1. Dealing with a clinic with a local representative raises some questions:
– how is that representative paid for and how does that translate into the price you’ll pay?
– is it true that when you meet a local representative you have to take up treatment with the clinic they represent?
– It’s like offering you free accommodation, flights and tours and saying to you: it’ll cost you the same as if I didn’t give you all of these!

2. Now you’ll say – how will the agency get paid?
It’s simple enough – they get paid by the clinic… wait, isn’t this the same as with the representative? No, not really.. the facilitator gets paid by the clinic to find patients who will spend money on more than a filling. Basically if John, Jill and James come into the dentists looking for a scale polish and two fillings in a country in Eastern Europe, they’ll pay 150 euro in total, and the doctor will work on them for 3 hours in total => doc gets paid 50/hour out of which he takes expenses and salary and the profit is little. However, what if Chris comes in to get a full set of new dentures? Doc works for about 30 hours, maybe a bit more, and gets paid about 8000 euro.. that’s around 260 euro/ hour.. takes out expenses and the same salary and makes more money in profit even after paying for the technician and a small percentage to the agency (remember he makes 5 times more / hour’s work)- prosthetics are most profitable for dentists.

3. What do you get out of it? Well, plane booking, airport transfer, access to accommodation as well as 24/7 access to a person you get to call by their first name, based on location where you have your treatment as well as tourist information. Do you pay for this specifically? no.. but by booking accommodation with the agency, they receive a commission from the hotel, and you’ll still pay less than by booking directly to the hotel..

4. As to “you get to speak directly to the clinic” you can speak directly to the clinic even if you book through an agency, although if the agents are good you’ll have your questions answered as they are trained to understand your problems and communicate effectively.. and another thing, you might find they sometimes act as interpreters as well, and you might find that useful..

had to take a break from writing, and forgot something i originally thought was important.. never mind, I’ll come back to it when I remember it.

When deciding to deal with a clinic, you take up a lot of your time for research and ideally ask for a quote from several ones. One of the advantages of working with a facilitator is that they give you quotes from a number of clinics, the only thing left for you to do is to choose the treatment plan that suits you best.

It’s like working with a travel agency when booking a holiday. Most likely that they’ll give you a wide variety of choices based on your requests and probably at a better price.