Dear Harbor Members,

Membership has its privileges...Harbor Dental Society is your one-stop resource for all stages of your professional career, with money-saving solutions to give you a competitive edge. We deliver key information on legislation, business, regulations and compliance issues that you will want to know about and inform your patients. CDA Cares Anaheim was a great success, providing $1,537, 951 in free dental services and education to 2,019 people during the two-day event April 27-28 at the Anaheim Convention Center.

In addition, Harbor has organized some June powerhouse CE programs you will want to check out on June 9, 2018 on Case Acceptance. A powerhouse team of experts has teamed up to help you build upon your education with a discussion around the most relevant real-world business applications that YOU need to understand for success and less stress. The CE Program June 21 will focus on the Cutting Edge Tech with Digital Design and Real World Cosmetic Dentistry: Faults, Failures and Fixes.  The Dental MBA Series will pick up again on September 20 on "Dentistry for the Millennial Mindset - focusing on investing and embracing tech for a productive patient-focused practice. The October 25 Dental MBA will address "The Power Within Your Data" and discuss ways to use your data to increase patient care and overall practice team performance.  The Dental MBA Series is an exclusive free benefit for Harbor members so be sure to take advantage and sign up for these programs.  RSVP to Harbor’s office to attend, 562.595.6303. We hope you enjoy the continuing education clinical programs and business series customized to meet your needs.

Thank you for being a member!

Aarti Shah, DDS

President

Harbor Dental Society

Dental Advocacy

Take action and show your support for SB 1008 to hold dental plans accountable and increase transparency with the information they provide to their policyholders.

Specifically, SB 1008 would:

• Require all commercial dental benefit plans to provide their beneficiaries with a uniform summary of benefits and coverage – showing how much the plan spends on patient care along with other plan details, including its limitations, exceptions and anticipated out-of-pocket costs for the patient.
• Enact a “dental loss ratio” (DLR) standard, requiring dental plans to spend at least 70 percent of premium revenue on patient care (as opposed to administrative overhead costs).

Dental patients should know what they are buying and expect reasonable value. It’s time to give them more transparency and hold insurance companies accountable for how they are spending patient premium dollars. These consumer protections and transparency requirements exist for all medical insurance plans, but not commercial dental benefit plans. In fact, while all medical plans must spend at least 80 percent of all premium dollars on patient care, NO minimum requirement exists for commercial dental plans. As a result, one out of four dental plans in the state spends less than 50 percent of premium dollars on patient care, with some falling as low as 4 percent.

THANK YOU FOR TAKING ACTION TODAY!

CDA is sponsoring SB 1008 by Senator Nancy Skinner to better inform consumers of what value a commercial dental plan provides and to ensure adequate value from these plans. We anticipate that the dental benefit plans will be pushing hard to oppose this measure. To counter them, we are asking Harbor members to visit www.cda.org/sb1008 and fill out a form to submit a letter to their state senator supporting the legislation.