a country · PolandPoland

A dental and cosmetic destination whose first customers were its own emigrants. Polish practices price in sterling and euro, against columns labelled average UK price and average Irish price, because the patient flying in often has a Polish surname and a British dentist. Poland is also one of the heaviest users of the EU cross-border reimbursement route in the other direction: Poles going abroad, mostly next door.

The Commission's data for reference year 2022 makes the two-way traffic legible. Poland received 14,176 requests for reimbursement of care that needed no prior authorisation and granted 11,862 — more than any country except France and Germany — and the report names the flow from Poland to Czechia among the busiest in the EU. In the other direction Poland received one request for care subject to prior authorisation and authorised none.

Trade practice — the inbound dental trade grew on the same aircraft routes. Budget airlines opened Kraków, Wrocław, Gdańsk and Rzeszów to British and Irish cities in the 2000s for a labour migration, and the practices that advertised in Polish to that migration were already set up in English when the non-Polish patient arrived.

Inference — the price pages show what is actually being sold. A Kraków clinic's list prices an implant with its abutment and zirconia crown at GBP 1,450 or EUR 1,552 and sets it against columns it labels average UK and Irish prices of GBP 4,000 and EUR 3,750. Those comparison columns are the clinic's own reading of other people's websites, not a survey, and they are the number most quoted and least sourced in this trade.

Itemised price lists rather than bundles, with examination, x-rays and local anaesthetic often listed free — the loss leaders that get a treatment plan written. A deposit is taken against each stage rather than the whole plan: one Kraków clinic asks 80% of a stage on signing. Implant work runs across two visits months apart; crown and veneer work can be done in one week if the laboratory is in the building.

As of 16 September 2026 a Kraków clinic lists a complete implant at GBP 1,450 and a full-ceramic zirconia crown at GBP 429, and states that American Express and Diners Club are not accepted. What the list does not price is the flight taken twice, the week off work, or the dentist at home who inherits the case.