Yearly X rays at the dental office

[PWMDMD]

I’d argue it’s not dentistry, it’s poor obsolescence management for the HW vs SW.

If you break even so fast on cost of a $55k machine, and there’s so much money in it, the manufacturer has no incentive to provide lifecycle management and support. That’s not dentistry, that’s the manufacturer contributing to the excessive cost of care.

People are paying and there’s no reason to drive cost down. Maybe the Chinese will start selling kits that under cut the price by 90%, lol.

It's dentistry insofar as there are a very limited number of dental manufactures and distributors and no one in dentistry has all that many choices so we are used to getting hammered by manufacturers over "issues" like this.

 

[eljefino]

I’d argue it’s not dentistry, it’s poor obsolescence management for the HW vs SW.

If you break even so fast on cost of a $55k machine, and there’s so much money in it, the manufacturer has no incentive to provide lifecycle management and support. That’s not dentistry, that’s the manufacturer contributing to the excessive cost of care.

People are paying and there’s no reason to drive cost down. Maybe the Chinese will start selling kits that under cut the price by 90%, lol.

The manufacturer is planning obsolesence in cahoots with Microsoft.

They say the most modern Windows can emulate older versions and support the hardware drivers but we all know that's an ambitious statement.

It's public knowledge when a Windows version hits its end of life, but that's the end of free support. Big users can continue using "obsolete" Windows if they pay for support.

My former employer TV station was still using WinXP in 2016 for their on-air server! And yes it was internet connected and got a virus that took it down. The broadcast software tech support was out of a mini strip mall next to a tattoo removal clinic in Gainesville, FL. We looked into alternatives and there was basically the cheap option, which we got, and gold-plated super-luxury models that went to station groups with dozens of affiliates, with the buying power to make it happen.

 

[Donald]

An X-ray is nothing. Wait until you need a cat scan before a riot canal.

 

[Pew]

The last generation of scanner we use was $55K and no they aren't free. As of next year, the last generation will no longer be supported because of the Windows version it runs. The new scanner is $65K, it does the same thing, and our old scanner is only 4 years old. We will keep using the older scanner until it actually needs some kind of support and then buy the new one.

I feel your pain here. Forcing expensive upgrades via software or hardware obsolescence with little to no benefit is the bane of every SMB.

 

[Dave Hess]

It's dentistry insofar as there are a very limited number of dental manufactures and distributors and no one in dentistry has all that many choices so we are used to getting hammered by manufacturers over "issues" like this.

I work for an equipment manufacturer and they try to support equipment for at least 5 years after the end date of manufacture.

Some hospitals are surprised to get an End Of Life (EOL) letter in the mail a year after they purchased their equipment.

 

[BaronHK]

It is standard practice to get an xray of the entire set of teeth annually? How about a filling that needs to be "repatched"?

Fillings don't last forever. I have some that are so old the dentist back then told me composite fillings were "something new" and nobody knew how long they'd hold up. My dental exam 5 months ago said they were still okay. I think I have 3 fillings. Two happened in 2001 and one in 2007. They've never needed repaired or replaced. The dentist in 2001 told me they hoped they lasted at least 5 years.

I had an ex who was on Indiana Medicaid in the mid 2000s and got silver mercury amalgam fillings because they were all the state would pay for. Needless to say those are a lot more noticeable.

As for the x-rays, they usually do bitewing x-rays annually. Full set every year seems excessive unless they're monitoring some problem.

 

[BaronHK]

I feel your pain here. Forcing expensive upgrades via software or hardware obsolescence with little to no benefit is the bane of every SMB.

I ran into an eye doctor in 2021 that was still using Windows XP. It wasn't networked to anything, but he told me the eye exam software only ran on that and it was a whole new $40,000 machine or something if he got rid of it.

I haven't used Windows in almost 20 years now. The last time I did was when that horrible Windows Vista came out and it nearly melted the "Vista capable" laptop, so since it was hosed anyway I just migrated over to Linux on all my machines after dual booting since 1998.

I used that laptop 2005 to 2016, but near the end I'd pared down the OS to run in just 38 MiB of RAM, leaving most of the 1 GB for the system, allowing me to open a web browser with a tab or two, or close that and run an office program. It was getting painful.

I hate throwing things out.