Financial Policies

We try very hard to keep you informed about your financial status to keep communication open.

We believe in providing as many options as we can to help you afford good dental care.

To reduce the costs of bookkeeping and billing, we ask your cooperation in paying for services that can be completed in one appointment on the day of that appointment. This will include new patients covered by dental insurance at their first visit.

We offer the following options for the payment of your necessary dental treatment :

1. We accept cash, check and Master Card, Visa, Discover, Debit card or Money Order for your convenience.

2. For those patients who pay the full treatment fee by cash or check for treatment totaling more than $500.00 prior to their first treatment appointment, we will REFUND out bookkeeping and billing cost to you. This savings to you represents 5% of the total fee.

(It is to be noted that ALL removable prosthetics must be paid for in full by the date of delivery. Half the fee must be paid at the date of the initial impression and the other half upon receiving the denture or partial.)

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3. Any dental treatment that is over $500.00 you may elect to pay in two equal payments, half at time of service and the other due in 30 days. A second option to this would permit an initial payment of one-third of the total fee and additional payments with pre authorized credit cards, debit cards and checks of one third of the original balance to be applied to your account in thirty days and sixty days of date of service.

4. We have dental loans available through Dental Fee Plan, Citi Health Card, American General and Care Credit. We will help you fill out the necessary application.

5. In all cases involving three or more appointments, or three or more payments a written financial agreement will be made. In the use of this option we offer preauthorized credit card payments. In the use of this option, the charges will only be applied to your account on the date for the amount set and agreed on by you in the financial agreement.

To avoid increased fees to all patients ANY ACCOUNT BALANCES OVER 30 DAYS WILL BE ASSESSED A FEE OF 1.25% OF THE BALANCE DUE. ALL ACCOUNTS OVER 90 DAYS WILL BE NOTIFIED IN WRITING OF THEIR ACCOUNT BEING TRANSFERRED TO A COLLECTION AGENCY.

A finance charge is added to a patient's account each month that the bill is not paid. This charge offsets our costs.

Please remember: our patients with the lowest dental expenses over time are the ones who complete comprehensive treatment and follow up with good home care and on-time checkups. If something has been getting in the way of your completing comprehensive dental care, please talk to us

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Reminder About Dental Insurance

You and your insurance company have an agreement that does not involve Family Gentle Dental Care. We will provide you with the best advised procedure to care for you, not based on your insurance coverage, but based on your own personal dental needs. A quote from a May 1999 issue of the Walltreet Journal. A manager of Delta Dental of California had this to say in the article: “(many) of the claims that we deny are for care that we agree is needed and should be provided.”

That’s a pretty interesting quote to come from an insurance company executive. Insurance companies don’t base your benefits on what you need; they base it on what payout they can profitably provide based on how much your company has paid them.

If your insurance company rejects a claim and refuses to pay for a service it is not a reflection of how important the service is. It is based on a master contract drawn up between your company and an insurance company. If your employer is putting very little money into the dental insurance piggy-bank, you’ll have poor coverage. Few procedures are covered---for example, just cleanings, examinations, and necessary X-rays---and the payment is much less than the average dentist charges for the service. Most benefits are based on a fee scale rather than a percentage of the dentist’s charge (kind of like saying that they’ll cover your purchase of a car. You can buy any car you want and they’ll give you $250 towards the purchase price).

More expensive dental insurance policies cover a wider range of services (crowns and fillings, for example) at a higher reimbursement rate.

If you have dental insurance, make yourself knowledgeable about it and make sure that your benefits officers tell you and your co-workers exactly what’s covered and what is not. If you have a medical reimbursement plan at your office, make sure that you use it.

Please note our agreement is with you, NOT your insurance company. Because of this fact, if your insurance company refuses to pay or pays less than you think it should you must remember that dental insurance is designed to offset the costs of your dental treatment. You are responsible for the cost of your treatment and any insurance reimbursement problems. It is unusual for all of the charges to be paid by insurance but our business office staff will strive to help you obtain your maximum benefits by prompt and efficient processing of your claims.

Insurance companies base their reimbursement on
dental cost from the 1960's, which is outdated

Our fees reflect our commitment to providing you with the highest quality service.

We will provide you with all the information you need to interact with them and we will do all we can to help you maximize the benefits they cover.

We give written treatment plans at all of our new patient and recare (check up) appointments. These plans include our fee, what insurance is GUESTIMATED to cover and what your out of the pocket expense will be.

If you have insurance you must remember these quotes are ONLY questimates. The insurance companies refuse to provide us any detailed information on what they will cover for each procedure.

We want you to know that a core belief of our practice is to provide you with the best possible value in dental treatment. What this means is that we avoid patchwork treatment that would soon need to be redone. We use the finest possible materials and techniques to provide you with the greatest longevity of treatment. We want you to have the peace of mind that comes with knowing that your treatment has been well done and that you won’t have to worry about it for many years.

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September 30, 2008

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