Having been client with Swiss dentists and paying a lot I stopped it a few years back. Now I need to get some work done. Any experiences with cheap dentists outside of Switzerland?
I’m visiting my family twice a year in Poland and then I go to all possible doctors. It’s 10 times cheaper. I think for an average Swiss resident it would make sense to make twice a year a city break to a lovely Eastern city, like Lviv, Krakow, Budapest, Bucharest, Wrocław, Kiyev, Kotor, Dubrovnik, Prague, Bratislava, Vilnus, Riga, Talin, St. Petersburg, Lubljana, Sofia, Belgrade, and get your dentist visit there. It should pay off with cheap airlines, like Wizzair or easyJet.
We usually see the dentist and do health-checks in Taiwan [my wife is from there] while there with family on summer vacations. The Taiwan dentists are top-notch and used to have all clients covered by the national health-insurance. If a foreigner comes, they will almost feel bad to charge CHF 20-30 for dental hygiene service and other check-ups. We’ve been doing this since 2004 and have our own client files over there with the dentist who knows us well.
As the flights for 4 pax (2 adults and 2 kids) will set us back normally around CHF 4,000 we always feel delighted to only get charged CHF 20-30 per head for the dentist. My mental accounting mechanism makes me believe we saved around CHF 250 x 4 or CHF 1,000 on the flight by going to a cheaper dentist which makes our summer vacation cheaper again.
We usually also get our haircut over there! But only once or twice a year.
There are many forum posts on different sites about how good healthcare in Bangkok is. It’s a bit far from here, but if you need something very expensive, it might be worth it.
Other than that I see a lot of ads about dentists in Konstanz. No idea how good they are. though.
I have booked Warsaw/Poland, thanks all for your tips especially @1000000CHF . I have no connections there but want to do some sightseeing in between the dentist sessions. With direct flight from Zurich and 4N hotel costing CHF 600 the volume of dental work needs to be sizable to bring about substantial cost reductions. Will keep you posted if someone is interested.
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Uhmm…you could have saved by flying from Basel, if time is not an issue.
It might cost you 150chf return, depending on when. Cheaper but slower by bus, straight from Zurich.
If anyone’s interested, the Polish prices are:
- 150 PLN (40 CHF) for a typical cavity
- 1000 PLN for a serious cavity (canal etc)
- 200 PLN for descaling + sand + fluor
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@dom.swiss check out Budapest. it seems to be a booming paradise for dentists serving swiss customers, everything included (transfer from airport, lodging, dentist related work, etc). will try to dig up the precise company, a swiss friend’s mother and sister were there recently and loved the experience.
Would these be the prices in a big city like warsaw?
Yes, these prices will be valid in any city. Warsaw is somehow not more expensive, when it comes to services. Warsaw is more expensive on rent.
So I went to Poland for 4 days. These are the prices I encountered:
- 200 PLN / 55 CHF for very speedy and good descaling
- 200 PLN / 55 CHF for panoramic x-ray on CD-ROM and thorough check-up plus cost estimate for all the work that needs to be done
- 250 - 300 PLN / 70 - 85 CHF for simple cavities and resin filling
Furthermore I got the following price estimations
- 300 PLN / 85 CHF for simple extractions
- 500 PLN / 140 CHF for extractions of teeth with multiple roots
- 1000 PLN / 280 CHF for extractions where bone needs to be taken away
- 2000 PLN / 560 CHF for root canal treatment and filling
- 4000 PLN / 1130 CHF for implants
The difficulties I encountered were that the original promise to keep a doctor available until late in the evening did not materialize. In 4 days I got 20 min with a dental hygienist and a total of 2.5 hours with a dentist. This allowed to fix small things only.
Some processes are not fit for offshoring. I would hate to travel far with a swollen cheek and in pain after one or more extractions. Implants need 5 appointments over 4-5 months, two of them 7 days apart to take out stitches. This requires a lot of planning for low-cost flights and available dentist’s time.
For flights, hotel, drinks and meals I paid about 600 CHF (having a very comfortable stay in a good hotel). With the few things that could be fixed I may have paid slightly more than with a Zurich dentist but got to see Warsaw as a bonus.
Quality wise the dentist was top. Sufficient English was spoken and she was a nice and no-bullshit lady.
(Exchange rate as of today: 100 PLN = 28 CHF)
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It’s cool that you enjoyed your stay. I would recommend to visit Warsaw in the summer. In the winter it looks pretty depressing (most places do).
BTW The typical flight price Zurich-Warsaw is about 200 CHF (both ways) and Basel-Warsaw 50 CHF (cheap airline). You will easily find a 4-star hotel for 50 CHF / night and 5 star for 100 CHF. Restaurants are about the 1/4th of the Swiss price, the Warsaw prices in PLN are the Zurich prices in CHF.
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Thanks for the interesting posts, but can we have this kind of conversations with an exchange rate written somewhere?
I mean instead of 200PLN you could have written ~50chf.
Maybe it’s enough to put a rate just at the top (something like 100pln = 28chf)
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A friend of mine is dentist in Hungary if anyone is interested. Not in Budapest though. I have NO CLUE if he is a good dentist. I met him kayaking in Greenland. He speaks good english.
I visited friends in Belgrade last fall, and they booked an appointment with their dentist for me. The dentist and assistant (who fortunately spoke English quite well - I speak no Serbian) spent an hour giving my teeth a proper cleaning, to the tune of just under CHF 30.-. I was extremely happy with the way I was treated and with the results. To my untrained eye, there was the same infrastructure there as at my dentist’s practice in Bern. I didn’t inquire about other prices.
Here’re their XY:
BELVILLE DENTAL
14N/Lokal 2 Jurija Gagarina, Beograd 11070, Serbia
+381 11 6300955
https://goo.gl/maps/11LZ3m8KBT42
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My Sony smartphone has a cracked display but works well otherwise. I called a couple of shops in Madrid the day before going there in November. They offered to fix it for half the price of the swiss and german repair workshops. It didn’t work out in the end because they couldn’t order the parts on time, but I will definitely call earlier and do the repair next time.
Sorry for hijacking the thread.