Dental Health and Income

How our finance plans may help our Birmingham patients.

It is widely accepted that being in poverty is likely to lead to a poorer level of health than those with more money. There are, of course, exceptions to this, such as when those with money over indulge and damage their health. For most of us though, we probably fall somewhere in the middle, having neither an excessive amount of money, yet enough to get by with a moderate to medium standard of living.

Whilst this level of income would perhaps be the envy of many around the world, it is difficult to escape from the fact that we live in a consumer society and want many of the benefits that go along with this. When times become financially harder though, it can be difficult to maintain our standard of living and sometimes, we allow things to slip, such as our dental health care.

False Economy

Whilst it is impossible to avoid paying utility bills for example, it is much easier to close our eyes to the fact that we perhaps need a dental procedure, whether for ourselves or our children. Naturally, if pain is involved, we will seek our dental treatment, but in cases where it is merely inconvenient such as a chipped tooth, you may feel that seeing a local Birmingham dentist is unnecessary and will only add to your outgoing expenses.

As any professional dentist will tell you though, this is taking a similar approach to the ostrich which sticks its head in the sand and what starts out as a simple chip may well lead to further damage such as dental decay. Unfortunately because the enamel is damaged, the tooth may weaken further and possibly even break – at this point it may need to be repaired using a dental crown, or even extracted and replaced by a dental implant or bridge. Both of these procedures will obviously be more expensive than a simple filling would have been if the problem had been addressed straight away.

Overall Dental Health

Of course, it is not only when minor damage such as a chip occurs that we should seek out a dentist. Keeping on top of your oral health is important and problems which would otherwise often go undetected until they became serious, such as gum disease, or even oral cancers, can be spotted and treated much earlier if regular dental appointments are kept.

At Arthur House Dental Care, we recommend that our patients from Sutton Coldfield and around the Birmingham area generally, maintain at least twice yearly visits to our practice so that we can help to ensure their optimum oral health. In some cases, we may also recommend more regular visits or even additional visits to our hygienist, Gemma Hodson.

We do appreciate, of course, that most families do not have a never ending supply of money (especially after Christmas!) and we are therefore pleased to be able to offer a selection of flexible payment options to help you to pay for your dental treatment over a period of time, thus helping you to spread your payments.

For more information, please call our reception on 0121 323 4492.