Medical and Dental Tourism is HUGE! Get some work done WHILE traveling for the same cost as having it done down the street from your house?? Sounds pretty good!

And in some cases, it works out great! But other times, patients come into our office after having things done in another country…and we scratch our heads a bit. Here are the problems we see from time to time:

• Standards. Many first-world countries are fantastic in their standards and quality, but quality comes at a high price. Others, especially countries with a poor citizen population, but very wealthy vacationing population, can be questionable. The local schools may not train to the standards of a wealthier nation, and the testing to become a dentist may not be as rigorous. We have seen some very questionable work that often has to be redone, and therefore ends up costing more.

• Materials. Dental implants are the big issue we’ve run into, but the same can be said about fillings, crowns, and root canal material. At my practice, we use brands of dental implants that are high quality, and are therefore recognized and used world-wide. They also happen to be more expensive for us to buy than other brands. This is simply a quality decision we’ve made. It is very tempting as a doctor to buy less expensive, less common implants. This is fine if it is your doc down the street who has all of the equipment to service the implant in case there are any issues. However, if your implant was placed several thousand miles away in a country that’s difficult to get records from…it can be a problem. If something goes wrong, we may not be able to fix it and may have to start from scratch.

• Communication. It can be difficult for us (or you) to get records of your care from a foreign country. If you choose to have work done away from your home country, make sure you don’t leave until you have ALL info of what was done. This includes chart notes, procedure notes and detailed records of materials used.

To conclude, I’ve seen good and bad from medical tourism. And certainly, you can argue that the same can be said about medical and dental care done locally. But the bottom line is that you need to know what you’re getting into before you spend money to travel afar for care. Some tips:

• Get plenty of recommendations. Personal recommendations, if possible – we’ve heard of places that pack their online reviews with those from family and friends that have never undergone treatment.
• Ask lots of questions – you should know exactly what is being done to you and feel comfortable with who is doing it. Don’t accept “we do it this way, no questions asked!”
• Get all the records that you can before leaving the country.
• Make sure you have accurate contact information for the medical/dental team you saw. Phone numbers are great, but email addresses make things simpler in case translation is necessary.
• Finally, be aware, that if something goes wrong and you can’t get back to the initial provider, you will likely have to pay for something to be fixed or redone…which can be much more costly.