NHS Dentists- Brits only

[jonnytuna]

For the last few years I have been going to the BBC dentist, where I'm registered as a national health patient. Since I have been out of the Beeb for almost 3 years and the BBC dentist itself is soon moving to the nearby shopping mall, Westfields. I thought I'd experiment with elsewhere.
So I have just gone to a local one in Camden for a checkup

Comments

[blonde_venus]

I'm a bit of a pov these days, and cheap amalgam fillings and £16 check-ups are very handy, thank you. I had a root canal done earlier this year and it cost me £200 as opposed to £400. I'm sure there is some sort of right-on reason as well, eg not contributing to gradual dismantling of NHS services, etc.

[jonnytuna]

I'm not so sure about having a load of lead and mercury stuck in my mouth long term. There is certainly anecdotal evidence of early onset of dimenture due to leeching of these elements (although probably the least of my problems)

So the root canal was £400 private and NHS was £200. What was the difference in the treatment?

[blonde_venus]

The difference was in the product not the service - I got a pikey gold crown as opposed to a nice white one. I imagine the cheap nasty ones wouldn't be offered by a private dentist. My teeth are all going to fall out soon anyway so I don't think I've got any 'long term' issues to worry about!

[blonde_venus]

My teeth are rubbish, I might have to look into this ...

[indigo_violet]

CJ goes to N7 Dental on Holloway Road where they do accept NHS patients. CJ needed a cap on one front tooth and a 'build-up' on the other one, these would have cost a small fortune privately (£800 - £1,000 according to the internet) but I think he paid around £200 all in on the NHS. I can't say what the difference in treatment would have been versus private, but so far so good. So it might be worth staying with an NHS dentist in case God forbid you ever need anything more complicated than a filling doing. As for me I pay private rates because my dentist stopped doing NHS some time ago and I like him so don't want to move, mind you all I ever need is a £50 check-up once a year which I can totally cope with cost-wise.

[lucifiction]

Maybe the check-ups are around the same price, but everything else done non-NHS is a massive rip off! The only dental work I've had done is extraction of two wisdom teeth (on separate occasions). The first wisdom tooth I had removed was done on the NHS for about £45. When I had to get the second taken out, I'd moved house and so registered with a different dentist, supposedly as an NHS patient but they were total liars and tried to rip me off, telling me that I would have to pay about £100 for an x-ray plus the cost of the extraction. I knew at this point that although they claimed to be treating me as an NHS patient, they weren't, because the x-ray for the previous extraction was done as part of the cost of the extraction. I've encountered this with more than one dentist, as I went to get a check-up at another place and they wanted to charge me extra for the scale and polish thing, which again contravenes the NHS pricing structure

[jonnytuna]

lucy- many thanks for that informative comment. I think you have made my mind up and I will stay with the NHS option in West London.