Medical tourism: dentistry in Croatia

I just read the story on yet another way of tempting tourists to Croatia. Now, I don’t know about you but this one is new for me. And when I think about it, I don’t understand how I haven’t heard of it sooner. So what is it all about? It is simple. Dental care in Croatia is a lot cheaper than in Western Europe (about twice to even four times cheaper). Now, combine this with the fact that Croatia is becoming increasingly popular tourist destination and this ingenious, yet simple idea reveals itself. You can come to Croatia, enjoy your holidays, visit dentist and you might save complete accommodation cost! Wow! Free holidays!

Of course, Croatian dentists did not invent this type of tourism offer - medical tourism and dental tourism were popular long time before this. I found an interesting website that claims to be “The UK’s leading guide to medical tourism” (link at the end of this article). It has a section on dentistry and under Croatia it has 3 dental clinics in Croatia: in Zagreb, Split and Rovinj. On this site you can also read patient stories, get quotes for services in different countries, learn about dentist accreditations and more. But please read this article before visiting, I tried to do some research on the subject and you just might find it useful before starting your own investigation.

So, let’s start with those 3 clinics listed and their prices:

• Doblanovic Dental Practice - Zagreb is a group dental practice located in the center of Zagreb. Their team consists of four dentists and a surgery nurse. Unfortunately, their website is “under construction” and their email is bouncing back so I do not know their prices yet. They might be good dentists but if they want to sell their services abroad this is not a way to do it.
• Dental Croatia - Split is located in Split (central Dalmatia). Main part of the team consists of four dentists.
• Zeljko Popadic - Rovinj is situated in the center of Rovinj (town in Istrian peninsula, 1 hour from Italy and 2 hours from Austria). His team consists of three dentists, three assistants and two administrators.

I’m not going to investigate prices in every country in the world here. It’s much easier for you to compare your home prices with those listed above.

However, I didn’t stop at those three practices. Those are the practices that spend some money on marketing their services abroad and I’m curious about practices that do not do that (they stick to home clients) but are equally good. I have a theory that those are even cheaper for the same quality level and I want to find out if that is true. Here are the few I have found and contacted to make sure they do offer services to foreign tourists:

• Dental Centar Marusic - Split is a large company grown from single dental practice of Dr. Gordana Marusic which started in Kastela near Split, continued in Berlin, Germany, and finally settled in Split. This company now joins together different dental schools, trading with dental equipment and dental practice. Hrvoje Marusic, the owner says that “for a number of years already, our dental services are used by foreign tourists. There is no need to make an appointment in advance, especially if it is an emergency. Prices are published on our website and are the same for foreign and local clients“
• Dental Practice Cekic - Zagreb is located in Zagreb.The team consists of four dentists, nurse and a couple of other staff members.
  Dr. Dean Cekic says that “there are no problems for foreign tourists to come to us, we always adjust our working time in that case. Prices are the same for all of our clients and the quality in better Croatian practices is on level or sometimes even better than much more expensive services in western Europe or United States. We have a lot of foreign clients but those are mostly people with Croatian origins that are aware of price differences and quality of services. In future, we would like to reach dental tourism market but in the past we never had management capacity to go for it so we focused on local clients searching for quality dental services”
• Dental Practice Prpic - Rijeka is located in downtown Rijeka. This practice has a website in English language and does try to explain to foreigners the idea of dental tourism but as far as I managed to find out on Internet - that’s about it! So I decided to put it in the group with those practices focused on local population. What I do not like here is the fact that prices are published on English and Italian version of the website (targeted at foreigners) but there are no prices on Croatian version of the website which usually makes me think that there are double price lists - higher for foreigners and lower for local population. However, I might also be wrong here.

* 10% discount for payment in cash not included

Conclusion

Some prices are missing and I must say it was not easy to get more information than already published on official websites. But I think it was sufficient to back up my original theory. Prices in those “less marketed” practices are usually lower, not too much but considerably. Also their credentials seem to be as high as of those more expensive. Weather this little investigation brought me to the right conclusion or not, I suggest you investigate prices in smaller local dental practices not directly advertised as services for tourists. Ask locals for advice and recommendation, get couple of quotes, make some phone calls and then make a decision. I’m sure you can save some more money if you do this. Spend it on accommodation and food and stay couple days more in Croatia.

Resources

• Directory: Health Tourism » Dental Tourism
• www.treatmentabroad.net - The UK’s leading guide to medical tourism

Technorati : croatia, dental tourism, healt tourism, travel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 6:16 pm and is filed under Weekly Comment. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.