How to Educate Patients About Their Dental Insurance Benefits

Posted on September 24, 2025 in Insurance

Key takeaways:

• Providing educational materials and highlighting preventive care helps patients maximize their dental insurance benefits, leading to better oral health and greater satisfaction.
• Dentists and their teams must thoroughly understand the details of the insurance plans they accept to build trust.
• Consistent, clear messaging from the dental team about insurance and costs prevents misunderstandings, eases frustration, and promotes informed decisions.

As an oral health care provider, you’re already making a meaningful impact by caring for your patients’ smiles and oral health.

Taking the extra step to educate them about their dental insurance benefits and how to maximize those benefits is a simple yet powerful way to elevate care, enhance their experience and support their well-being.

Steps to help educate your patients about their dental insurance benefits

As a dentist, you play a key role in helping patients understand and make the most of their dental insurance benefits. By doing so, you can improve treatment acceptance and reduce billing confusion.

Here are some effective strategies dentists and their teams can use:

Practice transparency before starting treatment

Patients appreciate transparency from the start. Be sure to provide information about what a procedure involves, the total costs of any treatment, what insurance is likely to cover, and any out-of-pocket costs they can expect, before starting. This communication helps avoid surprise bills and empowers patients to use their dental insurance benefits effectively.

Delta Dental offers a benefit estimate tool on our secure Dentist Connection for providers. This feature allows providers to enter the treatment codes and then see what insurance would cover for those services.  It instantly estimates benefits based on basic patient eligibility information such as frequency limitations and assumes any clinical criteria required to be submitted and reviewed is met. Unlike a prior authorization, no procedures are reviewed to determine if the patient qualifies for benefits.

Pro tip: Use the word “estimate” when discussing costs to prevent misunderstandings, since the exact amount can only be determined after the procedure is completed and the insurance claim is processed.

Provide education materials at your practice

A simple way to educate your patients about their dental insurance benefits is to provide educational materials in your practice. This can be as simple as brochures at the front desk or in the waiting room that cover common insurance terms, what common dental insurance plans do and do not cover, and the differences between in-network and out-of-network coverage. 

Encourage preventive visits

Remind patients that most dental insurance plans fully cover preventive care services such as cleanings and exams at a regular cadence. Encourage visits by sending reminders, emphasizing how preventive care can save money in the long run, and framing these visits as an opportunity to use benefits before losing them at the end of the year.

This proactive approach helps patients stay on top of their oral health while maximizing the value of their dental insurance benefits.

Educating patients empowers them to use their dental insurance benefits

Patients who have a clear understanding of their dental insurance benefits are more inclined to take full advantage of them. Using dental check-ups as an opportunity to educate patients about their coverage is an effective way to empower them and elevate their overall care experience.

Want to discover more ways to improve patient experience? Check out “Tips for Dentists to Help Patients with Dental Anxiety”.