Visiting your family dentist at Stuart Dental Spa before the end of the year is essential to ensure that you receive all of your yearly benefits, in addition to ensuring the health of your teeth.
Just about everyone has heard the saying, “Use it or lose it,” and that’s especially true when it comes to your dental benefits. Every year, you work hard to earn them, but it’s easy to get busy and before you know it the year is almost over, and so are your unused benefits.
If you receive dental insurance benefits through your employer, you are allotted a certain amount each year, such as $1,000, $1,500 or perhaps as much as $2,000 each calendar year. If you don’t use all of your benefits, you’ll lose them.
You could save hundreds of dollars by using your benefits before the clock strikes midnight on December 31. Most dental insurance plans run on a calendar year, and dental insurance companies count on making millions off of patients who never use those insurance benefits. Of course, they aren’t going to give you a call or send you a letter and encourage you to use them, and most people are too busy to figure out what they have left.
Dr. Rita Medwid, your family dentist in Stuart, advises having an exam and cleaning between October and December, so that potential problems can be discovered before they turn into major events. If you have a tooth that needs a root canal, for example, and then a crown for protection, the office may advise you to proceed with the root canal before your benefits run out, and then proceed with the crown using the following year’s benefits. Or, in another example, if you need four fillings, you might have two or three taken care of this year and the rest in January.
Of course, as any good family dentist will tell you, they do not want to jeopardize the health or proper care of your teeth just to take advantage of the benefits. If the need for treatment is immediate, it should be done right away, but there are times in which dental procedures can be scheduled in a more appropriate time slot.