This morning’s peer to peer breakfast was very well attended for such an early start. Discussions on the dental/medical connection, technology, small business marketing, dental benefits ROI, universal healthcare, provider networks, discount dental , children’s oral health, retirement market and working with brokers were fruitful in the ideas generated.
A big issue permeating many of the discussions was the management of provider networks. The complexity of credentialing providers and maintaining systems to accomodate accuracy in networks spans across a number of functions within the dental plans including impacts on the auto-adjudication of claims, difficulty consumers have negotiating loosely accurate provider directories, and timely credentialing.
Other issues addressed included the need to utilize product and pricing segmentation in retirement markets, education of the various audiences of the dental benefits industry about the value of dental benefits, the use of discount dental products to address the needs of the dentally underserved market and better collaboration between public and private payers to provide more access for the care of childrens’ oral health.
