Are you in need of high quality dentistry? Are you a frequent shopper at Walmart? Could you use a break in the cost of dental care that you or your family might need? If you answered yes to the questions above, please read on. Dental offices are soon coming to a Walmart near you!
You may want to take a look at the website of Sensible Dental. This company has dental offices in a few Walmart stores. The idea of corporate dentistry is not novel. It all started about 20 years ago with dental office chains such as Western Dental, Monarch, Aspen, Gentle Dental, Towncare and others. Do you think that office space is rented out by a dentist that decided to open an office in Walmart or any other shopping mall for your convenience? Do you think that dentist is top notch and up to speed with continuing education on all modern methods and materials? I would think again. The reality is that such dental offices are run by large corporations, in our example Walmart is behind it . As a result, it is run as a profitable business and the one law of profitability is high income with low cost. The low cost includes a not so well paid dentist, cheap dental laboratories and cheap materials. How is that done? By dropping down the fees and increasing the patient numbers. I know they must be cutting corners on quality and as an unfortunate result, the patient receives a lower level of care.
Without a doubt, pricing is an important factor in all our decisions we make on a daily basis. But the question is, would you decide to buy that crown if it’s made out of some sub-standard material, or if the staff and office is not up to speed on their qualifications or infection control? Could you know for sure that you even need the crown or are there other better and maybe cheaper alternative treatments available for your condition? You cannot possibly have answers to all of those questions.
Did dentistry really become a commodity that can be purchased in stores with no regard to the patient’s needs or concern about the training of the staff that actually performs a medical procedure? As tragic as it sounds, it definitely seems so…. Will we ever see a shelf at Walmart where one could buy a replacement hip or shoulder, or maybe a pacemaker? Hopefully not in my lifetime, but you never know.
We own a small private dental office in Fresno, CA. Both Dr. Claudia Denes and Dr. Alex Denes take continuing education classes with some of the most prestigious schools in the country. Dr. Claudia Denes is a mentor of Spear Education School. We provide quality dentistry and pay dental laboratories anywhere between 3-4 times the average lab fee for a porcelain crown or an implant tooth, that is besides our cost of time and materials. So, could we compete against big corporate Walmart dentistry? I think we can. But not on pricing! We are not interested in that and simply cannot do it while providing a good quality treatment and good patient experience. However we can very easily compete on the quality of our service. If you want to have long lasting exceptional dental work done right the first time, service for which you don’t want to wait or come back to have it redone, you are the kind of patient we want to see in our office. On the other hand if you want cheap dental services that will not last long, we are sorry that we cannot provide that.
To learn more about quality dental treatments available in our office, contact Dr. Alex and Claudia Denes by calling Fresno Dental Studio at (559) 297-1800. Also, you may tune into the latest news and updates provided by the Doctors, by visiting our Facebook page. Located in the 93720 area, we proudly serve patients from Fresno, Clovis, Mendota, Orange Cove, Reedley, Selma, and the surrounding areas.