The forest for the trees?

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  companies seem to be emphasizing efficient and affordable health care which is fine, but let's not throw the baby our with the bath water... Our primary responsibility as dentists is to do no harm and do our best to help our patients maintain dental health. The hippocratic oath never mentions efficiency or affordability. 

Sometimes it seems that many of the  "mandated" courses that I am forced to take to stay credentialed involve the principal of preventing law suits and or fines from the government, but actually have little to do with insuring that my patients receive the best dental care possible. 

As an Instructor at NYU College of Dentistry I remain in contact with many young dentists who are just starting out and many report the pressure they are under from their employer to be productive as possible and to support aggressive treatment plans. While this may make sense to their employers who want to maximize profits, it has nothing to do with the ultimate well being of their patient's dental health , especially if they are not allowed enough chair time to provide optimal dental services.

Personally, I believe the public would be better protected by our government if it spent more time analyzing out comes and quality of care and less time spent on posturing about protecting the public and paying lip service to affordable healthcare.