New fee guide takes bite out of high dental costs
Cost of 60 common procedures to fall by an average 8.5 per cent
Months after baring their teeth in a dispute over dental fees, Alberta’s health minister and the group that represents the province’s 2,600 dentists were all smiles Wednesday after reaching an agreement to lower prices.
Health Minister Sarah Hoffman announced the two sides settled on a newly revised dental fee guide touted to make cleanings, fillings and other procedures more affordable.
“Alberta was an outlier in Canada in terms of not having a fee guide and an outlier in terms of average costs, and we are no longer an outlier,” she told a news conference.
The fees listed in the new guide are recommendations only, and dentists are still free to set their own rates.
The guide calls for an 8.5 per cent reduction in prices for 60 common dental services. That’s nearly triple the three per cent drop the Alberta Dental Association and College called for when it initially published the fee guide in August.
That infuriated Hoffman, who publicly blasted the association and demanded they “get back to the drawing board.”
She felt the guide — Alberta’s first set of recommended fees in 20 years — didn’t do enough to help patients facing some of the highest dental prices in the country.
Hoffman struck a different tone Wednesday, encouraging consumers to use the newly revised document as a tool to compare prices among various practices, or to pressure dentists to lower their rates.
“I don’t know a lot of Albertans who are excited to discuss economics when they are sitting in a dental chair, so this makes it a little bit easier to have some of those conversations,” Hoffman said.
“When I go to see my dentist in January, I can say, ‘Do you bill in line with the fee guide?’ It’s a yardstick for me to use.”
The move to publish a fee guide for the first time since 1997 came from a government review released last year that found Alberta’s dental fees could average as much as 44 per cent higher than neighbouring provinces, while a handful of procedures cost more than double.
Association and college president Dr. Mintoo Basahti said the suggested 8.5 per cent reduction applies to “average” rates Alberta dentists have been charging, as calculated by the review.
Hoffman said the experience of other provinces is that dentists have tended to bring prices in line with their respective fee guides.
“We are already seeing changes happen,” Basahti added.
“As this new guide comes into effect at the beginning of 2018, I think you will tend to see things trending down.”
However, many Alberta dentists have said they don’t have much room to reduce rates.
The cost of maintaining an office, hiring highly skilled staff, upgrading equipment and covering other overhead expenses can eat up to 70 per cent or more of the fees they collect, they say.
Some have even expressed concern that less revenue will force dental practices to close or push dentists to cut staff salaries.
Others have suggested employer-based insurance plans will exploit the fee guide to justify smaller reimbursements for dental work, forcing patients to cover a greater portion of costs.
“Members haven’t had a fee guide for 20 years, so when change happens it can be a little unnerving,” Basahti said. “I think at the end of the day they have to trust senior leadership and trust the stability the minister has given them.”