Dental Info

In general good quality patient dental care should be about helping our patients achieve the best dental care possible. This doesn't necessarily entail getting our patients to spend maximum money. Instead it is about our ability to educate our dental patients about the factors that can undermine their dental health and lead to tooth loss. Most times tooth loss can be prevented through early intervention and patient education about the importance of home care and showing them how to achieve optimum dental health.  Most often  dentists do not get paid for the time spent on educating our patients. Instead there seems to be an increasing emphasis in health care about achieving efficiencies. and insuring our ability to generate a profits in spite of the ever increasing costs of delivering  dentistry in an optimal fashion. In my opinion our government and the insurance companies bear a certain responsibility for these developments. Both the government and the insurance...

When I went to dental school shadowing was not required. My only experience was as a patient. When I started dental school I was surprised how "difficult" dentistry could be. After all, my uncle was my dentist and he always made my care look easy. I had a lot to learn when I started school. I am not sure if I fully understood the difficulties involved with running a practice, seeing patients and making them happy. If I had shadowed I would have had a much better understanding about what is actually involved in being a practicing dentist.  We are currently hosting a recent college graduate who is taking a gap year and I asked her how much shadowing she needs and she reported that most schools require 100 hours of shadowing. I think this is a good thing, since the amount of schooling required to complete a dental degree is both time consuming and expensive.  Not all dentists are comfortable having a prospective dental student shadow them in their office, but many are and ...

 David finishes his general practice residency July 1rst. Even though he has passed all his licensure exams, He has to wait one -three months for his NYS license. Accordingly he will join our practice in September and probably be seeing patients primarily on Thursdays. He may see pattients on additional days if he is available.  Clearly my staff, myself and David are excited for him to join us and many of my patients are asking me about Davids plans. Many of them have known him since he was a small child who often came to my office to visit us. I would dress him up in a smock , gloves and a mask and introduce him as "Dr. David"  Although it was a "secret fantasy" that someday he would become a dentist, I never really promoted this to David and it was his idea to become a dentist like his father. I couldn't be happier with his progress and look forward to working side by side with him over the next years.  from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogsp...

For the last 5 years I have been teaching at NYU College of Dentistry on Fridays.  Recently I started teaching on Thursdays as an attending at the Mount Sinai supervising the residents in their general practice residency program. I changed my office schedule so that for the time being we are open to see our patients Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. My son David is planning on joining the practice sometime this September and he may end up seeing his patients on Thursday or Friday.  Fortunately, even though we have condensed our schedule to three days, it still is fairly easy to book an appointment in our practice since we usually have openings each week and most patients do not have to wait more than a week to see us. Emergencies can still be accommodated sooner if needed.  Recently, I went see one of my doctors and his physician assistant teased me that I am a workaholic. She may have a valid point,  since I haven't been slowing down even though I am old enough to be...

  I attend Study Clubs about three times per month. These occur after work at an office of one of the members. The purpose of our study clubs that are run using a "Spear" Model is to have  presentations  that are interactive that encourage our members  to  ask questions and share their related experiences.  Our members understand that its best  tnot to be critical of other attendees but they are free to politely disagree and explain why. The purpose our clubs is to help improve the skills and knowledge of our attendees. This should help them become more effective and able to achieve more predictable dental outcomes.  Since all dentists occasionally experience non ideal outcomes,  it is important for us to analyze why they may happen and how to avoid them in the future. I have been participating in Spear study Clubs for more than 13 years and it has helped me become a better dentist. Currently I lead my own club 10 times a year ...

 The answer is simple... to remove plaque  a long the facial and lingual surfaces of the teeth. No other technique will accomplish this as well as using a tooth brush properly . Plaque consists of colonies of bacteria attached to the teeth with a mucopolysaccharide matrix. It is like the colonies of bacteria that are grown in petrie dishes, soft, slimy and relatively easy to remove.  Yesterday I was treating one of my patients, a young man with rampant decay through out his mouth. He comes in weekly for me to clean out cavities and place " medicated fluoride releasing fillings" . These needed treatments are the result of years of neglect on his part and poor oral hygiene.  Even though he should be sufficiently motivated he still seems to be not brushing properly. Yesterday I disclosed his plaque using some chewable disclosing tablets that stain plaque red and then I asked him to go to the bathroom and brush it off. He was able to get a lot of it off and I gave hi...

According to the dictionary a serf is "a servant or laborer of olden times who was treated as part of the land worked on and went along with the land if it was sold"  and now a days it seems that healthcare workers are being bought and sold by large corporations and this analogy seems more and more apropos. I read an article today in the Wall Street Journal about CVS negotiating buying a chain of Doctor clinics from Oak Street Health. According to the article  "CVS's deal would be the latest in a series of moves by a range of players, including health insurers to acquire clinics and doctors focused on primary care. Of special interest to the buyers are clinics that manage and treat patients with chronic health conditions such as diabetes, whose care can be costly if not managed closely" It is clear that the hope is that through "greater efficiency" managing and preventing worsening conditions may save money and lead to greater profits for the own...