Not Again

Yesterday I had a consult with a beautiful young woman of 36 who had 6 poorly done (ok ugly) veneers placed in 2002 by a dentist in Syracuse, NY. Last month a local dentist convinced the patient that he could give her the smile of her dreams by placing 10 porcelain fused to metal crowns. What the dentist actually did for the patient was:
1. Remove a lot of beautiful and irreplaceable natural tooth structure
2. Place 10 dark, opaque, short crowns

Was the patient happy? No!!!
Were the patient's expectations met? Absolutely not!!!

Why did this happen and why is that we read about the plane crashes, the perforated intestines during routine colonoscopy,failing root canals and ugly cosmetic dentistry cases ON A DAILY BASIS?

WHY???????

The book 'The Outliers' provides us with much of the answer. Supposed 'experts' who haven't studied the required 10,000 hours to become a master at what they do are passing themselves off as true experts. In dentistry, we joke about a dentist who is an expert after taking a weekend course and doing the procedure exactly once.

If you find excellence by chance...consider yourself extremely lucky. Excellence will require that you do some investigation on the internet, invest some time in asking around and your willingness to not only demand excellence but be willing to PAY FOR EXCELLENCE.

Excellence requires more time and costs more. Where have I heard that before????
And let me give you a hint: Your insurance company will NOT PAY FOR EXCELLENCE....But YOU sure can.

Like Nike says: "Just DO It." And if you are unwilling to pay for excellence, you will spend three times what excellence costs in trying to correct your problems as a result of mediocrity or worse.