How oral health affects us

Your smile is the first thing people notice about you. Embarrassment of a smile, bad breath, or untreated tooth decay all impact the way a person speaks, eats, and socializes. Childhood tooth decay affects learning, behavior, self-esteem, diet, and sleep. The children in low-income bracket families have a decay rate 2.5 times higher, contributing to annual loss of 2.26 million school days a year.

Neglecting your mouth can also lead to a range of physical issues including heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, diabetes, respiratory disease, oral cancer, and pre-term or low-birth-weight babies.

The alarming stats

Six million Canadians do not visit a dentist regularly. Of those, 48 percent have gum disease. The gap of untreated dental conditions is causing an unnecessary burden on our health care system: 1 of 5 children, 3 of 10 adults, and 4 of 10 elderly use an emergency only pattern to address their dental care. This practice means they visit the emergency room at hospitals rather than the dentist for their dental needs. This lengthens wait times for other urgent care and puts an unwarranted strain on the health care system.

Why do so many not attend the dentist regularly?

Some reasons include neglect, lack of education on the value of dentistry in health care, lack of insurance, and affordability. Cost has been cited as the reason 17 percent of Canadians avoid the dentist, while 16 percent decline recommended care because of cost.

“What many patients do not realize is that they can access an option for alternative payment via their dentist who partners with a reputable third party company who will finance dental costs interest free.”

Of all the dental spending in Canada, half is from employer insurance. The other half is from out of pocket payments from patients. What many patients do not realize is that they can access an option for alternative payment via their dentist who partners with a reputable third party company who will finance dental costs interest free.

There are a handful of financial institutions in Canada that understand the need for dental patients to have other ways to pay for care. Canadians holding back care due to a lack of flexible payment options will benefit from programs designed to fit dental payments into restricted budgets and cash flow through financing approval. These approval processes are created to be simple — with acceptance being private and obtainable within minutes using online tablet programs — with no administrative work or complicated credit reporting.

When choosing a dentist, look for one that will be empathetic to your needs and wants, gives back in their community, focuses on prevention of gum disease, screens for oral cancer, and offers outside financing options as a method of payment.