Insider Update

With Delta Dental, your clients can rely on comprehensive, high-quality oral health care. Why? One of the reasons is that we’ve built the largest dentist network in the country to ensure that your clients can always find a quality dentist they trust while enjoying substantial in-network savings. But that’s not the only advantage our network offers your clients.
 

Objective ratings help your clients select a dentist

For your clients to take full advantage of their dental benefits, they need to feel confident in choosing a dentist who meets their unique needs. To help, we’ve tried to take the guesswork out of finding great dental care.

That’s why our online dentist directory features quality ratings for Delta Dental PPO™, Delta Dental Premier® and select DeltaCare® USA dentists within our 15 enterprise states and the District of Columbia. Developed by a neutral third party, DentaQual ratings evaluate dentists on these criteria:
 

• Procedure success rate measures treatment success rate, including the likelihood of repeat procedures and post-treatment problems.
• Commitment to best practices evaluates how well a dentist follows established standards and treatment methods.
• Value compares the type and number of prescribed treatments and the average cost per patient.
• Patient retention compares the degree of patient retention and loyalty.
• Treatment recommendations compares how a dentist recommends treatment in comparison to dentists in their geographic area and specialty.
   

DentaQual compares each dentist’s scores to the average scores of their peers to generate an overall rating. And DentaQual automatically refreshes scores each month, so your clients will know that their dentist’s rating is always current.
 

Member input makes our network stronger

Our members’ opinions matter to us. That’s why we pair DentaQual ratings with Yelp ratings from actual patients to give members an extra level of confidence when choosing a dentist. We even ask our members to recommend great dentists who aren’t in our network so that we can ask them to join. 

Member satisfaction was our main objective in creating our network. In fact, in 2020,  98% of our members said they were satisfied with their dentist and the quality of the care they received.
 

A proprietary dentist networks offers your clients unique advantages

Unlike some other carriers who lease their networks, we’ve built our own. Of course, you might ask yourself why the network matters as long as your clients have access to dental care. It’s because your clients will enjoy several distinct advantages with Delta Dental’s networks versus a leased network:
 

• Quality. We have direct contracts and relationships with our dentists and hold each to consistently high standards. In a leased network, carriers may not have relationship with dentists, and dentist credentialing may be inconsistent.
• Size. You can count on our network size to be accurate ― we update our directory daily ― and since we have relationships with our dentists, turnover is low. Carriers with leased networks may not know exactly how many dentists their networks contain, and if the carrier’s network lease ends before your contract does, some of your clients could find themselves without an in-network dentist.
• Value. Our networks offer predictable, consistent fees. Leased networks may not be able to make that promise. And we never charge for network access, unlike some carriers with leased networks that withhold claims saving to cover access fees.
   

The largest network in the nation means your clients save

A large network means it’s easy for your clients to stay in network, which translates to lower costs. And when it comes to a large network, we lead the competition. Our Delta Dental Premier network is the largest in the nation, based on total unique dentists, according to Zelis Network360’s September 2021 report.

Why is counting unique dentists important? Because it sets us apart from carriers that count access points instead. Access points represent the number of network dentists at each dental office where patients are treated. This means a single dentist who treats patients at several offices could be counted multiple times, which may not represent the actual number of individual dentists in the network. 

With Delta Dental, you can rest assured that your clients will receive quality care. Delta Dental’s robust, nationwide networks offer quality assurance, savings, simplicity and choice.