Forced to have X-rays

What kind of plan has only ONE dentist it will cover?!?!?

I have a plan provided to me by my employer which costs me about $50 per week for health and dental. It's the worst of the 3 tiers I could have selected but still covers like 50+ dentists!

Just stumbled across this so thought I’d respond with the view of someone working in dentistry. The reason we require x rays on a regular basis is not to get rich. In fact, I don’t even charge out many of the films I take. Dental professionals are legally responsible for diagnosing oral conditions present in both the hard and soft tissues. It doesn’t matter if you refuse x rays or even sign a release form against them we will still be held liable if something is missed because we didn’t have films. That means we could be sued and could lose our license to practice. If you think I’m going to be sued over $75 worth of X-rays you’re crazy. I’ll take them for free before I perform supervised neglect. I sent a patient out the door today that refused films. Bye Felicia. I’m not risking my livelihood bc you “just want a cleaning.” I’m not a car wash.

I am familiar with dental policy as I am a dental hygienist. Each state has regulations and guidelines for dental offices. Look them up. I am licensed in both PA and in NJ and in both states a dentist can not perform any procedures on a patient without a history of diagnosable radiographs. The dentist would run the risk of losing their license to practice and their office if something happens and they don’t have that kind of diagnosable record on a patient. (ex: a patient dies or goes missing the FBI can turn to their dental radiographs for identification of a person.) It is SO important for us to have this kind of information.

As for refusing treatment, most insurances now will not even cover treatment without proof of the need for treatment through a radiograph (ex: treatment for a crown, a filling, an extraction, scaling and rootplanning). We have to prove for them that their is need for treatment in order for you to get as much insurance coverage as possible.

Read your dental insurance benefits carefully, most cover dental check-up xrays at least 1x a year. So you shouldn’t have to pay out of pocket.

The radiation from routine checkup dental xrays 1x a year is SO small and insignificant compared to traveling in an airplane, living in a brick house for a year or getting a yearly mammogram. PLUS we even protect your thyroid with a lead apron. With the other things mentioned you are walking around daily with no added protection and you are more likely to have complications from any of the other forms of radiation mentioned rather than from dental xrays alone.

Lastly having a patient sign a refusal form actually does nothing to protect the dentist if OSHA or the state board decides to come in and do an inspection or if a patient sues.

THAT is why some dentists will look at you like you‘re crazy and either turn you away or refuse to do any treatment b/c in a nut shell you are being silly to refuse them unless you are either pregnant, just got over chemotherapy/radiation therapy/ bisphosphates or you don’t have any teeth to take a radiograph of.

@medium_pace

Great post. There are biological dentists that will not require you to have X-rays.

You can find them at The International Academy of Biological Dentistry & Medicine's website.

This question actually has an answer- here is but one paper of many on this topic:

Estimated radiation risk of cancer from dental cone-beam computed tomography imaging in orthodontics patients
Jih-Kuei Yeh, Chia-Hui Chen
Abstract
Background:
Radiation dose evaluation is important to cone-beam computed
tomography (CBCT) for routine orthodontic treatment planning, especially
for a significant proportion of children in orthodontic patients. This
study evaluated the patient radiation dose and estimated the radiation
cancer risk on dental CBCT according to the calculations by the Monte
Carlo simulation method.
Methods:
The dental CBCT scanner evaluated in this project was the i- CAT®
(Imaging Sciences International Inc., PA, U.S.A.) device. Organ doses
and effective doses were calculated by using personal computer-based
Monte Carlo simulation (PCXMC 2.0 Rotation) software. The cancer risk
resulting from the exposure to ionizing radiation was estimated by using
the BEIR VII (Biologic Effects of Ionizing Radiation VII) report model,
and the risk of exposure-induced death (REID) was assessed by PCXMC 2.0
Rotation software.
Results:
The largest contribution to the organ dose and effective dose at
Zref 83 cm positioned in the dental CBCT x-ray beam centerline was from
the salivary glands (738.29μGy, 7.38 μSv). The different organ doses
showed the maximum values at the different Zref locations, and the
largest contribution to the organ dose and effective dose of all
simulated positions was from the thyroid (928.77μGy, 37.5 μSv). The REID
values in the 10-year olds (22.6 × 10- 7, female; 19 × 10- 7, male) were approximately double than those in 30-year olds (10.4 × 10- 7, female; 8.88 × 10- 7, male) for all cancers. The highest change during age range from 10 to 30 was shown in breast cancer of females.
Conclusions:
Although individual cancer risk estimates as a function of gender
and age are small, the concern about the risks from dental CBCT is
related to the rapid increase in its use for orthodontic practice,
especially in children patients.
Keywords:
Cone-beam computed tomography (CBCT); Monte Carlo simulation; Organ doses; PCXMC; Risk of exposure-induced death (REID).