huge difference in diagnoses, hard to get xray records.

smileygrrl · 10-26-2009, 05:28 AM

I'll try to make this short. I'm unemployed and without insurance. I have not been to the dentist in about 3 years. About 3 weeks ago I went to a local free dental care day and got a filling done, because I knew I had 1 cavity (it wasn't hurting or anything) Due to the amount of people waiting for services, they did not have time to do a full exam but did say I it looked like I had some more cavities. It was an extremely painful experience, so I got some recommendations and picked out real dentist. They were having a special and did all the xrays and intraoral photos for $50 and a cleaning for $80. They showed me lots of "problems" on the photos and then had their financial lady take me into a private office and proceed to show me a treatment plan consisting of 14 fillings and 3 cores/crowns, and periomed at a price of $6037. I almost fainted dead away. I only have fillings in like 6 back teeth now, and have absolutely no problems with my gums. I have a nice smile. I am missing 1 molar due to neglect the last time I lost insurance.

Now for the good part. The financial lady had me pretty freaked out and I was crying. Wanted to put me on a payment plan.. I told her I would like to get second opinion and she quickly pulls up photos on the moniter of how bad my teeth are. Mind you, the finance person.... then she offered a discount if I would prepay $1700 and come back THAT AFTERNOON and get 4 fillings and a crown. That did it for me, and I paid my bill and left. I got in with my parents dentist two days later and gave him the itemized procedure sheet and he did some xrays on the supposed needed crowns, and checked all the "problems". He says I have just 4 cavities and I don't need any crowns..

He wanted to review the one xray closer because the tooth is fractured, they are going to let me know this week if that one needs a crown.
Anyhow I did not have him take the large amout of xrays the other place did and now I would like to give them all to him to double check. Do you think this first place is going to give me a major fit about going once, getting the xrays cause they were cheap and now I don't want to go back? I know state law is that they have to give them to me and can't charge more than they cost to reproduce. I would say that they did at least 25 of them so I don't know how much it would cost to get them. Probably a small fortune.
Thanks for any help and please give your opinions on the huge discrepancy on the diagnoses also.

Thelma-Louise · 10-26-2009, 03:30 PM

Well - I would at least call them or stop by and find out how much they want - if you only paid $50 for them there should only be a nominal fee of $25 for all of them to be reproduced - I have never had anyone charge me $25 for each picture- even for a full series which it sounds like you had done. If they ask why or give you a hard time - be frank and tell them for the amt of work they recommended, you need to get a 2nd opinion and should not have to redo xrays so soon to having them just done for safety reasons (blah,blah,blah) - and besides you did pay $50 to have them done and its good to keep a copy of your records...and so on.

That was a "come on" or teaser ploy, IMO - get people to come in and get a cleaning and xrays cheaply and then try and convince them they need a lot of work done - and of course if you pay right then and there the cost will be much less - what a gimmick - so don't feel bad about going back asking for copies of your xrays only b/c you went there once and won't return - they had no guilty conscience luring you into their chair in the first place, did they?

msboards2 · 10-29-2009, 01:10 AM

A cheaper way would be to have your current dentist (the 2nd one) request a copy of the xrays from the original one. This way, it is free. From there, you can request a copy from your current dentist for your own records for whatever price they charge without having to bother with the original dentist at all.

HTH

msboards2 · 10-29-2009, 01:12 AM

But it was nice of the first dentist to offer a payment plan. The best I ever got was a discount for paying upfront via cc or check (that can be held for a week).

smileygrrl · 10-29-2009, 03:16 PM

The payment plan is the one most places are using CareCredit, I think it's called. 0% interest till you make a late payment and then it's like 25% interest. If I was going to spend that kind of money I could have used one of the 0% convenience checks from my credit card and had 6000 reward points, to boot. So it wasn't the dentist offering financing. They make money by offering the plan and likely make a nice percent kickback when people goof up on the payments. Just like car dealers make money off of financing.