Thank you for reading our blog with regards to the Chronic Disease Dental Scheme for Dental Services.

The scheme remains open and we are still a bulk billing practice. This is for all services except where specifically discussed prior to treatment e.g. implant treatments.

Medicare Australia have advised that it is fraudulent for our professionally trained dental hygienists to treat patients under dental supervision, regardless of the fact that this is the only way they can utilise their profession within Australia.

We believe the health service provided by the hygiene profession is imperative to improving oral health and we will continue to offer hygiene services to all of our patients, especially the chronically ill who have been referred to me or Dr Verner by their GP with the goal to improve oral health.

Our goal with the scheme over the years has been to try and return the mouth to being as healthy as possible given the funding available, whilst still listening to our patients issues and dealing with them where possible.

With complex restorative care, the full $4250 is usually not enough to reach this goal.

In these cases we have often provided treatments (including dental hygiene services) and not charged Medicare or our patients, essentially we have done the work for free.

We believe this scheme has allowed for a lot of patients to have the chance to have proper dental care and treatment which will improve oral health into the future.

With proven links between poor periodontal health and the exacerbation of chronic diseases, I believe it is unethical and unprofessional not to offer dental hygienist services to our chronically ill patients.

We enjoy giving back to the community and will continue to do so by offering the services of our hygiene department to the chronically ill.

What does this mean?

Usually if a treatment plan goes over the $4250 balance, we would do some restorative work for free which will leave funding for hygiene visits. We will just do the reverse now.

This is not to say that all hygiene visits are now free, in some cases where patients only need continuing care we will arrange for myself or another dental team member to provide periodontal care and charge Medicare accordingly.

For patients where I have reserved funding for hygiene; at your next visit we will be charging Medicare for work we have done in the past for free, this will enable us to cover hygiene visits for the future. I recognise this is somewhat confusing. Myself or one of my team members will help to explain this further or answer any questions our patients may have.

Please be assured if patients don’t have funding left and something happens or they are in pain, we will always try and help them.

This change in our way of invoicing Medicare for our dental services still means there is no charge to our patients who have been referred to us for dental services by their GP.

Thank you for your support and trust in me to assist with your health care. I enjoy being a dentist and providing a service I am proud of to the community.

Cheers,

Adam Alford