We get asked all the time why we are out-of-network with most insurance plans and the reason is because we want to give our patients the best care possible by having the freedom of spending time with our patients to get to know them and establish an emotional connection in order to provide individualized care. Contracted fees are set by insurance companies and require providers to perform dentistry faster and see more patients per hour, which affords less time with each patient. This makes it difficult to provide the quality treatment with the advanced materials we use if we are forced to accept low fees as dictated by insurance plans.
I became a dentist because I wanted to help others and create healthy smiles. In order to help others, I start my exams by showing my patients the ideal treatment necessary to establish good oral health. Dental insurance helps maintain your oral health but investment on your part is required to get to the maintenance phase. Therefore, staying within the bounds of what your benefits are will not be enough to get you to the ideal treatment. Ultimately, you as the patient have the deciding power and there are different tiers of dentistry, just as there are lemonades.
The organic lemonades shown above are expensive because of the process required to make them, starting with the seeds and soil used for the lemon tree and what is used to allow the tree to grow. The best dental care will be the highest quality and longest lasting but will be the most expensive. We make choices on what brands to buy based on cost, quality and benefits.
Take for instance, if you already have a large filling on a tooth and it breaks, it is best to place a crown as it is stronger and the risk of it breaking is much less but there is always a dentist that can redo the filling for cheaper than what a crown would cost. We should always choose the best treatment for our oral health but we should also consider how often we want to replace the filling and if we are ok with paying little but replacing often, then the cheapest option is what we choose. Sometimes, it won’t be the cheapest choice long-term because of how often it may need to be replaced and then it becomes a higher cost versus choosing the high-quality, durable and expensive option of a crown and possibly never having to replace it (depending on how much we floss of course!). Not to mention, the amount of time spent at the dentist to constantly repair that same tooth is greater than the cost, especially if you have to take time off from work in order to get the filling repaired.
In Health,
Dr. Hana