ER Dental Work

ER Dental Work

 

Did you know that more emergency rooms are seeing more patients for toothaches? It’s a fact that close to 130 million Americans have no dental insurance. With the lack of jobs providing medical insurance let alone dental many people choose to ignore the nagging pain that keeps many people up most of the night in pain and for those that do have jobs calling into work.

Even when patients have Medicaid many dentist will not treat these patients because of the low pay or only take a number of “new patients”. With this issue becoming a bigger problem in America the emergency rooms are being visited more frequently were the cost of service is 10 times higher for dental problems that could be fixed with preventive care.
ERs do not keep dentist on staff so the amount of relief they are able to offer is usually limited to a painkillers and antibiotics. A trip to the ER for a tooth extraction will cost around $400 on the other hand if the patient had a dentist it would cost around $57. Regardless if the patient is from a low-income background or middle class it becomes a problem when underlying conditions are ignored because the patient cannot afford a dentist.

Everyone should be able to get dental help no matter how rich or poor they are. For example would it seem feasible for someone with knife protruding from their neck to go to let’s say a therapist to remove the knife and bandage the wound?
Your Informed Truth
W.D.