Mexican Dentist at TJ border – Dr Oscar Avila

“Ok, my name is Oscar, Oscar Avila and I’ve been on this address for the past 35 years. We do general dentistry, we have 8 more doctors in our clinic, specialize with treatments of Root Canals, Periodontics, Prosthodontics and of course Implantology so we can work out general dentistry on all of our patients. 90% of our patients come from the United States; from all over and we have patients that come down from Washington, Alaska, Florida. They come down because the prices in Mexico are cheaper than in the Unites States.

Ok, this is Rosarito and I’ve been in this town for forever and we’ve been working in dentistry for 37 years. My education; the bachelor was in Mexico in Tijuana and then I went to Loma Linda University for 9 years where I took 3 master degrees on different dental programs; Implantology, Prosthodontics and Cosmetic Dentistry.

Loma Linda; it’s one of the best universities in United States and it is located in Loma Linda, about 10 minutes away from Riverside. Prosthodontics and Implantology; Implants, we do Bone Graft and Implants are for most of the patients that don’t want to have any partials or dentures.

Many come for Cosmetic Dentistry, they come for Full Mouth Rehabilitation, for Bone Graft, Implants, Sinus Lift with Bone Graft and Implants at the same time and of course we have.. the newest thing is what they call the “all-on-four” dentures which is placing implants and putting the teeth in the same appointment, in one session. Well usually I have several patients that come from Nevada, from Washington, from Alaska, from Florida, Texas, Arizona, Utah, Iowa, Canada and even from Europe. I start getting patients from Europe that come (came) down and see (saw) the family in California then the family recommend (ed) us and they come (came)down over here.

In my clinic I would say that 90% are US citizens and then I have about 6 or 7% Mexican American citizens, and then the rest of it is local people, but most of my patients come from all over United States and they stay for 2-3 days, 4 days or 1 week until we finish big jobs on their mouth and they go back with new teeth.

I can also assure you that at least 99% of my patients are happy with our work. As a professor of the university I’ve been a speaker in several parts of Mexico and always like to go and show to the other colleges what I do in my office or what we do perform in our university so the presentations that I usually do are about Cosmetic Dentistry, Prosthodontics, Implants or Dental Administration.

Dental Administration is very important for every dentist because we have to know how to control an office, how to hire personnel, how to administrate the income and outcome (expenses), so it is very important for us to know how to administrate a dental clinic or a dental office. We normally see about 6,000 patients per year in this office and that’s very simple, we see more than that, but normally that’s about the amount (number) the minimum amount of patients that we see.

Considering that we see 20 patients a day, 20 patients per day; sometimes we see 23, 25 but normally 20 patients and we don’t count 20 patients for 365 days, only for 300 days and that comes to 6,000 so we normally see over 7,000 or 8,000 patients a year. But I always say that 6,000 patients is the minimum amount of patients and to tell you the truth we see very much patients that are coming for the first time every month. When you have (in) your office, 3 or 4 patients a week, it’s a good sign but over here we see 2 or 3 new patients every day which is because somebody else refer(s) us more patients and that is the best advertisement we have. We have no other kind of publicity.”