Dental Info

According to Britannica.com :" This oath dictates the obligations of the physician to students of medicine and the duties of pupil to teacher. In the oath, the physician pledges to prescribe only  beneficial  treatments, according to his abilities and judgment; to refrain from causing harm or hurt; and to live an  exemplary  personal and professional life." Since dentists are essentially physicians of the mouth, the Hippocratic oath applies to our profession . That being said, as more and more cooperate entities are getting involved with healthcare, sometimes it seems that this oath is being forgotten. As far as I know MBA's are not sworn to uphold this oath and and in my opinion it seems that their goal is to increase efficiency and  generate  maximum profits. This can present a conflict to both dentists in training and to licensed dentists as well. Often to improve access to potential patients they feel compelled to treat patients with insurance ...

  A number of dentists, feel that cleaning teeth is "too simple" for them to spend time cleaning teeth (also hygiene "production" is less than other types of procedures that a dentist may perform.).Dentist's whose heart is not into performing cleanings may not do their best job. In that case most hygienist will do a better job at cleaning their patients teeth. I do about 20% of the cleanings that are performed in my office. I enjoy doing some cleanings and I have patients that ask for me. Other patients request that they be scheduled with Elena (our hygiene "Angel"). She is quite gentle and extremely nice and has been performing cleanings in our office for over ten years.  This past vacation I rented a house in Cape Cod  and my son invited some of his friends who are recent graduates of NYU's dental school. Some will be working in dental offices as a first year associate instead of doing a general practice residency.  I advised them to not be ups...

 The problem with cleaning out cavities that are at least partially below the gingiva is that it is easy to cause bleeding when prepping the cavity for a filling . In my practice I employ ultradent cord to retract the gums away from the margin of my preparation. Often I need to use two cords... a smaller cord first and and slightly larger cord second. These cords are saturated with either hemodent or viscostat. Hemodent is often better because it doesn't get "brown" ferric sulfate infused into the gingiva and preparation. Hemodent (aluminum chloride) is a clear solution.  Ocasionally I will remove some of the gingiva with a rotary diamond or a periodontal currette (a gingivictomy) because there is too much gingiva to be retracted by retraction cord alone. I find that ferric sulfate (Ultradent's Viscostat) will arrest the resulting bleeding that occurs due to my gingivectomy.  Once the gingiva is pushed away from the margin , then I am usually able to clean out the d...

 Since we close for the last two weeks in August many of our patients who we saw in August who need dental work are likely to schedule their next visit after labor day when we reopen. Since most dental insurance plans renew annually starting Jan 1rst, many of our insured patients have only the next 4 months to use their remaining dental benefits.  Most that are in need multiple procedures prefer that we sent in a pre-certification to their insurance company prior to commencing treatment since this will help them determine out of pocket costs. The problem is that some of the insurance companies are getting more slow at processing pre-certfications and claims. It is not that unusual for them to claim that they haven't received our mailed documents. So the point of this post is to encourage our patient to not delay scheduling their continuing care appointments ( check up and cleanings as well as completing any planned treatment), This will allow these these to be billed to their...