As Kathy and I plan our eventual retirement to Ecuador, one lingering question we always have is how is the healthcare. We talk to Expats everywhere we go about their experiences with hospitals, doctors, even the dentist. We want to make sure we have access to basic services once we live here and that those services are good enough for us and our own standards.
What better way than to see first hand for ourselves. Today, we decided to stop in a dentist office just around the corner from our apartment. I didn’t have an appointment, so I just walked in. When you enter the dentist office, there is a small waiting room with a couple of chairs and a couple of benches. It could reasonably seat about 8 people. The room was about 10×8 in size. It was cramped, but reasonable. There is nobody to greet you or otherwise any other way to check in. When we first stopped in, there was nobody waiting. It was about 3pm. On the back wall of the waiting room was an open door. I stepped through that door and discovered the dentist and her work room. She had a standard dental chair and all the stuff you would normally see in a dental office. Off to one side was a small desk in which she could conduct her business. The was obviously a one person setup. The dentist ran the whole business and had no employees other than herself.
She did not speak English, so I asked her in Spanish about getting my teeth cleaned and how much it cost. She said $25 and gestured for me to have a seat in the chair. I asked her if I could come back in an hour, as I needed to go home first and drop off some stuff I was carrying. Did I mention this visit was totally impromptu? She stated sure that would be fine.
We went home, took care of some stuff and returned to the dentist office about 45 minutes later. There were two people in the dental office, and 6 in waiting room. I decided to try again another day.
Curtis at the Dentist
We went back the next day, in the morning, and there were 4 people in waiting room, so we left again not wanting to wait. Later in the afternoon, right after lunch, we stopped in again. Empty. Perfect. The dentist remembered me obviously and gestured for me to have a seat in the chair. I took my seat and she went to work.
I can’t say the experience was much different than the one back in the US. She picked and scraped at my teeth, flossed them, polished them, gave me a foam fluoride treatment, etc. The foam fluoride treatment was even the same strawberry flavor my dentist back home uses. The only real difference I could tell was she didn’t use air suction to clear water and saliva from my mouth. I had to lean forward and spit in a drain pan built into the chair. No big deal, but a difference. Oh and she sang. She had a radio on and would sing softly to the radio while she worked. It was a nice experience.
The whole thing took about 30 minutes tops. I paid her the $25 in cash and that was that. No insurance, no appointment, no paperwork and no hassle. She never even asked me my name.
When we got back to the apartment, Kathy looked up the last visit to the Dentist I had last August. It was $153, of which I paid $53, the insurance $100. This seems like a better deal here.