Office Policies

Appointments
A dental practice, it is not always possible to stay exactly on time. Still, we pride ourselves on staying on schedule and rarely will you have much, if any, waiting time. Most scheduling delays arise because of patients arriving late. Please remember to allow for unpredictable traffic and give yourself a few minutes to spare.
  
 
Payments
Payments are due at the time of service. If there is dental insurance pending, financial arrangements can be made with our office manager to be implemented until the actual amount of insurance coverage is determined. At that time, the patient's portion is due in full. If payment needs to be spread out, we will be happy to provide you with a Capital One Dental financing company form. For your convenience, we also accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, and Discover cards.

Unfortunately, there is a great deal of confusion about dental insurance. Please remember that we do not work for any insurance company or for any PPO or HMO. We work for you. Our treatment recommendations are based solely on what we feel will give you the best dental health outcome. Insurance companies' treatment recommendations are based solely on what is best for their profit margins.

There are two methods commonly used by dental insurance companies to limit your reimbursement. The first is the payment schedule, which limits the amount covered for any particular procedure. Most of these benefit tables are based on faulty and outdated information and cannot be justified. An insurance company may also limit payment because they claim the fee was greater than the "usual and customary" charge for that procedure. Again, it is impossible to ascertain how the insurance companies arrive at their "usual and customary" figures, which can be less than half of those found in nationally published data. Moreover, we are not satisfied with "usual" or "customary" and you can expect unusual and extraordinary care at our office.

The second - and most restricting - limitation to benefits is the yearly maximum payment the dental insurance company will reimburse. Regardless of the procedure coverage, most dental insurance companies will cap the payment between $1000 and $2500 a year. Thus, if the insurance company's scheduled re-imbursement for a $3000 procedure were $2400, they would still only pay up to their yearly maximum of, say, $1500.

While we are not directly involved with any insurance company, we will do all we can to help you derive maximum benefits from your insurance plan. For extensive treatment we will submit a pre-treatment estimate to your insurance company, when requested, to determine what reimbursement is available for anticipated services. After that treatment is completed, our office will then send in a final insurance claim for you.

We have a staff member whose sole job is to help patients receive as much as possible from their insurance company, but remember this is done as a courtesy to our patients. Each patient is entirely responsible for his or her bill.

Cancellations
We understand that on occasion cancellations are necessary, particularly due to illness. Please remember, though, that each appointment time is reserved exclusively for that individual patient, and without adequate time to fill the broken appointment, the operatory is empty for that time. Unfortunately, the overhead of the operatory continues. Therefore, if we are unable to have one full business day’s notice of a cancellation, an overhead charge of 30% of the appointed procedure will be made - unless we are able to fill that time. We would much prefer never to make that charge, so please try to schedule a time that is most convenient for you.