Visiting a Dentist in Mexico - What You Need to Know

Every year thousands of Canadians and Americans visit dentists in Mexico (what's come to be known as dental tourism). They go there knowing that dental work costs less in Mexico, generally between 50% to 70% less than at home. For many, this is an opportunity to combine substantial savings with a holiday in a beautiful beachfront destination. But what about quality?
Standards for dentist credentials and competence in Canada and the US are among the highest in the world, and for good reason. Your dental health and overall health are not things that should be left to chance. On average, the level of competence and credentials of dentists in Mexico are lower than in North America. This is why it is easy to find stories about dental tourists who have gone to Mexico and had a bad outcome.
The good news is, there are dentists in Mexico who are likely as well or better qualified than the dentist you visit at home. The challenge is identifying who they are.
Let us help you with the process.
Don't Choose a Dentist in Mexico Based on Appearances

For dentisits in Mexico, the dental tourism market can be very profitable. The realities of their developing economy means that most Mexicans will not opt to undergo unnecessary or very expensive dental work. When they do, they will tend to visit dentists who are located in non-tourist areas whose clinics might not be as well equipped as some clinics in tourist areas. They will tend to visit clinics that are reasonably priced by Mexican economic standards.
Clinics focussing on dental tourists serve a clientelle that is on average much more affluent than the clientelle served by clinics focussing on the local market. For this reason, they will perform a much higher volume of procedures that are elective and/or expensive. For instance, they will perform more dental implants, dental veneers, dental crowns, dental bridges, whitenings and bondings. These are all high profit margin procedures relative to a typical filling or extraction. For this reason, there is a real incentive for dentists in Mexico to attempt to attract dental tourists to their clinic. They do this by creating an appearance that is similar to what dental tourists are used to. They will offer nice looking clinics, perhaps with modern waiting room furniture, LCD screens for you to watch, be located in nicer parts of town, etc. The objective is to make you believe that because the clinic looks the similar to what you're used to at home, their dental practices, techniques, competence and materials will also be the same as what you find at home. In the majority of Mexican clinics however, the appearance will be a deceiving.
What Could Be Missing From a Dental Clinic in Mexico

1) Proper Sterilization and Infection Control Processes:
If you visit a dental clinic outside of North America based on appearances or based on an un-informed recommendation, this is the area where you are taking a real risk. In order to make an informed recommendation two things are necessary:
a) the person making the recommendation must know about the technical side of dentistry to a level beyond a typical consumer and,

b) the person making the recommendation must be granted access to areas of the practice and to records that would not normally be available to a patient.
The untrained eye, and even a trained eye without the necessary access, will not be able to determine whether a dental practice is following appropriate sterilization processes. If this has not been verified, the risk to you as a patient are enormous.

2) A Thorough Education

The dental industry is not as stringently regulated in Mexico as it is in Canada and the US. Unlike in Canada and the US, general practitioner dentists in Mexico are not required to pass board exams or to maintain continuing education in order to maintain their licenses. Without a source who is knowledgable about the educational and licensing standards for dental practitioners in Mexico, it is almost impossible for a dental tourist to be certain that the dentist they're visiting is as qualified as their dentist at home.

3) A Continuing Professional Relationship

Your dentist in Canada or the US hopes to form a long term professional relationship with you. Although new patients are generally welcome, your return business, year after year, is the real bread and butter of a dental practice.
Although most dentists in Mexico would like to see you again, and would also appreciate if you refer your friends, in reality, in most cases, a regular returning patient relationship will not materialize. For this reason many dentists in Mexico will look upon a dental tourist as a one time opportunity to make money and may approach treatment planning with this in mind.
In such a situation, it will be in your best interests to be allied with a third party who does have a long term professional relationship with the dentist you are visiting. A reputable, legitimate international dental referral company is your best bet. Because of Holiday Dental's reach within the Mexican dental tourism industry, our patients are treated as especially valued customers by the dentists within our network. We represent a steady stream of new patients, and as such you know you will be treated as a crucial piece of a larger picture by the dentist you visit.

The Holiday Dental Advantage

At Holiday Dental we do up-front quality control that is un-paralleled in the dental tourism industry. Using a proprietary practice assessment tool, we ensure that all dentists in our network meet the standards you expect. The tool is based in part on North American standards for Infection Prevention and Control, but also considers various aspects of a dental practice that are crucial to supporting the special requirements of dental tourists.
The assessment tool is applied on-site at the practices of the dentists in our network, and re-applied periodically to assure continued top performance. However, our quality control process begins even prior to the on-site assessment as we assess by invitation only. Leveraging our extensive network within the dental regulatory and educational realms, we only assess dentists who have been identified to us as top practitioners, by senior people in the industry who know dentistry and the people practicing it.
All of our dentists are located in the beautiful holiday destinations of Puerto Vallarta (on the Pacific coast) and Cancun and Playa del Carmen (on the Caribbean coast or Mayan Riviera). This means that our clients not only receive affordable, quality, safe dental work, but also a great vacation at the same time. In fact, in most cases, the savings on their dental work actually pays for the holiday.