Last week we talked about the various positions that make up a dental office. There were quite a few followup questions asking us to expand on some of the job descriptions. So, we decided to start a series of “who’s who in the dental office”. This will be a 3 part series and we are starting off strong with the business team. This week Bonnie Kost is joining us and talking about all things related to dental insurance. She explains the difference between medical insurance and dental insurance, dives into some insurance nuances to look out for when choosing a dental plan, and gives you some tips to help you maximize your benefits. You don’t want to miss this episode!

As always, feel free to reach out through our instagram @YourDailyDoseOfDental or through our website http://www.DoseOfDental.com. We would love to hear from you and hope your questions can be featured on our show!

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Ashley 00:00:02 Welcome to DM, a dentist, your friendly neighborhood podcast, where doctor Rusty and doctor Mike are here to make dental care approachable for everyone because everyone deserves a healthy smile without the fear.

Dr. Mike 00:00:24 Alrighty, so I have Bonnie with us today. Say hello, Bonnie.

Bonnie 00:00:28 Hello. Well, hello, everyone.

Dr. Mike 00:00:29 This is Bonnie. She’s been working in dental for how long now?

Bonnie 00:00:33 About ten years now. I started in the back.

Dr. Mike 00:00:36 Start in the back.

Bonnie 00:00:37 We talked about that last week.

Dr. Mike 00:00:38 So what is back?

Bonnie 00:00:40 Back office is being a dental assistant, being a hygienist, being a dentist. So front office does everything up front. So we push the paper and do all of the insurance and scheduling, and back does everything else for us.

Dr. Mike 00:00:58 So, yeah. Like clinical versus business team.

Bonnie 00:01:01 Yes, absolutely.

Dr. Mike 00:01:02 So, yeah, Bonnie’s been doing this for a while, so we had her on the show. I know we talked about last week, what are the different roles in the dental office? And this week we decided, why not talk to someone who does it for a living?

Bonnie 00:01:13 I do do it for a living. I am technically a finance coordinator, which is a fancy way of saying, I tell you how much everything’s gonna cost.

Dr. Mike 00:01:22 So you would say you are well versed in the insurances, eh?

Bonnie 00:01:27 I have so much knowledge of insurance that sometimes it hurts. There are thousands of different plans out there, and our goal is always to know as much as we possibly can in order for our patients to get the most out of their benefits.

Dr. Mike 00:01:43 And it’s hard. Cause it’s always. You were saying earlier, it’s always a moving scale, right?

Bonnie 00:01:47 Yes. Sometimes it does feel like we’re on a little bit of quicksand. Like, say anything is an absolute, and it changes every January. So every January, we have a big push to rediscover every dental plan that we have coming into our offices.

Dr. Mike 00:02:09 That’s wild. So they change a lot.

Bonnie 00:02:10 They change quite a bit, actually. And I will call it frustrating, but it’s also, you know, that is just how our country is ran with dental insurance currently.

Dr. Mike 00:02:23 And the bad thing is I will do things in the back and, like, treatment plan all these things and get all