pressure. Specialists have been taking blood pressure since dinosaurs roamed the earth. Unlike some stupid surveys, it is a part of your visit, not a line item on your bill. BTW, that’s how a family member was diagnosed with hypertension - a specialist noticed that BP was high during a couple of visits. The family doc totally missed that the BP was off during regular checkups.
I’m simply saying that it was communicated to the provider that this was now required, which was explained to me. If that was erroneous, I don’t know because it wasn’t important enough for me to look into.
My H finally got a sleep study – when he went to the ER with a dangerous arrhythmia (not overweight). He has both obstructive and central apnea. Very scary (and not a surprise to me!)
That being said, he finds the “sleep doctor” he has to go to to be a running a mill. Bothered him to do a narcolepsy test because he’d often been “tired” during the day, but H knew it was because of the apnea. So he turned it down.
He finds the checkups to be really cursory and they miss a lot (I don’t recall details). He has read up and often brought up details from journals that the doc didn’t know.
H is a doctor himself (though retired) and says he should go into this business because it’s such a racket–and so much better paid than the incredibly longer hours he worked as a pediatrician.
My son was diagnosed with sleep apnea after he had a sleep study when he was seven. He was not overweight. We had him tested because his snoring could wake up someone in the next county! It turns out his adenoids were HUGE. After those and his tonsils were removed, he stopped snoring and also never wet his bed again. I am thankful we caught the problem when he was so young.
Obamacare started in 2014 and I had to complete this survey in late 2017. I’ve been for annual physicals all along. It was also not covered by my insurance as part of the ACA. My dr meant that the group she belongs to was requiring it, as it turns out, to increase revenue. Not the first time they’ve done something like that.
For a short time my dr was having us fill out long “social” questionnaires, even asking if we owned guns. I think for a time it was if not a requirement but suggested by the government.
I would just like to know why the forms I fill out ask for my date of birth AND my age.
I’m sorry but not surprised to find myself in lots of company on this issue. I just realized that I misstated the number of points required for a sleep study to be recommended. It was 7, not 8, which immediately seemed skeevy because there was no way to come up with 7 points - you’d either score 0, 4, 8, or higher. So if you answered yes to more than 1 of the dozen questions, you needed a sleep study.
I like this dentist, who does excellent work, and love my hygienist. But it might be time to move on because I can’t imagine that this will become a non-issue at my next appointment. Plus, he advertises Botox injections (his business, but seems like a cash grab) and did pull one of those “Surprise, your kid needs $2000 in fillings” deals when we switched her over from our retiring family dentist.
My issue isn’t with screening for conditions like sleep apnea or depression, but with how those screenings are done, why, and by whom.
I switched dentists because my last one was always trying to sell me stuff - laser whitening, extra cancer screenings, invisalign, botox - you name it. It became really annoying to be saying “no thanks” every time I went in for a cleaning/checkup.
I am very happy with my current one who takes great care of my teeth and that’s it.
With over $250,000 of dental school debt and more debt from the cost of starting or buying a practice, it is not surprising that some dentists look for more ways to find revenue.
Seems like this trend hasn’t hit our area (or our dentist/doctors) yet. Can’t say I’m upset about that fact either.
When we lived in St Pete FL (a couple decades ago), hubby and I went to a dentist who went to our church. As with a pp, he found thousands of dollars worth of work that NEEDED to be done. We were young and poor just starting to have kids. There was no way we could afford it. My mom made me an appt with her dentist telling me she’d cover it on a trip I made to see her. He only found one small cavity… and asked me again what the other dentist said he saw. Then he told me to file a report. I never did. The original office called asking when I wanted to schedule our appts and I told the receptionist what the other dentist said. A little later in the mail I got a detailed report telling me how this dentist was all about preventative care and not “fix it” care yadda, yadda, yadda. It was merely a different “philosophy” of dental care.
Hubby went to a different dentist in St Pete and that dentist didn’t find his thousands of dollars worth of needs either. He didn’t even have a cavity.
Friends of ours at the church later told us how great this dentist was and how when they first went they needed a lot, how expensive it was, and how worth it it all was. I’ll admit we didn’t speak up. Why bother after the fact?
It did teach us a lesson though… and we forever knew how that dentist could afford his expensive house and toys.
I really like the dentist we have here - maybe even moreso now that I read so many stories like the OP and an additional one similar to our St Pete experience.
My dentist is phenomenal. We joke that when he retires we will have our teeth pulled so we won’t have to find another dentist.
He says, and I believe, that there are many, many bad dentists out there - finding non-existent problems, recommending cosmetic procedures, over-treating.
I have asked about getting silver fillings replaced and he won’t do them unless truly necessary. He goes for the least-invasive and lowest-cost treatments if it’s in the best interests of the patient.
@gallentjill said: “I would just like to know why the forms I fill out ask for my date of birth AND my age.”
Maybe it’s a test to determine how aggressively the patient should be treated … as in, if someone doesn’t answer correctly, perhaps a bit of herd thinning is in order.
(Just kidding, I swear.)
Ooh, update!
After reading and posting on this thread I wrote my first Google review, a one-star for the dental practice I complained about here. I pretty much copied and pasted my post from here and added a bit about being quite happy with my former care at this group, before the retirement of my old dentist. I immediately got an email asking if I’d contact them by phone or email. I emailed back with a little more info, including the date I was seem and exact work recommended. I got a phone call 10 minutes ago from a woman I’m now thinking of as the Dental Weenie trying to very politely pressure me into taking down my negative review. Ha! No way, Jose.
She kept saying things like “We like to give patients a full picture of their dental health.” At first I thought she was trying to apologize and to learn how to improve their care, and I tried to be polite and helpful, but I finally realized she just wanted the review changed and I responded with, “If I had gone with your recommendation I would have spend a whole lot of money and a whole lot of time in pain in order to have unnecessary work done.” She still wasn’t done and kept trying to say some dentists are more proactive than others and they were surprised to see my review given it had been so much time. She also said she hoped I would have contacted them first. I pointed out that I did when this happened, both when I asked for my X-rays and when I returned to have all my dental records switched over. I’m so tempted to write a follow-up review. It would not be the one Ms Dental Weenie would like!
GP suggested S - who is 23 - have a sleep study because he complained of fatigue.
About $500 OOP for the sleep study. Then he was routed to the one individual in the area which makes a special mouth guard type thingy - marketed as ‘you don’t have to use those uncool CPAP thingies’. That little special item was going to be charged to the insurance at … wait for it…wait for it…6K! But it was okay, because included all the needed visits and the production of specialized thingy was included in that one price. However, we were told not to worry because once the insurance denied the claim (as everyone knew they would) we would only be charged 2.5K for the thingy.
S apnea score was a minuscule amount over the 'yup, you have it ’ baseline. They couldn’t answer how they came up with this baseline, nor how many people in a random sample would be above the baseline (yet have no issues)
S is fine. Turns out he needed a good multi-vitamin some valerian tea and a stable sleep schedule.
As for those mental health questionnaires… S took one when he was 17 as part of his physical. Oh lookie…he scored one point over the baseline. GP suggested anti-depressants. WHAT! Those questions were so broad and so generic (have you felt sad in the last two weeks? Have you found it difficult to get motivated in the last two weeks?) that frankly just about anyone could be scored as depressed if they took it at a particularly bad moment in time.
Had we simply put S on anti-depressants he would have been precluded from EVER getting a pilots license (that was right after the GermanWings pilot flew into the mountain). Turns out - yes, he was feeling down, as one tends to feel occasionally at 17, or 27 or 57. A short round of talk therapy and simple permission to have a case of the 'ain’t it awful’s ‘cured’ him.
As for the questionnaire asking about guns. That is an inappropriate invasion of privacy - we cross out the question.
I’ve always wondered how they can get good readings on those sleep studies. How can anyone sleep well in a strange place with electrodes glued all over your head, face, etc. plus all the other straps and gizmos attached to your body?
If you haven’t seen it before, this is basically what you look like during a sleep study:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/brain-babble/201408/whats-all-stuff-they-put-me-during-sleep-study