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In the bad old days, last century, there was no real patient financing option. If a patient needed dental work they either paid for it from savings or the dentist would carry the balance. Since dentists aren’t bankers the result was lots of bad debts, very slow payments, high receivables and high billing costs. Or worse yet patients couldn’t afford care and either put it off allowing things to get worse or opted for cheap alternatives like extractions over root canals. In these bad old days the patient suffered with inferior care and the dentist suffered financially.

Early financing options were a lot better than nothing but still had problems. These options were often set up outside the office, required filling out pages of forms and took days for approval. As a result most patients didn’t bother. Finally companies like Care Credit moved in with flexible financing options and fast no hassle applications. Now the Internet has made it even better.

The office staff or the patient can apply for financing online from either the Care Credit site or linked from your dental practice web site. The online application requires only a few short fields of patient information and new Internet technology provides credit decisions within seconds. It is quite literally doing business at the speed of thought.