Category: Dental Insurance & Medicaid

The Ohio Dental Association has written Aetna Dental PPO to express its concerns with a recent decision by Aetna to substantially reduce network dentists’ reimbursement. The ODA’s action is in response to a number of ODA member dentists who contacted the ODA after receiving a letter from Aetna Dental PPO that it would be utilizing a new fee ... [continue reading]

The end of this year will mark the end of the 133rd General Assembly. That means all pieces of legislation pending before the Ohio legislature that have not been adopted into law will be discarded. If these legislative proposals are eventually to become law they must then be re-introduced and begin the legislative process all over again in the ... [continue reading]

More attention is being given to dentists having a separate charge for personal protective equipment (PPE) or infection control from a variety of sources, many of which are not keen about the idea of dentists levying this charge on their patients. Those weighing in on the idea range from dentists to patients to insurance companies to state ... [continue reading]

The Ohio Dental Association's Medicaid Working Group has acted upon and continues to address a number of matters relative to Ohio's Medicaid dental program. Rebidding Ohio’s Medicaid HMO contracts Early last year Gov. Mike DeWine called on the Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) to rebid the state of Ohio’s contracts with the private ... [continue reading]

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused much disruption throughout every facet of society. An impact it has had on dentistry has directly led to increased costs for dentists to provide care while at the same time significantly decreasing dentists' ability to recover those costs via the number of patients they may see in any given period of time. While ... [continue reading]

  Even before Ohio dentists were permitted to re-open their dental offices to provide more than just emergency only dental care, there was much discussion about the increased costs that dentists would incur in order to provide dental care in the current and post COVID-19 era. These discussions have involved not only increased costs but also ... [continue reading]

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, orders from Gov. Mike DeWine, the Ohio Department of Health and the Ohio State Dental Board have mandated that Ohio dentists defer all non-essential and elective procedures in order to preserve the availability of personal protective equipment (PPE) and prevent inadvertent spread of the coronavirus. Dentists ... [continue reading]

Should dentists receive third-party payer reimbursement for providing dental services to family members? The Ohio Dental Association and the American Dental Association say yes, but a very small number of insurance companies or dental benefit plan sponsors apparently say no. The Ohio Dental Association has again received a number of calls from ... [continue reading]

The Ohio Department of Medicaid (ODM) recently revised its dental periodicity schedule to recommend that every Medicaid eligible child should have an oral examination at the eruption of the first primary tooth, no later than 12 months of age and semi-annual examinations thereafter. “The periodicity schedule follows professional ... [continue reading]

Every month, volunteer member dentists who serve on the Ohio Dental Association’s Dental Insurance Working Group consider questions, concerns and complaints that are submitted by ODA member dentists relative to dental insurance. A common theme of many of the submissions involves problems associated with denied claims that could have been ... [continue reading]