We strive to provide our patients with exceptional care, as well as respecting their valuable time and investment. Your scheduled appointment time has been reserved specifically for you. We request 24-hour notice for cancellations.
Any patient more than 10 minutes late may be rescheduled unless we can accommodate the patient without infringing upon another patient's appointment time.
Our office is committed to helping you maximize your insurance benefits. Because insurance policies vary greatly, we can only estimate your coverage in good faith but cannot guarantee coverage due to the complexities of insurance contracts. Your estimated patient portion must be paid at the time of service. As a service to our patients, we will bill insurance companies for services and allow them 45 days to render payment. After 60 days, you are responsible for the entire balance, paid-in-full. If you have any questions, our courteous staff is always available to answer them.
We are a fee-for-service dental office and payment is due in full at time of treatment. As a specialist office, we are out of network with most insurance companies. If we have received all of your insurance information on the day of the appointment, we will be happy to file your claim for you. By law your insurance company is required to pay each claim within 30 days of receipt. We file all insurance electronically, so your insurance company will receive each claim within days of the treatment. PLEASE UNDERSTAND that we file dental insurance as a courtesy to our patients. We do not have a contract with your insurance company, only you do. We are not responsible for how your insurance company handles its claims or for what benefits they pay on a claim. We can only assist you with filing your claim. We at no time guarantee what your insurance will or will not do with each claim. We also cannot be responsible for any errors in filing your insurance. Once again, we file claims as a courtesy to you.
NO INSURANCE PAYS 100% OF ALL PROCEDURES
Dental insurance is meant to be an aid in receiving dental care. Many patients think that their insurance pays 90%-100% of all dental fees. This is not true! Most plans only pay between 50%-80% of the average total fee. Some pay more, some pay less. The percentage paid is usually determined by how much you or your employer has paid for coverage, or the type of contract your employer has set up with the insurance company.
BENEFITS ARE NOT DETERMINED BY OUR OFFICE
You may have noticed that sometimes your dental insurer reimburses you or the dentist at a lower rate than the dentists actual fee. Frequently, insurance companies state that the reimbursement was reduced because your dentists fee has exceeded the usual, customary, or reasonable fee (UCR) used by the company. A statement such as this gives the impression that any fee greater than the amount paid by the insurance company is unreasonable, or well above what most dentists in the area charge for a certain service. This can be very misleading and simply is not accurate. Insurance companies set their own schedules, and each company uses a different set of fees they consider allowable. These allowable fees may vary widely, because each company collects fee information from claims it processes. The insurance company then takes this data and arbitrarily chooses a level they call the allowable UCR Fee. Frequently, this data can be three to five years old and these allowable fees are set by the insurance company so they can make a net 20%-30% profit. Unfortunately, insurance companies imply that your dentist is overcharging, rather than say that they are underpaying, or that their benefits are low. In general, the less expensive insurance policy will use a lower usual, customary, or reasonable (UCR) figure.
DEDUCTIBLES & CO-PAYMENTS MUST BE CONSIDERED
When estimating dental benefits, deductibles and percentages must be considered. To illustrate, assume the fee for service is $150.00. Assuming that the insurance company allows $150.00 as its usual and customary (UCR) fee, we can figure out what benefits will be paid. First a deductible (paid by you), on average $50, is subtracted, leaving $100.00. The plan then pays 80% for this particular procedure. The insurance company will then pay 80% of $100.00, or $80.00. Out of a $150.00 fee they will pay an estimated $80.00 leaving a remaining portion of $70.00 (to be paid by the patient). Of course, if the UCR is less than $150.00 or your plan pays only at 50% then the insurance benefits will also be significantly less. MOST IMPORTANTLY, please keep us informed of any insurance changes such as policy name, insurance company address, or a change of employment.
We accept cash, checks, debit cards and all major credit cards. Payments are now accepted on our website. Please select the PayPal button on our home page to pay your account online.
