The Year My Dentist Was Replaced by a Call Script

It’s almost ten years now since my dentist, Jitty, retired. You might not believe it, but I actually cried.

A week earlier I’d still been thinking, I hope she stays another ten years. And I’d more or less assumed she would. I knew she wasn’t young anymore, but I never would have guessed she was already at retirement age. True to form, being as conscientious as she was, she thoroughly cleaned up my entire mouth before she actually hung it up.

The reason I was so sad when my dentist retired came down to two things.

Twenty years of trust

1. I’d been going to her for twenty years. A friend had recommended her. My daughter was still very little then, and Jitty was the first dentist who ever treated her. She played such an important role in the healthy development of my daughter’s teeth that even now, writing this, I still get a lump in my throat—out of gratitude.
I’m not going to go into my daughter’s medical situation here; that would be inappropriate toward her, and it’s not what this post is about. But if Jitty hadn’t stepped in the way she did back then, my daughter would later have developed a jaw problem that would have been extremely hard to fix. On top of that, Jitty taught my daughter how to take proper care of her teeth, and because of that she has a really healthy mouth today.

2. Over those same twenty years that I was seeing Jitty, I developed a lot of dental problems myself because of a serious autoimmune condition. Those problems kept getting harder and harder to treat, and gradually Jitty learned how to work with them. Because trust me—my situation makes it genuinely difficult for a dentist to treat me. So now I had to find a new dentist. But how was I supposed to find one who could handle my particular issues? (By then my daughter was grown and had moved out.)

The "special" dental care clinic

I went to the general clinic for special dental care that had been recommended in the patient association magazine for people with my condition. They supposedly had a special package for patients like me, and the costs would even be fully covered. What did that package consist of? All of my molars would be extracted preventively, and I’d get a special toothpaste with extra fluoride. If I were a health insurance company, I’d be happy to reimburse a treatment like that too. It really does look like a “preventive” good investment against possible future costs! 😉

Honestly, I was pretty shocked, and pretty angry as well. How exactly was it in my interest as a patient to have all my molars removed? They weren’t in the best shape anymore, sure, but they weren’t beyond saving either. It turned out it wasn’t my interest that was being considered here. “Otherwise we might not be able to get to them later,” was the argument.

So I kept looking for a dentist who could deal with my specific problems. I already knew I didn’t want to go back to one of those big institutions. Because there it seems to be all about the protocols: “Does the patient have condition X? Yes → Extract all molars + prescribe extra fluoride.”

I want a dentist who, besides focusing on the protocols—often the ones dictated by the insurance company—still has a little room left to see the actual human being sitting in the chair.

And that’s what this post is about.

Healthcare becoming impersonal

About how impersonal healthcare has become over those twenty years. At least, that’s how I experienced it. Because a lot changed in those two decades—changes that luckily passed me by because I had a dentist with whom a natural human connection gradually developed. Jitty didn’t even have an assistant; she did literally everything herself: answering the phone all the way through to sending out the bills. I swear, a bill sent out by the dentist herself—I pay those with pleasure. Not because I enjoy high dental bills, but because I really appreciate a dentist who hasn’t sold herself out to a practice chain.

I did get to see that kind of change happen, though, through my daughter’s orthodontist. When she was still very little and her permanent teeth were just starting to come in, Jitty intervened: we needed to get to an orthodontist as soon as possible. She knew one she trusted a lot, someone who had partly trained her. And indeed, the man was excellent; he made a completely custom little appliance designed specifically for my daughter’s mixed dentition. We went to that practice for four years. And during that time we watched it change.

First the number of orthodontists-in-training grew hand over fist. After we’d been there a year, my daughter was hardly ever seen by the orthodontist himself anymore. Starting in the second year the bills no longer came from the practice itself but from a company that handled the administration centrally. By the third year you couldn’t even call the assistant—who, thankfully, was still the same person—anymore; you got a recording and were transferred through a central service.

The script at the front desk

And that’s pretty much what most dental practices in Amsterdam look like now too. There’s a central front desk with an assistant. You can call, but the communication options are tightly limited. You can ask, for example, whether they’re still taking new patients, but you can’t ask whether they’re familiar with your particular issues or whether they can even handle them. Because that goes beyond the knowledge and authority of the front-desk staff. They’re only allowed to run through their script—including telling you that you can’t speak to a dentist. No, you first have to register with the practice, and only after that can they see whether they can deal with your problems. Which, to my mind, is completely the wrong order.

Finding a new dentist

After a lot of phone calls with a lot of front-desk assistants all reciting the same script, I finally found an independent dentist through Google Reviews. I read a review from someone who was extremely grateful because that dentist had specially opened his practice on a Saturday for a man with an emergency. And I was able to get in quickly myself. The dentist looked at my dental X-rays. According to him those back molars could simply be restored. And that’s what he did. It’s been eight years now. With one exception, I still have all the molars that the special dental care clinic wanted to pull out back then. Not that all of them have come through the years completely unscathed—a number have since been replaced with crowns. But that’s perfectly livable.

Later I heard the same story from other women in my neighborhood about that special dental care clinic: they’ve all had every last molar pulled. But for a different reason than in my case. With one of them I know it was because of grinding her teeth in her sleep. With the others I don’t know the reason, but in any case they don’t have the same condition I do.

Anyway, I’m once again very happy with my current dentist, and I hope he sticks around for a very long time!

Does any part of this story resonate with your own experiences in healthcare?
Have you ever felt the difference between protocol‑driven care and truly personal care?
If you think someone might relate to this story, feel free to share the post.

Photo: Henrik Lagercrantz