What the office accepts
Cash, personal checks, money orders, and most major credit cards. Payment is expected at the time services are performed.
That is the whole policy. It is stated plainly because a vague payment policy is how people end up in an argument at the front desk, and nobody wants that conversation after an appointment.
Why payment is due on the day
Settling at the time of service keeps the administrative side of this office small. A practice that carries balances has to fund the chasing of them, and that cost lands back on patients eventually. Keeping it simple is part of how a small office in a town this size stays a small office.
It also keeps the arrangement honest in both directions. You know what you owe before the appointment, you settle it on the day, and there is no statement arriving three weeks later with a number nobody discussed.
You get the fee before treatment starts
For anything beyond a small procedure you receive a written treatment plan listing each item of work with its fee. You get that before treatment begins, not afterward. If the plan changes once we are underway, which happens when decay turns out to run deeper than the image showed, we stop and talk to you before continuing.
The website does not carry a fee list, and any dental website that does is quoting an average rather than your tooth. What a molar needs depends on how much sound structure is left, what your bite is doing to it, and whether the nerve is involved. The number becomes real once the tooth has been examined, and you get it then.
If you carry dental benefits, ask about a pre-treatment estimate for larger work. How dental benefits actually work explains what those estimates do and do not tell you.
Paying over time with CareCredit
CareCredit is accepted here. It is a third-party healthcare credit card, issued and administered by a separate company. It is not a payment plan run by this practice and no part of it is decided at this office.
Applications are subject to credit approval, and minimum monthly payments are required. If you are approved, CareCredit pays the practice and you repay CareCredit under the terms of your agreement with them. Those terms, including any promotional period and what happens when it ends, are set by CareCredit and are written into the agreement you sign. Read that agreement before you sign it, the way you would read any other credit contract.
Applications and account information go to CareCredit directly. Any information you give them is governed by CareCredit's own privacy practices rather than by the privacy practices of this office. Their site is at carecredit.com.
Settling on the day compared with using CareCredit
Neither one is better than the other. They are different arrangements with different obligations, and it is worth knowing which you are agreeing to.
| Consideration | Paying at the time of service | Using CareCredit |
|---|---|---|
| Who you are paying | The practice, directly. | CareCredit. They pay the practice, and you repay them. |
| What it takes to arrange | Nothing in advance. Cash, check, money order or a major credit card at the desk. | An application, subject to credit approval. Approval is theirs to grant, not ours. |
| Ongoing obligation | None once the visit is settled. | Minimum monthly payments until the balance is cleared. |
| Who sets the terms | The fee is agreed with you before treatment starts. | CareCredit sets the rates, any promotional period and any fees. They are in your agreement. |
| Where your information goes | It stays with the practice, under its Notice of Privacy Practices. | To CareCredit, under CareCredit's own privacy practices. |
| If a question comes up later | Call the office. | Billing and account questions go to CareCredit, not to the front desk. |
Worth knowing before you apply
Straightforward consumer advice that applies to any healthcare credit card, this one included.
- It is credit. Approval, the credit line and the terms are decided by the issuer based on your circumstances. Nobody at this office can tell you in advance whether you will be approved or on what terms.
- Read the promotional terms carefully, particularly what happens at the end of a promotional period and how interest is treated if a balance remains. That single clause is where most complaints about healthcare credit cards begin.
- Know the minimum payment and the date it is due. Missing payments on any credit account has consequences that follow you well beyond dentistry.
- Borrow for the treatment plan you agreed to, not for a round number. Ask for the written plan first, then decide what you actually need to finance.
- Ask us about sequencing before you finance anything. Splitting the work over a longer period is sometimes the better answer, and it costs nothing to ask.
Sequencing a large plan
A long treatment plan does not have to happen at once, and pretending otherwise is how people walk out and never come back. Work gets ordered by urgency: infection and pain first, then active decay, then the structural work that keeps teeth in service, then anything elective.
We will tell you plainly what waiting costs you, because with some teeth it costs a great deal and with others it costs very little. A watched area of early decay is genuinely fine to review in six months. A cracked molar under a heavy bite is not, and neither is an infection. Dental emergencies covers the problems that should never sit on a list.
Nobody at this office works on commission, so a phased plan gets the same attention as one done all at once.
Statements, balances and where to send a payment
Most visits are settled at the desk and never generate a statement. When a balance does remain, for example after a plan pays less than its own estimate suggested, you receive a statement showing what was billed, what was paid and what is left.
Payments by mail go to PO Box 2407, Oakhurst, CA 93644-2407. The office itself is at 49414 Road 426, Oakhurst, CA 93644, and the two addresses are not the same, so use the PO Box for anything you post. Questions about a statement are best handled on the phone at (559) 683-4694, where someone can open the account and go through it line by line with you.
If cost is the reason you have stayed away
Plenty of people put off dentistry for years because of what they assume it will cost, and the arithmetic almost never works in their favor. Problems in a mouth do not hold still. A filling becomes a crown, a crown becomes root canal therapy, and an infected tooth eventually becomes an extraction and the question of how to replace it.
Come in and find out where you actually stand. An examination and a written plan cost far less than the treatment they describe, and you are under no obligation to schedule any of it on the day. You will not be lectured about the gap since your last visit either. What the first visit involves sets out exactly what happens, and common questions covers most of what people want to ask before they call.