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The Mouth
That Roared
Interview with Bruce Y. Cha, D.M.D., president of the New Haven Dental Association and a practicing endodontist with offices in New Haven, Branford and Hamden.
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Business New Haven
11/3/1997
By: Lori Green
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What are the issues of current
concern to the New Haven Dental Association?
The dental association has been focusing on raising public awareness about the valuable services dentists can provide using new technologies, such as bonding materials, regenerative therapies and periodontal procedures. Also, implants have really given human beings a third set of teeth, and we are very excited about that.
How does your group serve its members?
We educate members about new breakthroughs and technologies. We meet monthly for continuing-education programs which draw between 300 and 500 practicing dentists across the state. However, we do not discuss fees or insurance matters as a group, since we are legally prohibited from discussing any fee-related topics.
There was a recent ad on the radio placed by the
Connecticut Dental Association (ADA) promoting a new type of dental health coverage. How does this plan work?
This is not a dental insurance plan offered by the CDA. It's a suggestion by the CDA to employers to consider a direct reimbursement benefit, which cuts the administrative and premium costs of insuring employees by circumventing third-party payers. Most dental plans only cover $1,000 or $1,500 per year per person. Here the employer sets up an individual account for each employee with a maximum set at $1,000 or $1,500 per year, and employees are reimbursed for their dental expenses up to that amount. There can also be certain co-payment features, such as reimbursement for 50 percent of the cost of crowns.
Will this type of coverage result in cost savings
for employers?
Studies have shown that it will save employers money, and the CDA wants to help employers implement this concept. Yale University has been doing this for a long time. Employees who have selected a direct-reimbursement plan pay me directly and then take the receipt to Yale to receive their reimbursement. The Connecticut State Dental Association can be reached at 860-278-5550 for information, and the contact person there is the executive director, Noel Bishop.
How has the dental-care market been affected by HMOs and changes in health-care delivery?
Well, less than five percent of national health-care dollars goes to dental care. Traditional dental insurance plans in place over the past couple of decades already brought dentistry through the same capitation process that medical care is going through now. A managed dental plan, for example, will pay $6 per patient per month. If the patient doesn't come in, you will make a profit. But if the patient needs work, it is hard to provide quality care at that capitation rate. In dentistry, if you start cutting corners, you're going to have problems down the road. Loss of revenue cannot be made up by volume.
How can quality dental care for patients be safeguarded?
Providing good dental care takes time: You have explain things to patients and allay their anxieties. It doesn't make any sense to rush through one patient to get to the next. That doesn't really interest me. I feel more gratification in doing a good job than in working more quickly.
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