No HMO's Please...
No HMO’s please…
It is not fair for our fee-for-service or PPO dental insurance patients.
We believe that the quality dental service for ALL patients gets affected in an office where HMO’s are prominent. The dental care “efficiencies” imposed by a HMO insurance contract will likely require a practice to seek compromises and force it to be an assembly line. As, legally patient care in an office must be uniform to all patients; those “efficiencies” will spill over to patients with PPO insurances as well as fee-for-service patients. For instance, I wonder, if an HMO office can provide immediate appointments for patients in need and honor those appointments in a timely fashion—which has been a norm for our office. HMO complains are abundant—in one instant an HMO dentist reportedly did not have an emergency number for evenings and weekends, and the patients was forced to go out of network. In another case a little girl with HMO was said to have been given an appointment after four weeks for an unbearable toothache. Neglect of gum disease and not-so-through treatment are not unheard of.
This conflicts head-on with our “no assembly line” and “one patient at a time” philosophy. To be fair to all of our existing patients we are forced to leave all HMO coverage out of our practice. We encourage those with HMO coverage to switch to the Direct Reimbursement program or an unrestricted dental insurance program with their employer.
