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Put a dentist in a van and drive to wherever you'd need?
by Timothee 14y ago
Put a dentist in a van and drive to wherever you'd need?
- petercooper 14y agoHere in the UK, a group of Hungarian dentists did this with inflatable surgeries (and could offer Eastern European rates too): http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1051660/Deflated-charges-blow-dental-surgery-Travelling-Hungarians-offer-half-price-treatment-UK.html http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1051660/Deflated-c...
- bubbleRefuge 14y agoLike mobile dog grooming. I like it.
- pavel_lishin 14y ago"Yeah, my dentist is a guy in a van." There would definitely have to be some great marketing for this to not seem shady.
- patrickgzill 14y agoDentists seem to have about 5 different rooms, pay dental hygienists to do 90% of the work, then stop in for about 5 minutes during the course of the 45 minutes you are there. A van wouldn't cut it - you would need a bus.
- sliverstorm 14y agoYou should take it for granted that people mean the hygienist. "Dentist" is sort of a colloquialism referring to the whole operation. You're spot on though, as a single dentist operates at a higher level, that dentist would be underutilized overseeing just one chair. Can a hygienist practice independently?
- mbrameld 14y agoI'm surprised nobody has done this, actually. I live in Alaska and have a friend who is a dentist. He works exclusively in remote villages with a portable kit of equipment he flies around with on small chartered aircraft. It would definitely fit in a van.
- maxerickson 14y agoThere aren't very many licensed dentists that have to bother much about finding customers.
- davorak 14y agoI think the idea would be to charge a large amount to make it worth the dentists while to do so. So high population density high income areas. New York and maybe San Francisco?
- nuclear_eclipse 14y agoWe actually do have this where I work. I don't know the schedule, as I would never trust my mouth to someone I can't easily return to with problems, but it does actually exist.
- slackson 14y agoThey do this for New Zealand school students. A truck with a dental clinic inside it comes to the school and everyone gets a check-up.
- refurb 14y agoThe already have something like that in the Bay area. I was up near Genentech a few months back and they had a huge trailer setup in the parking lot. It was a portable dentist office setup for employees to use. I assume it shows up once or twice a month.