In a recent meeting with some dental benefit brokers and one insurance company, this thorny question came up:
Can Canadian insurers and benefit consultants switch to making money from dental health rather than from making money from dental disease?
In our meeting, the insurance company representative feared a world where patients weren’t claiming as much for expensive dental restoration — the claims processing fees would decline, he said, and so would his business.
Ouch!
Too many vested interests against improved outcomes in dental care?
Perhaps, but the world is starting to take a different perspective on healthcare. It wants health, it needs health, and it is rolling up its sleeve to get it.
Just look at the ongoing experiments with Accountable Care Organizations in the U.S. The point of ACOs is to generate and share the savings from improved health. And look no further than the 100 dental practices in the UK which are testing a reimbursement method for the National Health Service whereby the dentist makes significant income from getting his/her patients cavity-free.
All necessary thinking it seems, but I take the community’s perspective.
An aging community can’t afford recurrent disease, can now inform itself where more preventive care is offered, and has diminishing loyalty to the insurance company and the dental practice which pursues traditional perspectives.
How do I know? Surveys in the waiting rooms of Ontario dental practices. And canvassing the participants in that recent meeting. When asked “Would you like more preventive dental care when needed?”, there was unanimous agreement.
By: Ross Perry
SOURCED: Partners In Prevention – http://partnersinprevention.ca/taking-a-different-perspective
