Join, Join, Join. It's worth the cash. Just the info that you get via the publications is worth the yearly fees. ASDA membership/involvement can also be a potential contact source for future practice opportunities. As mentioned, ASDA's main goal right now is national licensure reform, and that would definately benefit you. Then, after ASDA, when you're out in practice, what the ADA is currently involved in right now, and will likely continue to be involved in in the future, will greatly benefit you. I'm not talking about amalgam legislation(from its use/disposal/water purification levels), but dentistry vs. the insurance industry. The unfair practice suits that have been filed will result in higher fees being paid to you the dentist by the insurance companies. It will also prevent you from having to sign up for ALL the plans they offer (from traditional PPO's all the way down to managed care plans), you can pick and choose what you want to sign up for.
Speaking on a personal note for what organized dentistry has done for me. My state society (Connecticut) has filed, and received preliminary results from, a suit against Blue Cross/Blue Shield claiming that they have used improper formulas/databases to set their fee schedules for the last roughly 20 years. When I received this years new fee schedule, the reimbursement rates went up an average of 35% per procedure
. In years past you would have seen an across the board average of 0% increase!! Additionally, we can now balance bill. What that means is that in the past, if you were a Blue Cross provider and you had a Blue Cross member patient, you would agree with Blue Cross to treat them for the fee schedule that they set and not seek the difference from the patient. (i.e. if your 2 surface amalgam fee is $100 and the Blue Cross fee schedule's was $95, you would be reimbursed for the $95 and NOT able to bill the patient for the extra $5). The suit has also stopped the common insurance company practices of code bundling and down coding. Code bundling is where they would take multiple insurance codes that are commonly billed together (i.e. prophylaxis, periodic exam, bitewings and flouride treatment) and lump all the codes together into a "prophy" code that is a few dollars less than the individual fees added up. Down coding is where the insurance company will pay at the lowest rate when multiple coding options for a procedure are available, reguardless of whether that code is what was actually done. An example would be for a crown. If you billed for an all ceramic crown, which is generally the highest fee crown when comapared to a full cast crown, a porcelain to high noble, and a porcelain to base metal crown, the insurance company would reimburse you at the cheapest crown fee, and then prevent you from balance billing the difference.
Organized dentistry is working for us all, and it's a good thing to join and support. The way that I see it, just this year alone with what organized dentistry has done for my fee schedule, the increase in production and collection that I will directly see as a result of the suits filed will more than pay for the cost of me being/having been an ADA/past ASDA member for my entire career until I retire in 30 or so years!
