How does dental insurance work?

Dental insurance is a contract between the patient and the carrier who has it. Every single insurance is different. Even if you have Delta Dental Insurance and I have Delta Dental Insurance, your contract is different. What is covered is specific to your individual plan.

At Murfreesboro Family Dentistry, we let you know what your insurance covers and what your out-of-pocket costs will be before a procedure. A lot of times people think, “Oh I have such-and-such insurance, that’s really good insurance.” But, there are thousands of different plans within any type or brand of insurance. We want to make sure that we know what your insurance covers before we move forward with any procedures. For this, we can always do a predetermination. We send the procedures that we plan on doing out to the insurance company. Then they will tell us exactly how much they anticipate paying for those procedures.

Are there different general headings of dental insurance?

There are different brands of dental insurance. We are in network with Delta Dental of Tennessee in any state and we are in network with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Tennessee. Also, we are in network with MetLife, Cigna, United Concordia, Humana, and a handful of others, but those are the main ones that service this area.

Are there different kinds, like HMO, PPO? Are there different types of dental insurance?

Correct. There are what are called DMOs and PPO networks. We are in network with most PPO networks, but we are not in network with any DMO networks.