Quote:
Originally Posted by Dentoman
Interested to know how you know this to be true. It has never been that way in my office and since the majority of dentists don't take assignment of benefits, I would highly doubt that the majority of dentists would do so ..... in fact, it is insurance fraud to do so. Since an insurance audit could take place at any time, the likliehood of a two tiered fee structure would be highly unlikely.
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Well I'm not a dentist so I will never know the whole truth, but its my own anecdotal opinion based what I have seen and heard from others.
Of course dentists wouldn't be so stupidly blatant to have an official two tiered billing structure, but it is easily done within the system by manipulating which codes they chose to charge as has been already alluded to in this thread. Maybe not in your practice, but it would certainly appear that some downtown practices are rather "generous" in their baseline billing structure when they know 99% of their clients are going to have coverage and won't question it.
My suspicion is that the default billing structure told to the front office staff would change rather drastically if the government were involved, becoming more in line with that seen in a medical practice.