Financial Arrangements
Shannon, Linda, and Rhonda handle the financial arrangements for our dental clinic. As a general rule, we would like one-half of the expected patient balance to be paid at the start of treatment. We do accept assignment of benefits payable to our office from your insurance company. Our computer system will estimate your remaining portion of the bill. We accept MasterCard, Visa and Discover payments as well as your personal check.
For more extensive dental treatments, we are pleased to offer CareCredit to our patients. CareCredit is a convenient, no initial payment, low monthly payment plan for dental treatments of $1,000 to $25,000. Offering CareCredit allows us to make the smile you've always wanted affordable.
Insurance
It is our pleasure to assist you in maximizing your insurance benefit by completing your claim forms. If your carrier is up-to-date (in over 70% of the cases), the claims will be transmitted via computer modem before the end of the treatment day. Because insurance policies vary, 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. As a courtesy, in addition to filing the claim, if you prefer we will initially ask you only for your estimated co-payment. Please understand that this is only an estimate, and is based upon the information available to us.
The range of benefits depends solely on what your employer wishes to purchase. Some plans cover as little as 30% or as much as 100% of dental services, with most falling in the 40% to 80% range.
Some plans base the amount of benefit on a schedule of fees arbitrarily developed by insurance companies. For this reason, you may receive a lower percentage than the reimbursement level indicated in your dental plan. For example, if your plan states that it will pay 80% of the cost of a specific treatment, it means 80% of the fee arbitrarily determined by the insurance company and not the actual fee charged by our office. The financial obligation for dental treatment is between you and our office, the insurance company is responsible to you, and not to our office. We will assist you in any way that we can (including our new high-tech "electronic claims submission"). Once your carrier has paid the claim, the difference will be due upon receipt of our statement.