Why is preventive dentistry under emphasized by most dentists?

 Patient education and follow ups really are often needed to make sure recommended changes are followed through by our patients are not really properly reimbursed by patients or their health insurance. Coaching a patient either by a dentist or one of their staff actually can requires more than one appointment in order to assure that the patient has properly implemented home care properly. 

Given the way things in healthcare is moving, patients are expecting lower out of pocket costs and desire  treatment covered by their dental insurance. Unfortunately most dental insurances efforts seem focused on saving their companies money by cost containment and rejecting payments for submitted expenses that they deem 'unnecessary' . Maybe I'm exaggerating but possibly they don't seem that concerned with patients keeping their teeth for a life time. I believe their ultimate goal is to maximize their own profits during the short term, especially since many patients do not maintain their policies over their lifetimes and seem to switch insurers from time to time.

If I was to possibly debate this from the insurers perspective, they might maintain that if they reimburse better for preventive services, this would become a new way for dentists to pad their bills with additional unnecessary services. Clearly some dentists and/or their corporate dental offices are expert at 'gaming' the system and are delivering services not clearly needed, but are covered by insurers. As things stand, the majorit of  dental office billings are for procedures to help repair and/ or replace teeth, after they have developed problems.

In my opinion, the single greatest services our dental practice offers are preventive, including advising patients to purchase the proper electric tooth brushes, teaching ways to clean inter proximal surfaces, choose a healthy diet and the importance of maintaining a good recall schedule... Yes our other types of dental procedures are all important, but the key to maintaining oral health  involves  frequent recare visits and the type of home care that patients perform at home.



from Ask Dr. Spindel - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/2025/10/why-is-preventive-dentistry-under.html - http://lspindelnycdds.blogspot.com/

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