Insider Update

When it comes to dental coverage, having a large, dependable dentist network is crucial for quality dental care and reliable, cost-saving in-network access.

One of the unique advantages your clients enjoy with Delta Dental is network size. Our proprietary dentist networks are the nation’s largest. How large? Our combined Delta Dental PPO™ and Delta Dental Premier® networks feature more than 155,000 unique dentists, as of September 2021, according to Zelis Network360.

And to ensure quality care, we contract directly with each of our dentists and, most importantly, never lease our networks. That’s not the case with most other carriers, which lease dentist networks from other carriers to boost their numbers.

Of course, you might say to yourself, numbers are numbers ― if the network is large and my clients and their employees can visit a dentist, why does the type of network matter?

Because with leased networks, these numbers can be deceiving. What’s more, leased networks come with serious disadvantages for members.

To help understand some of these disadvantages, let’s first take a look at what leased networks are and how they work.

The downside of leased networks

Access fees

While carriers may benefit from access fees, your clients won’t. Carriers who lease networks often pass the cost of access fees on to your self-funded clients by withholding claims savings. These fees can also differ from network to network.

We never charge access fees, so you can be sure your clients will get the full savings they’re entitled to.

Network lease timing

When your clients choose a carrier, they’re locked in for the term of their plan contract. But that contract may not correspond to the carrier network’s lease agreements. Carrier-to-carrier leasing contracts are negotiable and can be terminated at any time. This means your clients and their employees might find the dentists they chose and depend on are suddenly no longer in their network. A leased network could lose thousands of dentists overnight.

Since we don’t lease networks, your clients can be confident knowing they can visit the dentists they know and trust.

Increased costs

When leasing contracts change, members’ expenses can increase. With renegotiated fees under a new lease, members may not realize their out-of-pocket costs are higher than expected until claims are processed. And these changes can happen at any time.

Inconsistent fees and billing

When a carrier leases several different dental networks, it can result in several different fee schedules, which can lead to inconsistent costs. Dentists may also be confused about how to bill enrollees, which could potentially increase the time it takes to process claims or even lead to incorrect billing. And since the leased networks are owned by different carriers, resolving any billing disputes may be difficult.

Our networks offer predictable, consistent fees and uniform billing and processing.

Quality concerns

Quality of care matters to patients and employers. But when a carrier leases multiple networks, this is difficult to guarantee. Since carriers have no relationship with the dentists in the networks they lease and contractual obligations around quality standards vary, they may not be able to confirm that these dentists’ treatment plans, safety measures and office cleanliness meet acceptable standards, nor can they guarantee that these dentists are properly credentialed.

At Delta Dental, we contract directly, maintain strong relationships and hold our dentists to high standards.

The promise of a carrier with a leased network may seem appealing, but that promise doesn’t hold up to scrutiny. With Delta Dental, you can be sure that you’ll get the network, quality and consistency that you — and your clients — can count on.