Your PPO Contract Is Renegotiable. You Just Don't Know It
Your PPO Contract Is Renegotiable. You Just Don't Know It
Your PPO Contract Is Renegotiable. You Just Don't Know It
Solo practices sit on signed PPO contracts and accept whatever they negotiated three years ago. Insurers count on this inertia. They're betting you won't audit your actual production per plan and push back on rates.
Start here: Pull your production report by insurance plan for the last 12 months. Calculate per-visit revenue. Most solo practices find 2-3 plans paying 15-25% below their overhead. Those are renegotiation targets.
Schedule a call with the carrier's dental director. Don't ask for a rate increase. Show data: "Your reimbursement is $52 per cleaning. Our cost per visit is $65. We can't sustain this plan." Request specific increases on your bottom-performing codes (cleanings, exams, resin restorations). Carriers would rather negotiate than lose a provider.
You have leverage if you document it. Five practices in your market threatening to drop Delta? Suddenly they're interested in talking. Most solo owners never try. The ones who do recover $20-40K annually.