Starter Kit. Idea 358 of 500. Cluster 17
Dental clinics in the district towns, to the international standard, at local prices
The mechanism, from the book
Sri Lankans abroad have parents at home whom they cannot look after from Melbourne. They will pay, and the money stays.
The first step
Ask a dentist in a district town to write down the clinic's hygiene and sterilisation standard, step by step, and to put it on the wall and on one page for patients. Price the five most common treatments at the local rate and print them beside it. Tell the town's families, and the Sri Lankans abroad who send them money. The proof is a month of appointments from families who chose the clinic for the written standard.
- Who pays first
- A family in a district town that now travels to Colombo for dental work it would rather have done nearby, at a price it can pay, with the standard written down.
- What leaves today
- Families travel to the city, or go without, because nothing in the district town proves the standard; a written standard keeps the fee and the patients at home.
Ask first
- the area Medical Officer of Health. Ask what hygiene inspections a dental clinic must pass, and how often.
- Sri Lanka Medical Council. Ask how a patient can check a dentist's registration.
Check before you spend
Confirm the dentist's registration, the sterilisation standard written down and checkable by any patient, and what aftercare the clinic gives when something goes wrong.
Find out these three numbers
- What do families in the town pay now for the five common treatments?
- How many families travel to the city for dental work each month?
- What does it cost the clinic to meet the written standard?
The test
Does it keep value that now leaves the island, or build the proof that lets somebody else do so?
From the appendix of Why Not Sri Lanka? by Dr Maheshika Halbeisen. The idea and the mechanism are the book's; this kit was written for the site.