Concern About Changing Dentists (Denplan)

TychoTMA

The one-man dental practice I’m with changed hands 4 years ago (it’s Denplan). 

The new guy soon found out that his predecessor had not been doing a good job and had not made recent X-rays; there was a backlog of work that needed doing. I thought that he had caught up with it.  But just last week, he started to deal with a small cavity in a molar, but found it was actually big cavity and that the tooth needs extracting. He declined to do that, saying it was near a nerve, so now I have to pay appreciable money to see a consultant to do the extraction. How come he did not spot the problem when it was still small?

I want to leave the practice, but will need to get a leaving form saying there is no outstanding work needed before I can start with another practice.  As he’s not got me in to good shape after 4 years, how can I be sure that he will give me an “honest” leaving form, which the new dentist may quickly find to be inaccurate?

Undervalued

If you are going to pursue this (and obviously I have no idea whether your old dentist was at fault or not) you are going to need an expert opinion.

You could start by making a subject access request for all of the records, x-rays etc the dentist holds about you. You will then need another suitably qualified dentist to look at those and state, formally, if they feel that there is evidence that he failed to provide appropriate treatment at the time. If there are no x-rays then you will need an opinion as to whether that actually suggests negligent treatment. Obviously radiation is harmful so there is always a balance between risk and benefit (and indeed cost if you were paying privately).

Apparently Denplan does not count as insurance, so is not regulated as a financial product, which will make those aspects harder.

Toothsmith

With you saying the extraction is complicated by it being near a nerve, and that you've been referred for it's removal, makes me think that we're talking about a wisdom tooth here?

If it is, wisdom teeth can be quite tricky to spot things in early, due to their position in the dark reaches in the back of your mouth. They are also quite notorious for having problems develop with them quite quickly - and decay spreading through them quite fast. So I'd be cautious about condemning the dentist too soon. Having said that - there are 'due diligence' processes you should go through when buying a practice - and looking at a decent sample of notes and patients is not difficult to arrange. I really don't like it when any dentist moans about a previous dentist's work. There are always 2 sides. So I'm not that enamored with this dentist from the outset! 

One thing I can't really understand is why he's only suggested referring you privately to have this tooth out? If it's still not giving you any bother - then he could refer you to the Oral Surgery dept of a local hospital? This would then be done on NHS. It's true, there are backlogs in some departments of some hospitals, but not all. My local OS dept seems to have coped pretty well, and isn't much different to pre-covid times.

Either way, it's looking like this one tooth is the only actual thing that's wrong. It's also on it's way to being sorted out, one way or another. So it shouldn't cause a problem with any requested transfer.

TychoTMA

Thanks for the comments. The tooth is shown as lower left 8 on the referral document, so not sure whether that is a wisdom.
He tried to refer me to the local major NHS hospital, but they say they are only dealing with emergencies during Covid and their website system automatically bounced him on to a very large dental practice in the City. They said I could go NHS in 6-9 months or have a senior dentist do it privately in 7 days, and I chose that as it's not a happy tooth now!

I think that my present dentist took over a practice where his predecessor had being letting things slip for a while (based on discussion with the present one and my own impressions), and just after he took over, Covid happened. Just as Covid restrictions were lifted, he took on a new hygienist (a contactor), who was very poor, and after complaints, he let her go.

It's an unhappy combination of circumstances, but I just wonder if there are most nasty surprises to come. If my treatment had fallen behind, when will it catch up?

Napoleon was asked whether he preferred brave generals or intelligent generals. He said he preferred lucky generals.
I feel my current dentist is not lucky!