Dental Tourism

DentalSea Clinic is situated in the heart of the beautiful resort island of Phuket.
You will notice the difference the moment you walk in. We aim to be different from any other dental clinic, and we are told we are.

Within a pleasant and relaxing atmosphere, you can find some of the most advanced dental facilities in Thailand - and some of the most committed surgeons and staff.
Enthusiastic and experienced at home and abroad, our general and specialist dentists are committed to offering you a wide range of high-quality and affordable dental services.


Fear not

We aim to offer you dental care without the tension one usually associates with dentists. Professional and caring dentists, friendly staff, state-of the-art technology and calming atmosphere all join to work for your dental health and mental piece of mind.
Learn
Do you know that you could avoid future visits to the dentist by following simple rules for dental health? Most dental conditions are caused by poor oral hygiene and are easily preventable. It is our commitment not only to cure you, but to teach you how to take better care of your teeth in the future. Our dentists will provide you with personalized advise and show you brushing techniques that make it much less likely that you will need to spend long hours at the dentists in the future, and ensure that you can smile with confidence - and pride

Relax

Even if the main reason for coming to Phuket is dental treatment, you will have much time remaining for enjoying the charms of Phuket and Thailand. Between visits to our practice you can relax at the beach, take a boat to one of the surrounding islands, admire the underwater world by snorkeling or scuba diving, enjoy bargain shopping, surrender to the mouth-watering Thai cuisine (be careful with the chilli), and, whatever you are doing, and wherever you go, indulge in the overwhelming hospitality of the Land of Smiles.


Virtually unknown until just a few years ago, the terms ‘medical tourism’ and ‘dental tourism’ are rapidly becoming familiar to most households in many first-world countries. The describe the increasingly popular practice of travelling to another country to obtain health care.

Some have said that medical tourism first emerged in ancient Greece, where people travelled from afar to seek treatment by the father of medicine, Herodotus. More recently, in the 20th century wealthy patients from developing countries would travel to first-world countries such as the USA or Germany for treatment.

However, nowadays the term ‘medical tourism’ is exclusively associated with patients travelling to “less developed” countries, such as Thailand, India, Hungary, Costa Rica, etc., which offer not just low-cost and high-quality treatment but also the opportunity of combining it with a holiday in a popular tourist destination.


Factors that have contributed to the growth of medical tourism include:

·        The development in recent years by less-developed countries of high-quality, cutting-edge health care service industries, with many doctors trained overseas;

·        Medical facilities have been built that match or even surpass in quality some “western” hospitals and health centres;

·        And all this comes at a cost often several times lower than the typical “western” cost of medical treatment;

·        On the demand side, patients from industrialized countries often face long waiting lists and high treatment costs. Aging population there needs increasingly more health care, and increased life expectation has added to the demand for health care;

·        The advance of the Internet has made acquiring information and making contacts with overseas hospitals easy, and competition in the airline industry has brought down the cost of travel.


The main point is that the quality of dental treatment in Thailand and other “less-developed” countries is not only comparable to, but in some case more advanced than, what is on offer in some industrialized countries. This is due to the fact that most facilities have been built only in recent years, and that governments and private sector have invested heavily in both hardware and health education and training.

Yet another point not to be ignored is the cost of treatment. Depending on the procedure, the cost in Thailand for most dental treatments can be 4-6 times lower than in West Europe, North America or Australia. These lower costs can be achieved mostly through lower cost of setting a practice, cheaper specialized education and training, lower cost of construction and real estate, and, crucially, our belief that doctors are there to serve patients and not to bankrupt them.

Rather than undergo a prolonged treatment in your country for which you pay a small (and sometimes not so small) fortune, why not save some of the cost and still be able to pay not only for the treatment but also for a week or two of a tropical vacation for yourself and your family. Indeed, just coming to have one dental bridge made in Thailand will give you enough savings to pay for a 2-week vacation of a family of four (airfare and decent accommodation included).


Caring for your smile
Daily, from 9:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. and later

To make an appointment, call +66 (0) 7629 6682 or +66 (0) 872 775 014

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Due to Government restrictions within some countries, using PrePaid Minutes to place a call may not be available from every country. Call Customer Service for international calling information before leaving the U.S.
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What about calling with an internationally-subscribed Mobile Phone?
Using AT&T PrePaid Minutes and/or an AT&T PrePaid Phone Card with AT&T USADirect to place calls back to the U.S. from an internationally subscribed cell phone.

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AT&T USADirect access numbers are usually toll free when called from a locally subscribed cell phone in a foreign country - using this service with AT&T PrePaid Minutes can help you save on calls back to the U.S.
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How about my own U.S.-subscribed mobile phone?
A U.S. subscribed cell phone used in a foreign country will always charge a roaming fee, even when calling a number that is toll free within the country you are calling from.

AT&T USADirect access numbers are not toll free when dialed from a U.S. cell phone used in a foreign country - therefore, it is not recommended to use your cell phone with AT&T PrePaid Minutes when traveling internationally and calling back to the
U.S. - you will be charged twice, once for the roaming access to AT&T's network (charged by the local network provider) and once for the use of the prepaid card.
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Those are the facts. As you can see, AT&T PrePaid Minutes can help you save while you travel the world. Buy yours today!

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When a Palm Reader Knows More Than Your Life Line

“PLEASE put your hand on the scanner,” a receptionist at a doctor’s office at New York University Langone Medical Center said to me recently, pointing to a small plastic device on the counter between us. “I need to take a palm scan for your file.”

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John Hersey

I balked.

As a reporter who has been covering the growing business of data collection, I know the potential drawbacks — like customer profiling — of giving out my personal details. But the idea of submitting to an infrared scan at a medical center that would take a copy of the unique vein patterns in my palm seemed fraught.

The receptionist said it was for my own good. The medical center, she said, had recently instituted a biometric patient identification system to protect against identity theft.

I reluctantly stuck my hand on the machine. If I demurred, I thought, perhaps I’d be denied medical care.

Next, the receptionist said she needed to take my photo. After the palm scan, that seemed like data-collection overkill. Then an office manager appeared and explained that the scans and pictures were optional. Alas, my palm was already in the system.

No longer the province of security services and science-fiction films, biometric technology is on the march. Facebook uses facial-recognition software so its members can automatically put name tags on friends when they upload their photos. Apple uses voice recognition to power Siri. Some theme parks take digital fingerprints to help recognize season pass holders. Now some hospitals and school districts are using palm vein pattern recognition to identify and efficiently manage their patients or students — in effect, turning your palm into an E-ZPass.

But consumer advocates say that enterprises are increasingly employing biometric data to improve convenience — and that members of the public are paying for that convenience with their privacy.

Fingerprints, facial dimensions and vein patterns are unique, consumer advocates say, and should be treated as carefully as genetic samples. So collecting such information for expediency, they say, could increase the risks of serious identity theft. Yet companies and institutions that compile such data often fail to adequately explain the risks to consumers, they say.

“Let’s say someone makes a fake ID and goes in and has their photo and their palm print taken as you. What are you going to do when you go in?” said Pam Dixon, the executive director of the World Privacy Forum, an advocacy group in San Diego. “Hospitals that are doing this are leaping over profound security issues that they are actually introducing into their systems.”

THE N.Y.U. medical center started researching biometric systems a few years ago in an effort to address several problems, said Kathryn McClellan, its vice president who is in charge of implementing its new electronic health records system. More than a million people in the New York area have the same or similar names, she said, creating a risk that medical personnel might pull up the wrong health record for a patient. Another issue, she said, was that some patients had multiple records from being treated at different affiliates; N.Y.U. wanted an efficient way to consolidate them.

Last year, the medical center adopted photography and palm-scan technology so that each patient would have two unique identifying features. Now, Ms. McClellan said, each arriving patient has his or her palm scanned, allowing the system to automatically pull up the correct file.

“It’s a patient safety initiative,” Ms. McClellan said. “We felt like the value to the patient was huge.”

N.Y.U.’s system, called PatientSecure and marketed by HT Systems of Tampa, has already scanned more than 250,000 patients. In the United States, over five million patients have had the scans, said Charles Yanak, a spokesman for Fujitsu Frontech North America, a division of Fujitsu, the Japanese company that developed the vein palm identification technology.

Yet, unless patients at N.Y.U. seem uncomfortable with the process, Ms. McClellan said, medical registration staff members don’t inform them that they can opt out of photos and scans.

“We don’t have formal consent,” Ms. McClellan said in a phone interview last Tuesday.

That raises red flags for privacy advocates. “If they are not informing patients it is optional,” said Joel Reidenberg, a professor at Fordham University Law School with an expertise in data privacy, “then effectively it is coerced consent.”

He noted that N.Y.U. medical center has had recent incidents in which computers or USB drives containing unencrypted patient data have been lost or stolen, suggesting that the center’s collection of biometric data might increase patients’ risk of identity theft.

Ms. McClellan responded that there was little chance of identity theft because the palm scan system turned the vein measurements into encrypted strings of binary numbers and stored them on an N.Y.U. server that is separate from the one with patients’ health records. Even if there were a breach, she added, the data would be useless to hackers because a unique key is needed to decode the number strings. As for patients’ photos, she said, they are attached to their medical records.

Still, Arthur Caplan, the director of the division of medical ethics at the N.Y.U. center, recommended that hospitals do a better job of explaining biometric ID systems to patients. He himself recently had an appointment at the N.Y.U. center, he recounted, and didn’t learn that the palm scan was optional until he hesitated and asked questions.

“It gave me pause,” Dr. Caplan said. “It would be useful to put up a sign saying ‘We are going to take biometric information which will help us track you through the system. If you don’t want to do this, please see’ ” an office manager.

Other institutions that use PatientSecure, however, have instituted opt-in programs for patients.

At the Duke University Health System, patients receive brochures explaining their options, said Eliana Owens, the health system’s director of patient revenue. The center also trains staff members at registration desks to read patients a script about the opt-in process for the palm scans, she said. (Duke does not take patients’ photos.)

“They say: ‘The enrollment is optional. If you choose not to participate, we will continue to ask you for your photo ID on subsequent visits,’ ” Ms. Owens said.

Consent or not, some leading identity experts see little value in palm scans for patients right now. If medical centers are going to use patients’ biometric data for their own institutional convenience, they argue, the centers should also enhance patient privacy — by, say, permitting lower-echelon medical personnel to look at a person’s medical record only if that patient is present and approves access by having a palm scanned.

Otherwise, “you are enabling another level of danger,” said Joseph Atick, a pioneer in biometric identity systems who consults for governments, “instead of using the technology to enable another level of privacy.”

One Low, Low Price for Sun and Sand

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesA view of the beach at the Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach resort in Bayahibe, Dominican Republic.

Sometime this winter, many of you might wonder: What’s the least it would cost to skip town and head to a Caribbean resort, leaving behind scarves, snowbanks and sniffling co-workers?

The wily Internet will sense your desperation (or at least your recent search for “flu remedies”) and beckon you with cheap deals promising sand and sun for a pittance.

Those packages will sound mighty good, and really cheap, but are they actually either? I certainly never believed they could be as good as promised, but in service of the shivering souls of New York City and beyond, I decided to call the Web’s digital bluff, search for the absolute cheapest all-inclusive Caribbean package — and then actually go. Any beach on any island would do. Just show me the lack of money.

I started with three sites that offer affordable packages: Groupon Getaways,Liberty Travel and CheapCaribbean.com as well as another, Travelzoo, that compiles deals from those and others. After searching and re-searching, shaving down the price as far as I could go, I declared a winner: four days and three nights for $561.86 via CheapCaribbean.com. The site of my late-October escape? The Viva Wyndham Dominicus Beach in Bayahibe, Dominican Republic. (It was not one of CheapCaribbean’s featured packages, by the way — I had to dig really deep, tailoring my own vacation and playing with dates.)

That price, I think you’ll agree, is suspiciously low, especially because it included airfare, airport transfers, a standard room, meals and whatever else “all-inclusive” includes. Surely Viva Wyndham would try to nickel and dime me once I arrived. I vowed to keep the total cost under $600, even if it involved suffering.

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesThe author’s room at the resort.

It did not. The beach was palm-saturated and fine-sanded; the water, pastel-colored and just cool enough to refresh. The food was tolerable and certainly plentiful. Alcohol — this was where I was sure they would get me — was free. My room, with a king-size bed and perfectly acceptable bathroom, was maybe about Holiday Inn-level, which is better than I’m used to. Including the $14.50 it cost me to and from Kennedy Airport by subway and AirTrain, $9 in four tips I handed out to drivers and luggage toters and a $5 bottle of Barceló Añejo rum, my total cost came to $590.36, door to door. (For a guide to more Caribbean deals, see Stephanie Rosenbloom’s Getaway column.)

It’s true that I did not go during high season, and prices go up during the winter months. But I went alone, so couples and groups sharing rooms can expect to make some of that difference back. (For added savings, get a ride to the airport and put up with well drinks.)

It was also all very, very easy. My trips are usually whole-grain adventures, in which I trade discomfort and cultural risk-taking for memorable adventures and personal growth. This was Wonder Bread travel: easy on the palate if not altogether healthy.

I was met at the Santo Domingo airport by a guy with a CheapCaribbean.com clipboard and a van. (First time that’s ever happened to me in this job.) He dropped off two couples at other resorts before dropping me off at Viva Wyndham, where we arrived in about 90 minutes, just before noon. (I had taken the earliest possible flight offered in the package.) At reception, they told me I would not be able to check in until 3 p.m., but I could leave my luggage, change in a public bathroom and get onto the beach.

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesUnlimited Presidente beer was on tap.

I made a brief stop at the poolside bar on the way, gawking at the crowd of all ages, some of whom seemed to be on their second or third bright pink Singapore Sling of the day. The sun was blazing, merengue music was pumping, children were frolicking, a man with a big belly was drinking a Presidente beer in the pool. I flip-flopped over to the beach, which was protected by palm trees of two distinct heights to create a solid (and particularly paradisiacal) backdrop.

Then I noticed something odd — most people were speaking Italian. I’d find out later that the resort’s president is Italian, and that Italian tourists tend to dominate year round. This made making friends — and avoiding secondhand smoke — a bit more challenging. An informal survey suggested that Chileans made up the second largest subset, with Americans and French tied for a distant third.

I wandered the resort, investigating what was included and what was not. Massages started at $35, snorkeling trips at $50. Both were out. Agents from outside travel companies staffed desks selling excursions, also not for me. A mini-mall, and not all that mini, had shops full of beachwear and touristy knickknacks. No need for any of that. The beach was my goal, and when sand and surf and a Kindle full of books got dull, I took out a free kayak or joined a pickup volleyball game.

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesFresh doughnuts were a breakfast highlight.

Or ate and drank. That first day, when lunch started at 12:30, I was prepared for the worst. I had checked the resort’s Web site, and without booking a package my room would have cost just $80 a night. That money had to cover the pools, the beach, the landscaping, the staff. How it could also include three decent meals a day was beyond my mathematical capabilities.

Unless it had something to do with those “irrational numbers” we learned about in high school, because quite irrationally, the food was just fine. If you’re used to surviving on burned toast at hostel breakfasts and free appetizers at happy hours, this was a smorgasbord: salad bar, cold cuts, fresh bread, rice and beans, baked fish, sliced ham, a pizza bar, a pasta bar, an antipasto bar (yay, Italians!), even a “diet corner.” Coffee and fresh fruit juice for breakfast; soda and beer and wine on self-serve taps for lunch and dinner.

Sure, there were weaknesses: I’ve had better cakes from Hostess, and the broccoli covered in cheese sauce was nauseating. But the watercress at the salad bar had some real bite, the warm sugar-dusted doughnuts at breakfast were irresistible, and the pasta served up fresh by a friendly cook was surprisingly al dente. Anyone who expected more for the price, please direct complaints to the nearest mirror.

(At dinner, you could also make reservations at several other restaurants; two were free and others cost $10 extra.)

All-inclusive places usually try to make a nod or two to the local culture, allaying visitors’ guilt that they are in a foreign country whose cultural attractions they are ignoring. So painters were out hawking their bright, tropical canvases, and a store sold Dominican rum and cigars. (I actually bought my bottle at a slight discount from a grocery store in town.) The snack bar featured the spiced-up ground-beef patties and shredded cabbage that connoisseurs of Dominican street food in New York will recognize as the basis of the chimi, or Dominican-style burger. The bars served mamajuana, a Dominican drink of roots and herbs steeped in rum and wine.

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesOutdoor merengue lessons.

Dominicans are all about music — they are largely responsible for the popular tropical rhythms of merengue and bachata — so there were goofy, fun dance lessons in both genres, as well as salsa. There were also nods to the Italians: one side of the main poolside bar was set up for espresso drinks. “As good as at home,” said one Italian man I chatted with. That was delusional, but they were tolerable, especially for the bargain price of $0. The rest of the bar served sugary tropical drinks made with cheapo liquor and cloying, artificial-tasting fruit juices. But no one complained, especially when cocktails were served with fist bumps from the hard-working bartenders. (And I solved the problem with that bottle of rum, which I used to spike the self-serve Coke.)

There was also a variety show of sorts every night, the same sort of thing you might see at Club Meds or other resort chains, or so I’ve been told. I had assiduously avoided this silliness until rain on the final day drove me to seek distraction.

Seth Kugel for The New York TimesA show at the resort.

I perked up a bit at the opening announcement, which was delivered in Italian, French and then finally tortured English: “We just remember you that the show is just for adults.” Five couples were called up and seated on cushions, and then, in game show format, asked to perform tasks involving balloon-popping, sticking broomsticks through toilet paper tubes and the like, in ways I will describe simply as highly suggestive. My initial reaction was, “This is the beginning of the end of civilization as we know it.” And then I couldn’t stop laughing. For a vacationing crowd with no language in common, it was lowest-common-denominator hilarious.

I had scheduled my return flight for 7:45 p.m., hoping for a full last day in the sun, but instead we got socked with the torrential rains that would become Hurricane Sandy. Aside from guest rooms, no place was safe from the rain — even the dining room flooded. In fact, just as the staff moved merengue lessons to the indoor stage, the ceiling cracked and water poured (amusingly) on the dancers’ heads.

The resort was awash and the day was a wash. But oddly enough, I couldn’t have been happier. What had I lost? Elsewhere in the Caribbean, I imagined, disappointed travelers had paid $600 a night for some high-end room that maybe included breakfast. I had paid less for the entire trip.

Since I had kept expectations as low as the cost, they were met long before the rain started falling.