Frequently Asked Questions

Frequently Asked Questions

 

Are you contracted to medical aids?

No we are a private practice, charging above medical aid rates. All our charges are medical aid approved, but we DO NOT submit the accounts on your behalf. You are expected to settle the account directly with us and there after you can submit the account to your medical to be reimbursed by them for the benefits you qualify for.

How much above medical aid rates do you charge?

Since the competitions act was passed by parliament many years ago now, there are no longer any gazetted or dental association recommended fee schedule. Every medical aid and every practice sets their own fee schedule. We all work from the same medical aid and government approved, procedural code list but the charge for each code is unique. Therefor it is impossible to answer this question as I honestly don’t know. But my standard practice is to do a comprehensive treatment plan for every patient after the initial consultation which you can submit to your medical aid for authorization and in doing so you will know how much they will reimburse you.

My fee for the initial consultation is, MORE OR LESS ( as far as I can tell) double what most medical aids allow for a consultation.

Do you treat children?

Yes I do. I love children. I have 3 beautiful daughters. They are all out the house now, but when they were little I use to go to their preschool and do a complimentary check up for the whole school once a year and the teachers were always so impressed with how well the kids responded to me. I work on a basis of trust and never try to trick any of my children into anything. I do make use of general anaesthetic on the rare occasion when a kid has too much work to be done, but it’s a rare occasion.

Do you do all the work yourself?

Yes. I am passionate about what I do and somewhat of a perfectionist, so unless I know that there is someone that can do a better job than me, I prefer to do it myself. Having said that I do have a full time Oral Hygienist, Maggie, whom I trust emphatically and even go to myself. (She does a better job of prophylaxis than me.) And if there is any procedure that I know there is a specialist that will do more justice to the task at hand, I will have no hesitation to refer you to them for that part of the treatment plan. I will however stay in control of the overall treatment plan to make sure that you are not sent helter-skelter and get “lost” in the system.

What is your practice doing to prevent the spread of the Corona virus?

The best and most efficient way to prevent the spread of the virus is to not be treating anyone with the virus, and since most of the dentistry we perform is elective , ie not life threatening, we have the luxury of trying to avoid working on contagious people. We therefor have the necessary protocols in place to try and prevent any sick people from coming to our practice. But there are asymptomatically sick people as we all know, and so to minimize the possibility of virus transfer, we have invested in additional clean air technology with air purifiers that remove all microorganisms from the air as well as additional suction systems to prevent the aerosols from being released into the air. We also fog our rooms daily and sanitise between each patient. Further more all instruments are autoclaved as has always been the case and PPE is part of our new uniforms.