The Dental Blacklist

Our initial intention was to publish profiles of the best dentists in Tijuana. That idea proved to be impracticable. There’s a lot more to being outstanding than being recommended by a tourist or a taxi driver, and those of us on The Real Tijuana simply don’t have the time or energy to vet each dentist. We will leave that project to the medical tourism groups to sort out – our Reader Service can put you in touch with the appropriate group, if that’s what you’re looking for.

There is still a valuable service we might perform. Our blog has become a lightening rod for complaints, so we though we should identify those dentists whose quality we have reason to believe is unacceptable. As Catherine Aird said, “If you can’t be a good example, then you’ll just have to be a horrible warning.” The complaints we have received have dealt with three general areas: technical quality, personal treatment, and price. Our list falls into two broad categories as a result. “AVOID” is for dentists who have had believable complaints concerning technical quality. “NOT RECOMMENDED” is for dentists for whom complaints in the other two areas predominate.

Tijuana cardiologist honored for innovative stem-cell therapy

Dr Juan José Parcero Valdés 

by Moisés Márquez

An eighty-year-old woman from the United States was able to keep her leg thanks to a team of doctors from the Tijuana Institute for Regenerative Medicine who successfully introduced stem cells into an incurable lesion left by radiation therapy.

The patient was treated last year at Hospital Ángeles Tijuana as part of a stem-cell study begun in 2010. Dr Juan José Parcero Valdés, a local cardiologist and the primary investigator of that study, was honored by the National Cardiology Association of Mexico for his work on that case. The CADECI Nacional award, presented to Parcero on 24 February 2012 at the association’s annual convention in Guadalajara, recognizes the country’s best research.

Stem cells are unspecialized cells of the body that change into the specialized cells of various tissues. They can be implanted into different parts of the body and onto damaged or sick tissues, transforming themselves into that type of tissue and functioning as such.

Baja's Visitor Assistance Hotline

The state of Baja California comes up with some unusual ways to help its tourists. Toward the end of the twentieth century, it posted bilingual attorneys in the tourist areas to resolve visitors' problems free of charge. In this century it has made use of advances in telephony to give its visitors access to government officials around the clock.

SecTurE, the State Secretariat of Tourism, maintains a line within the three-digit Special Services network of the Mexican telephone system. By dialing 078 from anywhere in the state of Baja California, help in English is available day or night. Any phone will do - a public phone, a private phone, even a cell phone from another country (so long as the subscriber has automatic roaming).

Additionally, whenever the operators of the emergency system receive a call in English, they'll transfer it to 078. This works equally for those who call the U.S. emergency number (911) while in Baja California or the European emergency number (112) or the Mexican emergency number (066). All phones in Mexico allow free access to 066.

The hotline offers reasonable assistance to visitors who need help with such things as directions, language, or cultural differences.

How to choose a dentist in Baja California

You might be disappointed. Our advice is going to be pretty much the same as that for choosing a dentist in Outer Mongolia. On the bright side, our dentists are more plentiful and better trained than what you might encounter in Outer Mongolia.

The first step in both places is to overcome the cultural discomfort of traveling for professional services beyond one’s neighborhood. “What if I pick a bad dentist?” is the greatest fear when you’re in a different town. Well, relax. Bad is very rare these days because of all the quality controls in place. The worst we’ve heard of so far has been an average dentist who charged like he was the best.

After that, we recommend you research your options thoughtfully, whittle your candidates down to a short list of four to six dentists, interview them, and make your decision based on who made the most sense to you.

“My dentist in Los Angeles thought he was a Mercedes mechanic” writes one of our correspondents. “I left him fifteen years ago and have been going to a dentist in Tijuana ever since. Now I’m not afraid to sit in the chair and, even better, my teeth stay fixed.”

Our correspondent is not alone. Because the dentistry in Mexico is of world-class quality while also being relatively inexpensive, you’ll find concentrations of dentists along the border from Tijuana all the way to Matamoros. The Asociación Dental Mexicana counts more than five thousand members in the central part of Tijuana alone.

The ADM didn’t count the many dentists who are not members. Nor does that number include the thousands of ADM members in Tijuana who practice outside of downtown and the Zona Río. It does not include any of the hundreds of ADM dentists in Ensenada, Rosarito or Los Algodones, nor the large numbers in Mexicali and Tecate. Dentistry along this border is very serious business and has been so for some while now.

Baja’s Medical Ombudsmen

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Every culture has its own expectations concerning their medical profession. The ancient Chinese paid their physician every day they were healthy in order to be treated for free whenever they were ill. In Mexico, doctors tend to be extremely Hippocratic in their approach – the idea here is that people whose social position has allowed them to learn a great deal now want to help you feel better. But what happens when a patient doesn’t see the improvement he expected?

In the United States, an unhappy patient pays a lot of money to a malpractice attorney and hopes for the best. In Mexico, that sort of patient has more options: he or she can go to the Ministerio Público (the district attorney) to file a criminal complaint for malpractice, go to PROFECO (the federal attorney for the protection of consumers) to file a civil complaint, or ask a medical commission to resolve the problem with expert arbitration. There is no cost involved in any of these options. Additionally, one can hire a private attorney to file the case in civil court, similar to what is done in the U.S. More and more, the medical commissions are becoming the preferred route.

CAME-BC, the Comisión de Arbitraje Médico del Estado de Baja California, is part of the state government and has been around in one form or another for about a decade. Originally it maintained a single office in Mexicali, the state capital. “To do our job, we have to be where the patients are,” says Dr Agustín Escobar, the head of the commission, “so we came to Tijuana in 2008. That’s where most of the medicine is being practiced in this state. Very soon we will be opening offices in Rosarito, Ensenada, and Tecate. We’re also working on a web presence like the one our big brother in Mexico City has.”

Tijuana’s health industry prepares for international competition

by Laura Durán

Tijuana Health without Borders, the medical tourism business cluster that was created two years ago, now counts one hundred eighty organizations as members and has created the first academic program for medical tourism in all of Latin America.

Today more than ever Tijuana is looking to develop its tourism. Not necessarily the leisure tourism of earlier years, because that has been depressed by fear, Customs lines, and the recession. Instead, Tijuana’s new tourism is being fueled by medical necessity. Patients come here for the high quality of our medicine, because our doctors spend time with their patients, and because health care in Tijuana is much more affordable than it is in the United States.

“The response to our educational program exceeded anything we imagined” said Jorge Gutiérrez, the treasurer and logistics coordinator of the Cluster. “It demonstrates the degree of interest that exists in this area. We thought maybe twenty people would show up and instead we have one hundred thirty who are committing one hundred sixty hours of their time, an entire semester, to earn this university certificate.”