does your dental office (somewhat) accurately calculate your out-of-pocket?

[zen_bliss]

i rely on DD's dental office's familiarity with different insurance plans to let me know what my out of pocket will be in advance. that sometimes affects the decision to go ahead with a recommendation. i have a pretty good PPO. over the last year, the office was WAY off in telling me something was covered, and it was NOT at all. it cost me $300+ i was not expecting to spend, and wouldn't have done had i been given accurate information.

eventually, after some back and forth with the business office, i just went to my dentist about it instead and together we politely convinced the lead dentist to authorize a write off of $150 of it. i still don't have an answer as to how that could have been avoided.

now, i was careful to say that i thought the original treatment plan had been done by someone other than the usual main reception person to avoid her getting in trouble, since everything goes through her. (but, yes, it was she who did the estimates. fyi, the billing is handled by a separate office.)

on the last visit, my dentist (who is not the practice owner, she is only there 2 days a week) suggested sealants for the back molars. whether or not i go ahead with that depends on the cost. as we were leaving and making the next appt, i asked them to get back to me with a number. the second younger receptionist said she'd call me the next day with an answer, and main reception person interrupted with a snide snort "we're not doing that. here's the tax ID. do it yourself."

now, i had JUST gone out of my way to protect her. it's been standard practice in every dental office i've seen in the last 10 years to print out a treatment plan broken down pretty close to the dollar.

how is it NOT her job?

is this normal? thoughts?

i love our dentist and won't switch because of a bitchy receptionist. i can handle her. i suspect she has issues with the part-time dentist waltzing in and disrupting her control and she's taking it out on us. this just took me by surprise. she also refused to give me a letter to fight with insurance to get reimbursed for nitrous because she KNOWS they will deny the claim... minutes earlier the dentist had said of course they would write a letter to submit. sigh.

[stillplayswithbarbies]

we have a dental HMO, and yes I expect the receptionist to correctly look up my charge in the book and tell me how much it is going to cost before I make the appointment. And if they make a mistake, I expect them to be apologetic, and I guess if it was a big mistake I would expect them to write off part of it.

for the letter . . . it sounds like you need to ask the dentist to get it for you. Then maybe the dentist will see that the receptionist is a problem.

[KrisM]

Our office horribly over estimates our cost. Hundreds of dollars. Which makes me want to say 'no' a lot more! DH came home with an estimate and looked online to verify our coverage for it and came up with the original charge from the dentist would be about $2200 and our insurance's 'reasonable and customary' for that was only $1300 and therefore our costs would be super high. I was getting ready to tell DH to find a new dentist who didn't overcharge so much. But, I called and asked and they said, yes their charge is $1200, so doing the math, my oop would be about $200 rather than $550 like their estimate. She said they don't want people surprised, so they overestimate costs. I get that, but really it left me thinking we'd switch to a more reasonable place!

[BabyMine]

We also have a PPO. My dentist is in network so if they estimate after they call then they eat the difference. Our kiddos have a non network ped. dentist and they estimate as close as possible. They are usually pretty good.

Her attitude was rude. Is she the office manager? If not I would talk to them and then even mention it to my dentist. Even though your dentist isn't the owner they probably don't want to lose patients due to a rude receptionist.

[AngelaS]

Ours is very accurate on what the charges will be after insurance. :)

[squimp]

This is why I left our dentist - they kept charging us extra for stuff and didn't provide accurate estiamtes. And the bookkeeper person was an absolute raging bee-otch. If you don't want to leave, I would just be really clear with the dentist and hygenist that they need to make you aware of extra charges. For example, our insurance would pay for a regular checkup and cleaning, but wouldn't pay for anything below the gum line. So every time they cleaned my teeth I would have to say "don't go below the gum line without telling me because I don't want an extra $200 charge". That got old! Our current dentist does not write this on the form even if they have to go below the gumline, so it's free. I'm glad we left!

[Moneypenny]

Ours is very accurate. They fax something in to our insurance ahead of time so we know exactly what is covered.