Guide
Emergency Dental Care When You Cannot Pay
Dental pain is one of the most common reasons people visit a hospital emergency room, and it is usually the wrong place to go. Emergency departments can treat infection and pain, but very few can treat the tooth causing it, so patients are often discharged with antibiotics and still need a dentist. Knowing which problems need which door saves both time and money.
If you think it might be an emergency, treat it as one
A dental infection can move beyond the tooth and become life-threatening, and a facial injury can need treatment the same day. Deciding whether yours is that needs a person, not a page like this one, so if you think it might be, go to an emergency room or call emergency services. This is the one situation on this whole site where the price is not the thing to weigh. If you want to talk to someone before deciding, many insurers, state Medicaid programs and health centers run a nurse advice line, and calling it costs nothing.
If it is not that, the cheaper door is a health center
Federally funded health centers keep same-day and urgent slots, and they apply their sliding fee discount to them. Those slots are frequently not advertised, so ask for one directly rather than accepting the next available appointment, which may be weeks out. Say on the phone that you are in pain, because that routes the call differently. Call several places rather than waiting on one to ring back, and check the dental school clinics in your state, which run urgent sessions on set days.
What the emergency room will and will not do
An emergency department will usually assess for spreading infection, prescribe antibiotics and pain relief, and drain an abscess if necessary. Extractions, fillings and root canals are outside what most emergency departments provide. Expect to be referred onward, and expect a hospital bill for a visit that did not fix the tooth. That is the reason to call dental options first when the situation allows it.
What to ask before you agree to anything
Ask what the visit itself costs before you are registered, ask whether the hospital has a financial assistance or charity care policy and how to apply, and ask for an itemized bill rather than a total. Nonprofit hospitals are required to have a written financial assistance policy and to publicize it, and people who would have qualified routinely pay in full because nobody mentioned it. If you are uninsured, say so at registration rather than at discharge: the discount is often applied differently.
After the emergency room, you still have the tooth
This is where the money goes wrong. An emergency visit deals with the infection and the pain and leaves the cause where it was, so the bill arrives and the problem comes back. Use the days that visit buys to get a dental appointment booked, not to wait and see. Call a health center the next morning, tell them you have just been to an emergency room, and ask what they can do and what it will cost. Treating the tooth once is almost always cheaper than a second emergency visit.