Netherlands residents increasingly unhappy with dental care: report

It's raining complaints about dentistry in the Netherlands, newspaper AD reports based on its own research. The newspaper received "many hundreds" of complaints from people unhappy about dentists providing treatments that don't work, doing unnecessarily large procedures, and sending high bills. 

And these complaints are just the tip of the iceberg, Jord van der Woude, founder of online healthcare complaints platform Zorgklacht.nl, said to AD. According to him, the number of complaints about oral care increased about 34 percent annually. Most regarded costs and the provision of information in advance. 

To avoid misunderstandings about costs, dentists have to provide a quote for any treatment that costs more than 250 euros, consumers' association Consumentenbond said to the newspaper. "We do see that dentists do not always make such a mandatory quote for their patients," a spokesperson said.

Jan Willem Vaartjes of the dentists' association KNMT told AD that the number of received complaints is actually decreasing, and that oral care costs are not that high. "On average, oral care costs less than 300 euros per year per Dutch person," he said.

According to Vaartjes, people need to understand that symptoms can't always be fixed in one visit. "There are treatment trajectories everywhere. It's the human body, not an exact science."