In-house Dental Financing 101: The Answers Dentists Need for Their Patients’ Concerns

Not all patients have insurance to manage payment for their dental care. Many patients skip or delay their comprehensive dental care visits because they believe they can’t afford it without insurance. Offering in-house financing can ease patient worries about payment, so they schedule regular dentist visits.

As a dentist, you know that regular and emergency dental care are essential to maintaining a patient’s overall health. Patients with gum disease have double the risk of death from a heart attack and triple the risk of stroke. Regular dental visits can also reduce cancer risk with oral cancer screening during check-ups.

Whether you focus on orthodontic, pediatric, family, cosmetic, or restorative dentistry, learn more below about how to offer dental financing for your dental treatment services.

What Does In-house Financing Mean for a Dentist?

Whether your dental office focuses on family, cosmetic, or pediatric dentistry, offering in-house dental financing can make the difference if patients seek quality dental care with your practice. Additionally, not every new patient has dental insurance. Establishing a dental payment plan can help patients manage their financial options to get necessary dental treatments.

With Buy Now, Pay-over-time, a partnership between Weave and Sunbit, your dental practice can offer in-house dental financing so patients can get their dental cleaning, tooth extraction, or oral cancer screening and make affordable monthly payments for their dental service.

Buy Now, Pay-over-time integrates seamlessly with your Weave Dental Software. You can offer a monthly option for dental financing with your office, and Sunbit will pick up the bill. Additionally, Buy Now, Pay-over-time only uses a soft credit check to qualify eligible applicants for a dental payment plan.

The Benefits of In-house Dental Financing

Not every patient needs dental insurance. A dental insurance plan can be one of the more costly financial options for patients with mostly healthy teeth. It doesn’t make sense for these patients to pay more with an insurance provider like Delta Dental or Humana annually than paying out of pocket for semi-annual dental cleaning.

For patients who don’t have a dental insurance plan, your office can provide the dental treatment they need, whether it’s wisdom tooth removal, a root canal dental procedure, or new dental crowns. Dental financing ensures affordable dental care is available to patients of all income levels.

Review the patient questions below to learn more about how to address patient concerns as a dental care provider. Consider your responses to a new patient compared to an existing one to guarantee the best care.

Patient Question: Does Dental Financing Affect My Credit Score?

Financing might affect a patient’s credit score, depending on your office’s financing provider. Many financing providers will pre-approve with a soft credit check, but will need to perform a hard credit check before approving your patient’s dental financing plan. While a soft credit check won’t appear on a credit report, a hard check will, and usually drops the score several points.

To avoid hurting your patients’ credit scores, choose a provider that only uses a soft credit check to approve patient financing.

Patient Question: What Can I Do When There Is No Credit Check Dental Financing Near Me?

Whether your practice area is in sedation, restorative, or orthodontic dentistry, you can help your patients get the dental treatments they need, including their kids’ first dental cleaning or an emergency dentistry visit for tooth pain or lost fillings. In-house dental financing allows patients to get the dental work they need more easily than they could with other options, including:

• Dental insurance. Not all insurance plans cover all dental treatment procedures, and not all patients need regular dental insurance from providers like UnitedHealthcare or Delta Dental for occasional family dentistry visits.
• Credit card. Many major credit cards offer 0% APRs for an introductory period, but patients usually must have a credit score over 700 to qualify. Some credit card companies like CareCredit offer cards for dental or medical financing with a score over 640.
• Personal loan. An unsecured personal loan may require a credit score over 660 for a lender to agree to the loan without an origination fee. Unsecured loan origination fees typically range from 1-8% of the original loan amount. A secured loan is secured with collateral, posing less risk to the lender and allowing approval for applicants with lower credit scores.
• Lending Club. The Lending Club provides financial assistance for comprehensive dental care, including dental implants, mouth reconstruction, cosmetic dentistry, orthodontics, and more. They offer reasonable interest rates based on credit score and payment history.

Helping patients find the right dental financing option for their dental treatment plan can help grow your dental practice and improve your dental care services with increased revenue. Offering in-house dental financing would allow your patients to receive the quality dental care they need.

Patient Question: What Are the Options for In-house Financing for Dental Implants Near Me?

Offering a financing payment option at your practice can make even the costliest procedures attainable for budget-conscious patients. By offering in-house dental financing, you can provide comprehensive dental care for patients who won’t need to run up the balance on their major credit cards or take out a personal loan to finance a dental procedure.

Conclusion

Your office sees patients every week who don’t have dental insurance to cover their dental service payments. Whether you work in emergency, pediatric, or sedation dentistry, ensuring your patients can pay for a dentist gives them the confidence to seek the dental care they need to lead healthy lives.

Proper dental care is essential to patients’ health, and a beautiful smile can improve a patient’s confidence to live life to the fullest. Helping your patients afford their regular dental services with monthly financial options can improve their quality of life several times over.

Choose Weave to help your dental office incorporate in-house dental financing with your patient systems. Our software can help your office streamline operations with missed call texts, online scheduling, automatic appointment confirmation, and more. Schedule a demo or call us today at 833-572-2139 to see how Weave can help you.