Payment & Insurance
Flexible Payment Options and Dental Insurance
$1400 off each Dental Implant
Free Smoothlase Session with purchase of Smoothlase package
Laser Gum Disease Treatment
All on 4 Dental Implants
Flexible Payment Options and Dental Insurance
Our practice is pleased to offer a flexible financing plan with approved credit providing convenient monthly payments with various setup & payment options via Care Credit and Lending Club We also accept major credit cards. To know more Contact Us or call (281) 446-9157 for payment plans and options.
Dental insurance, like medical insurance, is complicated and can be a stressful matter for patients who have a hard time sifting through the fine print on their policies and getting straight answers from their insurance companies by phone. For this reason, our staff is here to help you answer questions and to get you the most cost-effective dental care possible.
So What’s the Deal With Dental Insurance?
As a dentist in Humble, TX, you would expect the first thing someone would ask us is, “What kinds of dental implants, cosmetic dentist, periodontist, oral surgeon treatments do you offer?” or maybe, “When is your first available appointment?” However, more often than not, the first question we get asked by new patients is, “Do you take my insurance?”
Dental insurance, like medical insurance, is complicated and can be a stressful matter for patients who have a hard time sifting through the fine print on their policies and getting straight answers from their insurance companies by phone. For this reason, our staff is here to help you answer questions and to get you the most cost effective dental care possible.
I put together the following FAQs to help clear up a lot of the confusion regarding dental insurance. Share with family and friends and let’s work together to make dental insurance less confusing!
Frequently Asked Questions
HMO versus PPO:
Insurance plans are divided into either dental HMOs or dental PPOs. Discount plans aren’t true “insurance” and offer blanket discount on services for dentists who sign up, like honoring a coupon. If you have a DHMO plan, your insurance will only pay for a selected dentist to perform services. These dentists typically get reimbursed yearly for every patient that is assigned to them (For instance, the DHMO dentist has 4,000 patients on their list and gets paid so many dollars a year for each of those patients regardless of how much or how little work that dentist does for those people). This is a financial incentive for these dentists to do as little work as possible for each one of these patients. This doesn’t mean these dentists are necessarily bad dentists, just that the less work they do per patient, the more money they make. If this makes you, as a patient, uncomfortable, then you are not alone.
Dental PPOs (or DPPOs) work differently. Dentists are divided into two main categories, “in-network” and “out-of-network”. Patients have a choice who to see. Dental patients are urged to see “in-network” dentists to get the least expensive dental care possible. Dentists who sign up with DPPOs are contracted with those insurance companies to only charge a certain fee for each service they offer. Dentists who are “out-of-network” can choose what they charge for a service.
“In-network” dentists are listed online and in patient insurance manuals and receive “free advertising” for new patients. In exchange for that free advertising, these “in-network” dentists get paid less than market value for the services they provide. In many cases, the amount that “in-network” dentists get paid by the insurance companies is less than half of market value and isn’t enough to even cover the cost of materials that are ideal in providing that dental service (for example, an “in-network” dentist may get paid $300 for an anterior crown when the lab fee alone to make that crown may cost $500, resulting in the dentist not getting paid anything for their time or office overhead and the dentist actually paying out of pocket $200 to get the patient the quality of crown they should have). This would have the effect of forcing your Humble Tx dentist, in this example, to seek out less expensive (cheaper) materials that are not necessarily long-lasting, aesthetic, or cleansable as they would have hoped to provide if they were not an “in-network” dentist. Many patients don’t realize that their choosing an “in-network” dental provider may mean they are getting cheap dentistry done.
“In-network” versus “Out-of-network"?
In many cases, the money patients receive as payment for services from insurance companies is the same for “out-of-network” dentists as it is for “in-network” dentists. For instance, if your insurance plan has a $1000/year benefit, you will likely get a $1000 benefit whether you use an “in-network” or “out-of-network” dentist. “Out-of-network” dentists are free to use the materials and dental labs that are ideal for each service without being constrained by contract terms with dental insurance companies.
Doesn’t my dental insurance cover what I need?
Each plan will have a listed set of procedures that are either “possibly covered” or “never covered”. (Note: Dental Insurance calls “possibly covered” procedures “covered” but we know better.) If your dentist diagnoses a need for a service that is “never covered”, your insurance company will not even consider whether or not they think you need the service; they will always deny it.
In other words, if you grind your teeth and need a retainer at night to keep you from breaking teeth in your sleep, and your insurance lists retainers as “never covered”, they don’t care whether you need it or not. They won’t pay for it. Procedures that are “possibly covered” are usually listed in insurance manuals as “covered procedures”. More aptly named “possibly covered”, these are services that your insurance will review according to their regulations and decide whether they want to cover it or not.
For instance, let’s say you need a filling done for a cavity, and your insurance lists fillings as “covered” (or more accurately, “possibly covered”). Insurance has the right to say that they will pay for part of that filling but that they mandate it has to be a silver filling even though it’s going on your front tooth. (Yes, this happens.) Tooth-colored fillings are more expensive and if you opt not to have a silver front tooth, then your insurance may not cover that at all. Do you have hereditary bone loss and need cleanings four times a year instead of twice to prevent teeth from falling out? Unless you have had gum surgery in the last year (and it’s a goal not to have it more than once in a lifetime) then your insurance may not cover more than two cleanings a year. You get the idea. (By the way, there aren’t any “always covered” procedures. Sadly.)
My dental insurance doesn’t pay 100% of my covered procedures?
PPO insurances almost always pay only a percentage of each covered procedure. Let’s walk through a scenario for a patient who has a dental PPO and needs a crown on a tooth that is broken. Once the tooth is repaired with a crown (and not beforehand), your Humble Tx dentist can submit a claim to the insurance company that says, “I did this crown to splint the tooth because the tooth was broken.” The dentist sends documentation in the form of clinical notes, x-rays, pictures, measurements. The insurance company reviews this information and accepts this as a covered benefit for the patient. That means the patient doesn’t owe anything for that crown, right? Nope.
The crown is covered at 80%. So that means that the crown that cost $1000 is now only $200 for the patient, right? Nope. This insurance only reimburses for the least expensive solution which is a metal crown which costs $500, of which they will pay 80%, or $400. The patient got a porcelain tooth-colored crown, which most of us would want. So that means that the patient will pay the residual $600 of the $1000 charge for a porcelain crown. Feeling discouraged? Your doctor deals with this nightmare daily to get you the best coverage they can and there’s not a thing your doctor or you can do about it.
"I’ve been a patient of Dr. Gregory for the past 6 months and it has been a very pleasant experience. She and her staff are wonderful and have made me feel very comfortable. They are always very upbeat! Dr. Gregory did an excellent job of explaining the procedure that would be performed and it went very well – almost pain-free! I highly recommend her."
"I was happy to find Dr. Gregory after a previous bad experience. I was very nervous and she put me at ease about the procedure and made a follow-up call that evening to be sure all was well. I will feel very comfortable recommending her to all my friends."
Working Hours
Monday-Friday 8am-4pm.