Public Announcement from ABA Dental Clinic
Recently, there has been some negativity towards our treatment of certain members of our community. Specifically, members of the community have publicly commented that our Clinic carries on discriminatory practices. We wish to clarify some facts:
We are one of the dental clinics still accepting direct billing to insurance companies – this is called assignment of benefits. Our Dental Clinic has accepted assignment of benefits for the First Nations and Inuit Health Branch (FNIHB) program for over 14 years. Our patients know that the FNIHB program is complicated, with numerous restrictions and eligibility criteria that constantly change. As well, FNIHB only pays a portion of our fees for dental services and we did not require our patients on the FNIHB program to pay the balance of fees – this is called balance-billing. All of our other patients pay full fees for services rendered, including insurance co-payments and balance-billing.
We do not refuse treatment to anyone because of gender, race, or religion. However, we have recently been targeted by misinformed individuals or groups, accusing us of discriminatory practices because we don’t accept assignment of benefits from the FNIHB program at our Red River location. We have staff with special training in administering the complicated FNIHB program at our Memorial Avenue location, but do not have the same at our Red River Location.