A few interesting things happened in the past few months, most of them being positive. We rolled out our same-day crown and bridge services in November 2025. The technological innovations are impressive as much as they are reliable. And patients have been really receptive. They don’t have to wear a temporary piece of dentistry on their teeth. They receive the definitive crown or bridgework right there at the first treatment visit. And as a provider, it matters that I make a workflow efficient, precise, and accurate for the fit, feel, and appearance for a restoration. I used to employ dental technicians offsite to do all those things for all of our patients. Occasionally, my preferences for a restoration weren’t met. And that meant more return trips for patients, and more waiting time for completing their restoration. That experience has become less of an issue.
However, patients’ dental insurance companies have decided to create another unique issue. Generally, I appreciate dental insurance plans intent to help people reduce their expenses for care. It is also important to note it isn’t an insurance company’s mission to maximize payouts for patient care; these companies, at their core, are for-profit entities. And one of their strategies to retain profits are to ask patients and their doctors to follow an ever-changing and increasing number of rules before they reimburse patients. Which leads us to the unique issue at hand.
Making a crown for a patient in our office has triggered insurers to ask for proof that the crown was made by requesting an x-ray of the completed crown. This is not a normal or reasonable request; we have NEVER received this request with any other crown procedure in the past.
For the patient to get paid, we have to take the x-ray and expose them to an extremely small amount of radiation. This creates a larger set of consequences for patients. It’s confounding to me that a dental insurance company that would advertise they are trying to improve patient health (look up any number of company websites and note content and taglines about care and support) would ignore a widely respected principle called ALARA: As Low As Reasonably Achievable. It means all healthcare providers must make reasonable efforts to avoid irradiating patients when it is not arguably critical to the delivery of care.
My team takes the time and effort and uses our equipment to produce the x-ray. There’s a cost for that. Which ironically, has to be either absorbed by the patient or paid out by the insurance company. So everyone involved has a greater expense. Just to play the dental insurance rule. To me, that seems less than sensible.
Dental insurance COULD be engineered better, but it would take a complete overhaul of the company infrastructure. And I haven’t watched any company in dentistry do that yet. And care costs keep climbing with respect to the cost of living alone. So the affordability gap is growing.
I’m trying to shrink the gap by offering patients a way to receive discounted care without the need for dental insurance. In exchange for a competitive monthly fee to us, I will provide patients with free annual cleanings, exams, and imaging AND a discount on all care we offer. The membership plan we offer is called Clerri. You can call us and we’ll give you the details about it. And then the risk of companies adding and manipulating ridiculous “innovations” of dental insurance rules won’t continue.
