So, I was in Basel the other week with the ITI job.
Two days in Switzerland in rapid fire.
Fly out late Wednesday, arrive at your hotel after midnight, and all day Thursday in a concepting session. Then, on Friday morning in the office, meet with Straumann executives to see what they can do with the dental business course.
The dinner on Thursday night, though, was lovely.
The guys I'm working with in the office came out for dinner, and we sat on the side of the River Rhine in the middle of Basel.
It was about 22 degrees, beautiful.
There was a floating stage immediately opposite our restaurant, and later in our meal, a rock band would start to play with loads of crowds on the bridge nearby, an amazing scene.
Before that, the good people of Basel float down the river with their clothes in polythene bags right past us in a constant stream (I will do that one of the following times I go).
But the conversation ultimately turns to work, and also the geography of the city and where it lies within the overall geographical picture, and the guys explained to me that the Rhine separates Basel from Germany and about 2 miles in that direction right over there is the German border.
It's interesting because we were talking about why the Germans never invaded during the war and all the things that geography brings, but one of the things it brings is that dentistry is cheaper in Germany.
The guys I was working with, Martin and Catalina, and Philip explained that many Swiss people now cross the border to get German dentistry because private German dentistry is cheaper than private Swiss dentistry.
This seems like a reasonable thing and just the market levelling itself out if it wasn't for the case that the average person in Germany is covered by the German Social Security scheme or the national insurance of dentistry in Germany.
According to my colleagues around the dinner table, the German dentists are pretty much deciding they're not doing the insurance scheme anymore because the money is much better for treating Swiss exiles who cross the border.
Sound familiar?
It's the same everywhere, isn't it?
The guys with the money get to buy health at the expense of those who don't have the money.
Can we think of a better system for this where we have a minimum standard of care across the board, and if you want to work in that, you get paid for that, and then you provide that?
That's the deal; you get the money, you do the job.
Nowadays, everybody thinks I have this privileged life where I sit at the top of an ivory tower, providing only private dentistry to the well-heeled people of the East Midlands with no social conscience or insight, but it's worth remembering that in my previous life, I worked for 11 years as an NHS associate and then set up an NHS specialist practice from scratch and built it over seven years.
In that practice, we were contracted to provide NHS healthcare, including orthodontics, but more importantly, oral surgery.
The deal was clear, it was fair, and the outcomes were great.
It's not so difficult to do that if you stick to your guns.
There is a minimum standard of care for someone who has upper and lower dentures, and that minimum standard of care was defined over 20 years ago at McGill University in Canada.
Two dental implants in the front of the lower jaw to secure the denture are the minimum standard of care for those patients. It's very easy to resource and very easy to carry out, and life-changing.
It will always be the way that rich people have better health than poor people.
The only way we will be able to stop that is to stop having rich people, but that is not to say we cannot protect the people who are not as rich as the rich ones; it will just take some bravery and creative thinking.
Blog Post Number - 3544
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