A High Tech visit to the dentist
This week I had the chance to catch up on some much needed personal maintenance, including a visit to the dentist. Like most people, I have usually gone to the dentist that my wife or parents have gone too, without much research into the doctor, office, or technology. In fact, out of all medical related things, the dentist has always been a secretive-put-all-your-trust-in-the-guy-digging-around-in-your-mouth-thing. I hate it when I don’t know if the guy with the drill is looking out for my best interest, or trying to fund their new condo in Aspen or a 5 star trip to Brazil. After a few years at my wife’s old school dentist, it was time for a change into the 21st century.
I had seen that some dentists do everything from digital x-rays, movies on the ceiling, and even massages. In order to assure that they are most likely current with technology, I came up with a list of criteria:
· The dentist has to have a web site
· They at least have to have an email address, and reply back if I email them promptly
· (optional) Be able to book appointments online
· They have to be able to book me an appointment with the next two weeks. My old dentist would literally take 3 months for the next available appointment.
· I want to see a picture of their lobby on their web site
· I want to see a picture of their treatment rooms/chairs
· They better have an LCD hanging above the chair
· Take my insurance or at least make it simple by filing my insurance reimbursement for me
· Be near my work so that I don’t have to take much time off
Geeky? Yes. High expectations? Yes. Did I find what I was looking for? Yes.
Let me introduce you to my new dentist, Angela Osborn, DDS. BTW, I didn’t get any type of discount, nor did she know I would blog about this. But, I had such a cool experience (even though I had to have a lot of work done), that I had to tell all my geeky friends about it.
So, I “Live Searched” (you thought I was going to say Googled, huh) a dentist on Lone Tree, Colorado and found her web site. Let me first address a couple things that I didn’t like about the web site, remember this is a geek talking that uses the Internet heavily, opinions may be different for” normal” users.
1) It has an intro. Intro’s scream to me late 90’s when you wanted to attract a lot of attentions by saying “look I forked out the big bucks to have someone flashize my web site”.
2) It has sound whether you are on the Intro or main info page. Ya, you can turn it off, but if you are in an office, the prairie dogs start popping up in cubicle town when you get surprised with sound from a web site.
3) The main site is completely flash driven, with navigation on the right and frames, kinda. It took me about 30 seconds to figure out how to navigate and in Internet time, this is an eternity. The site could easily be converted to HTML/ASP/JAVA and still retain most of the ambience but make navigation normal and support small devices better.
Getting past the web site, the experience was nothing short of fantastic, yes I said fantastic about a dentist visit. I was able to grab all forms I needed from the web site, so signing in was easy. Brenda at the front desk was able to schedule me for about a week out, and called back the next day and offered me an immediate opening. Brenda was also great because she asked for my insurance information and called the insurance immediately to find out what they covered.
When I arrived, it was like sitting in the waiting room at the spa with nice tile floor, furniture, and faux painted walls. 
They got to me pretty quick, and Tracy starting doing a full X-ray of my mouth. I was able to watch the X-rays pop up on the LCD in front of me. Then came something I hadn’t anticipated, speech recognition. Tracy spent the next 10 minutes probing each of my teeth and dictating the state of the surrounding gum tissue to the computer. It was a bit long, but worth it as she dictating things like “no, 3, no” which means I didn’t have plaque, the gum tissue was at level 3 (level 1-3 is good), and that when she probed it didn’t bleed. All this is also feed onto the screen and kept as a permanent record for comparison in the future.
After the standard cleaning, Dr. Osborn came in to check for cavities and look at my x-rays. I didn’t expect any because I have had really good luck with my teeth. Then came the bad news, I had a few potential bad places, but the real story was that where I had some fillings in the past showed signs of damages and decay around them. How did I know she wasn’t pimping me for some money? She stuck a camera in my mouth, snapped some pictures like the one shown here and showed me on the monitor the nasty spots. Proof! That is what I wanted; it got rid of shroud of mystery of the dentist.
Dr. Osborn’s practice hit 8 out of 9 of my criteria, and has already started directing some of my friends and family there. I went back the following week to have my teeth fixed, and Dr. Osborn did an excellent job.
