Low Cost Dental Treatments or Modern and Efficient Dental Clinics?

In recent years, the dental industry has undergone great change. A lower economic availability and a reduction in the budget that can be allocated to health care by the average citizen have had as a direct consequence the reduction in annual turnover of the individual professional and, in return, an exasperated race of the competition over the price among the different professionals of the sector.

Taking advantage of this change in the dental industry, the foreign financial groups have made their way in the Italian market by offering low-cost dental treatments which, while meeting the economic needs of patients, cause a significant drop in quality of the services rendered to citizens throughout Italy.

Did you know that:
To become a dentist, the bachelor degree is not enough. One should get a five-year diploma.
After three years of studying the student will take an exam to obtain a diploma of Mechanical Operator of the dental industry and this will allow him to practice the profession exclusively as an employee. On the other hand, if he wants to exercise the profession
independently, the student will have to go on studying the following two years and then
take an exam. This gives him the possibility to obtain the qualification to practice the profession and
obtain the diploma of maturity. Thus, it is up to him to decide whether to continue his university studies at the faculty of dentistry.

To comment on this situation we leave the floor directly to RICCARDO CANTONI, founding partner of Dental Team Srl and lender of dental clinics in the Lombardy-Veneto area..

I am not pleased to be a prophet of misfortune, but already in 2005 I was warning colleagues and clients about the negative effects that this kind of globalization would have brought to our sector. Through the creation of information campaigns, I have also tried to establish closer synergies between dentists and customers all over the country to try to cope with this economic guillotine that hit all of us indiscriminately. Unfortunately these appeals and initiatives ultimately resulted in nothing, a situation that forces us to affront obvious and inevitable consequences.

The structures, I refer to, often do not avail themselves of the cooperation of the traditionally defined dental industry to keep the tariffs within a certain limit. The doctors themselves are paid in an absolutely non-remunerative way, not reflecting the ability and skills necessary for the profession. These companies implement a policy that can be described as low cost - low quality binomial.

The dental laboratories that even try to withstand the tariffs of these companies, while respecting both the quality standards imposed by the Italian Ministry of Health and the regular taxation of our country, should accept such a volume of production that would be impossible to deliver medical devices respecting times and functional aesthetic quality.

The consequence is that more and more traditional dental laboratories will be forced to close and together with them even more mono-professional dental offices would be stripped of the expertise support necessary to carry out any service for the patient.

To prevent this eventuality, the Dental Team Srl has heavily invested in new technologies for the dental industry by adopting new machinery, new protocols and a new conception of our profession. As proof of this new vision, our company has also invested in the partnership of the opening of several dental clinics in the area, becoming a single and direct supplier and creating an even closer and more efficient synergy of work than was previously possible.

The patients who rely on our services are cared about by highly trained and professionally skilled dentists, supported by a staff of assistants and receptionists who, with care and organizational skills, meet every expectation of the individual person. Our specialized dentists and our administrative department work in cohesive manner with the clinics, guaranteeing high quality of the products at a shortened times thanks to the organizational capacity and the synchronization of our staff.

Although this organization of work has allowed us to cut times and prices, a practice that returned the trust of thousands of families, our facilities cannot be considered low-cost. Offering high quality at a fair price, we are able to manufacture and deliver our products in a very short time, offering at the same time a service for all budgets but also an attention to the patient that is much higher than what you can find in structures, only apparently, similar to ours.

The fact that we managed to achieve these goals does not however delude us about the future: doctors, dental technicians and all the staff are being upgrading through courses and actively encouraged to keep their preparation and their mentality in step with the times. This industry has recently been revolutionized, but its change has not yet been completed and perhaps will never end. Soon the innovation will no longer be perceived as such and the consumer will become more selective in his choices, thus triggering a specialization process of the structures which the Dental Team and Holdent (our group of clinics) are ready to address..

The idea that this market may get stabilized and fossilized is now obsolete and our goal is to be always at the forefront of innovation and services, a policy that will allow us to remain the leaders of the industry and the growth of the dental sector and beyond.

Riccardo Cantoni