Think Twice Before Deciding On A New Dental Plan

We have always welcomed calls from our patients asking us questions regarding a new dental plan being offered by their employer. The situation usually starts with the employer being offered a lower cost plan by an insurance company. The cost of the plan is reduced because the fees that the plan pays for all of the procedures have been reduced. This leaves the patient and the dentist with two options. The first is that the patient can either decide to go to a dentist who participates with the plan or not. The second is that if they go outside the “network” they have to pay the difference between what the plan pays and what the dentist charges. The dentist has to decide if he wants to join the “network” or not. If the dentist does join the network he must accept the reduced payment, if he does not join the plan he can accept payment and charge the patient the difference.

The most recent plan we received is a good example. The plan is from ADN and is replacing a policy that was provided by Gaurdian. The fees that ADN has for dentists that choose to participate are in some cases 40% less than what we charge. It is important to note that we have always tried to keep our fees as reasonable as we can. A report that was issued within the past two months shows that almost all of our fees fall at the 50th percentile for the geographic region we are in. There is no way that a dental office could have all the innovative technical advances, equipment, materials, staff and use a quality laboratory (not China) and have a fee structure that takes us back to the 1980′s.

We have always been at the forefront in dentistry by being one of the first offices to have bonded ceramic fillings, cosmetic veneers, digital radiographs and more. The most recent innovation we have purchased is the CEREC unit that allows us to make a crown at the initial visit. Currently less than 5% of dentists nation wide have this equipment. We would hope that you would take all this information into account before deciding on a new dental plan. If you have any questions about any of the material I have covered feel free to contact our office and we can help guide you through the insurance maze.