DentalBuzz Staff

CareCredit: The Easy Way Billionaire Banks Fill Cavities in Their Profits

October 6, 2025 By DentalBuzz Staff Leave a Comment

Fact check: DentalBuzz first wrote about CareCredit in 2008, our very first year online. At the time, subprime lending was steering the nation into a deep recession. Regulators eventually closed many of those loopholes, but when it comes to medical lending, the risks have only grown worse.

Della thought she was just getting a tooth pulled. She left the office with a numb jaw, a $1,000 charge, and a brand-new CareCredit account she never asked for.

David went in for a cleaning. Weeks later, a Synchrony Bank credit card showed up in his mailbox with $1,000 already billed to it.

Victoria didn’t even get her teeth fixed, but somehow still got sued for thousands when a dentist’s office charged her CareCredit account without her knowing.

These aren’t outliers. They’re the blueprint. And if you’ve ever been in a dental chair with a clipboard on your lap, you know exactly how easy it is to sign away more than enamel.

How the Scam Gets in the Chair

Medical credit cards like CareCredit market themselves as patient-friendly: “No interest! Easy payments!” But behind the bright colors and soft music is a trap.

Here’s the magic trick: deferred interest. You’ll hear “zero interest” if you pay it off in six, twelve, or eighteen months. What you won’t hear is that if you slip up (even by a single penny), the bank retroactively slaps on 25–33% interest on the entire balance from day one.

So your $3,500 implant? Now it’s a $4,000+ landmine. And all you did wrong was believe your dentist’s assistant when she said “stress-free financing.”

Why Dentists Are Playing Banker

Let’s be fair: dentists aren’t rubbing their hands in the back office like cartoon villains. They’re dealing with slow, stingy insurance reimbursements. CareCredit offers them payment in two business days. Compared to weeks of haggling with insurance companies, it’s easy to see why dental teams say yes.

But for patients, this shortcut is a trapdoor. Signing financial contracts while you’re in pain, or even under anesthesia, is not informed consent. It’s duress with a signature line.

What’s Broken Here (Hint: It’s Not Just Teeth)

This problem is a symptom of a bigger disease: the U.S. healthcare system. Because dental insurance these days rarely covers more than $1500 per year per patient, lenders like Synchrony have found a back door into the exam room. Dental staff, who are trained through online modules, not by having finance degrees, are suddenly doubling as loan officers.

And let’s be clear: there should be no door in the dental office that opens to a bank.

For Patients: What you can do

Pause before you sign. Tell the staff you’ll take the paperwork home first.
Spot the red flags. If you hear “no interest,” immediately ask: Is it deferred interest?
Watch your credit. Patients often learn about CareCredit accounts only when the bill (or a lawsuit) arrives.
Know your rights. Some states are banning deferred-interest medical credit or requiring patients to fill out their own applications instead of letting staff do it.

For Dental Teams: A Gut Check

Patients come to you because they’re in pain, not because they need a crash course in consumer lending. If you wouldn’t hand an extraction patient a car loan in a vulnerable moment, why hand them a credit card app?

Remember: a patient who feels scammed won’t come back. And they’ll tell their friends, loudly. Synchrony might pay fast, but the long-term price is patient trust.

The Bite at the End

CareCredit works because insurance doesn’t. Dentistry should be a partnership in health, not a transaction in debt, and until the system changes, both patients and providers are caught in the same trap.

References & Further Reading

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau: Medical Credit Cards
Della, David and Victoria’s Stories: More Perfect Union: Investigation into CareCredit – YouTube
Synchrony Financial (CareCredit) Cardholder Agreement

Dentists Rejoice over the Leica Camera Tariffs

May 5, 2025 By DentalBuzz Staff 1 Comment

*^{Distracted Dentist using patient’s nose as a fulcrum to capture foot shot}*

There’s a strange, bougie scent in the air. It smells like high-end modular furniture, fine leather, and the vague aroma of eugenol. That’s right – it’s the company’s 100th anniversary, here in Leica Land, where a digital rangefinder costs more than an operatory chair, and yet somehow, can’t even help identify dental decay.

Strap on the laughing gas, because we’re about to dig into an elite camera company’s favorite stereotype:

“Only rich dentists shoot with Leicas.”

But here’s the paradox no one talks about: the Leica M11 is completely useless inside an actual mouth. Let that sink in. A $9,000+ camera that can capture the soul of a Parisian alley at dusk… but couldn’t diagnose a fractured molar if its red dot depended on it.

The Red Dot of Irony 🔴
Ah, Leica. The brand that makes grown humans weep with joy over manual focus rings and brass top plates. The M11 is their crown jewel:

60MP BSI CMOS Sensor
ISO range wide enough to photograph your regrets
And a shutter sound that’s smoother than a freshly polished zirconia crown

But let’s get one thing straight: the Leica M11 is not an intraoral camera. It’s a pricey piece of dental cosplay gear – perfect for the dentist who wants to look like they know photography while they’re in between hygiene checks, but who’s still using a cheapie USB scope to document someone’s smile transformation.

Let’s compare:

Feature	Leica M11	Actual Intraoral Camera
Autofocus	Manual only. Good luck.	Yes, like a normal person.
Ergonomics for tight spaces	Brick with a strap	Designed for mouths
Lighting	Bring your own flash, dentist bro	Built-in LED lighting
Usable in dentistry	LOL	Yes

“But It’s for the Experience!” – Every Leica Owner, Defensively
Leica owners swear it’s not about specs – it’s about soulful craftsmanship. Right. And dentists don’t care about teeth and their patients’ health – they just crave the existential thrill of the thought that any moment, those sharp canines and incisors will snap shut on their fingers. But go off, Dr. Moneybags. Slap a Summilux 50mm on that beast and try to explain to your patient why you need 60 megapixels of their uvula.

There’s a strange prestige economy among certain dentists that are part of the “egosystem” – if you can’t flex on your peers at a CE conference, what’s even the point of doing restorative dentistry? And nothing says, “I’ve moved past Nikon peasantry,” like wearing a Leica around your neck that hasn’t taken a single clinical shot.

Memo to Leica: Deny the Dentist – We Dare You
You know what’s worse than being the punchline? Desperately trying to look above it while still cashing in. Leica, we see you. Sitting pretty on your walnut display boxes, polishing brass knobs while pretending you’re too dignified to acknowledge that your M11 is the camera of choice for the Clinically Bored™.

You’ve never corrected the meme. Never addressed the elephant in the operatory. You’ve said nothing – because deep down, you like that people believe your rangefinders are purchased in bulk by dental practitioners who needed a tax write-off after buying a Cybertruck.

Let’s call it what it is: Leica doesn’t mind being the Rolex of cameras, even if it means being synonymous with nitrous oxide and Fridays off. They’ve embraced the aesthetic of minimalist elegance, hand-crafted precision… and thinly veiled financial overcompensation. And the US tariffs this year are not an obstacle – they simply add one more level of exclusivity. Happy 100th to you, too, old sport.

You could have released an affordable, beginner-friendly model for struggling photojournalists. You could have doubled down on legacy users, street photographers, and war correspondents.

But no – you released the Leica M11-P (Practitioner) with a sapphire screen and 256 GB internal memory, like a camera version of a platinum dental grill. And let’s not even talk about the black paint edition. You don’t fight the dentist stereotype, Leica, because you’re secretly flattered by it. And that’s the saddest part of all.

Final Thoughts: Come for the Myth, Stay for the Copium
So here’s to the Leica M11: a camera of unmatched engineering, wielded by a person who just permanently seated your new dental crown and now wants to show you a “soft” (slightly blurry) slideshow from their vacation in Milan – shot wide open at f/1.4, obviously. Let the myth live on, because Leica certainly isn’t killing it. In fact, they’re minting it. Every time a new model drops, another dentist gets their wings (and a new leather strap).

No shame in owning an M11 – unless you’re actively trying not to look like a dentist with a midlife crisis in JPEG format, because apparently RAW only exists when necrotizing gingivitis is present. Either way, congrats on reaching the final form of dentistcore.

It’s not OK for your dental practice to use free cloud-based communication

June 10, 2021 By DentalBuzz Staff 2 Comments

It was nice – the way that the HIPAA police looked the other way as we all figured out how to take care of each other during the worst of 2020 – but now that we’re over that hump, emergency usage is no longer an acceptable excuse for a security breach or a privacy violation.

Before you begin defending the use of cloud-based messaging in your office by explaining that you never share protected health information (PHI) there, or that you have other security measures in place to protect you from malware, or hope that the regulations only apply to large organizations and not small practices, know that there is one rule that is hard and fast when it comes to using communication tools in healthcare:

Only Paid Versions are HIPAA compliant.

This is because free versions do not include something called a Business Associate Agreement (BAA). A signed BAA is required in order for cloud-based systems to be HIPAA compliant. It’s not as though you’ll ever need to exercise an audit, but if one becomes necessary, this is the safeguard in place to allow you to have the ability to prove that a program such as Slack or Microsoft Teams was not the source of the privacy breach. Here’s the thing: even if you’ve never shared sensitive patient information on any platform, it doesn’t matter if you can’t prove it!

And that right there is the crux of the matter. While you may think this threat is a flaming fear spear, remember, data has value, and there are those out there who seek it out in order to further enrich themselves. We all have an obligation to follow the recommendations set for us professionally. After all, you’re a patient, too. Maybe not always where you work, but if you have a body, somewhere you’re a patient in an office’s system, and as such, you’d like to know that the practices you visit are managing all of their privacy matters correctly. If they’re no being careful with something simple like communications, it makes you wonder where else they’re making mistakes.

While this is not a comprehensive list, these are the most common communication platforms that dental practices (and healthcare practices in general!) may encounter when they’re looking for a way to collaborate with their team members, along with the current pricing that users should expect to pay in order to safely utilize the software anywhere in their business.

As you can see, it starts to get expensive, very quickly, if you’re dead set on using one of these platforms. They don’t even do a good job of getting the right person’s attention at the right time, especially if people in the office don’t just sit at one computer all day. You can get so much more for your money once you accept that healthcare businesses must have a paid subscription to use cloud-based communication. It’s just a matter of doing a simple Google search to find many other solutions more tailored to dentistry, at a lower cost per year, per user, per month, whatever. Making do with the programs above means that you end up paying for things that most team members aren’t even using, like Microsoft Word, or screen sharing, or video conferencing.

In case you’re still confused, here’s the concise answer for each of the free versions of these platforms.

Is Slack HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Microsoft Teams HIPAA compliant? No.
Is WhatsApp HIPAA compliant? Never.
Is Skype HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Google Chat HIPAA compliant? No.
Is Zoom HIPAA compliant? No.

And for final clarification, you can become HIPAA compliant in the use of five out of six of these applications, but only once you’ve paid a subscription fee per user, disengaged any non-compliant third party integrations (so many rules!) and received a signed business associate agreement.

Otherwise, it’s time to look elsewhere.

Resources:

HHS.gov Business Associate Agreements: https://www.hhs.gov/hipaa/for-professionals/covered-entities/sample-business-associate-agreement-provisions/index.html

Slack Enterprise Grid for Healthcare (otherwise NOT HIPAA compliant): https://slack.com/resources/why-use-slack/hipaa-compliant-collaboration-with-slack and https://slack.com/help/articles/360020685594-Slack-and-HIPAA

Microsoft Teams for Healthcare: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/compare-microsoft-365-enterprise-plans

Zoom for Healthcare: https://zoom.us/healthcare

Patients ask, “Is it safe to go back to the dentist?”

August 19, 2020 By DentalBuzz Staff 9 Comments

The COVID-19 pandemic sucks.

Now that we’ve gotten that gross clarifying understatement out of the way, let’s quickly address the title of this article. Most likely, yes, it’s quite safe to go back to the dentist. You’re feeling a little scared to get your dental work done, or to get your teeth cleaned, still, because maybe, you don’t know what has changed at your dental office to assure that you’re not going to contract the coronavirus there.

To recap the last few months, non-emergency dental care was completely shut down for a while, which had less to do with patient safety and more to do with the severe shortage of masks and gloves. Now that manufacturers, opportunists, and supply chain managers are ~~going for the quick cash grab~~ able to provide adequate amounts of PPE to dental practices, visiting the dentist should be no more dangerous to your health than entering any other enclosed public space.

But! There’s this annoying thing about viruses and droplets and aerosols that make dentistry quite different from visiting most medical offices.

Like everything these days, it’s complicated.

You didn’t come here for the science or the reasons that dental offices have made changes. Instead, you simply want to know whether or not your particular office is doing the right things to keep you safe, now that they have had a few months to get used to new routines.

Abundant Safety Precautions and Screening

Are you being allowed to breathe, maskless, anywhere other than in a treatment room? Surely by now you’ve had to wear a mask in public, so if you’re permitted to enter a dental practice without one, consider that your first huge red flag that they may be cutting safety corners elsewhere.

Many dental practices are having patients phone or text their arrivals in from the parking lot, making it so that there’s no stop in the reception area except for a little screening time. Furthermore, team members may check your blood oxygen saturation, along with asking a series of questions and the usual temperature-taking.

Watch for: Touchless thermometers, plexiglas barriers, pulse oximeters (finger clamps), hand sanitizer, complimentary masks.

Anonymously Mummified Clinicians

If you’re not sure who is taking care of you, congratulations! Your dentist is under there, somewhere, but is not likely to come in contact with your salivary or nasal secretions as long as those layers stay in place. Some dentists have their well-protected team members wear not just nametags, but “facetags” these days, so that you have a face to associate with each human-shaped blob that hovers near your examination chair.

Also, you may need to bring a light jacket – the exam rooms may have the ambient temperatures turned down to reduce the heat exhaustion that clinicians feel under all of that gear.

Watch for: N95 masks, scrub caps, full protective gowns, face shields, sweating complaints.

Animal-Sized Airflow Management

The rationale here: if COVID sucks, dentistry must suck harder, quite literally. If there’s no control of where infectious particles end up, aerosolized viruses are allowed to settle in place or move from room to room. Instead of letting them linger and then finding their way into your body, new large suction devices are used to pull the air directly into a filtration system that traps virus particles, making the dental environment much safer for both patients and the office staff.

Another way that dental offices are knocking down virus particles is with a powerful virus-killing fog machine. You probably won’t be able to see indications that the office is using this technology, but it never hurts to ask how they are cleaning rooms between patients.

Watch for: Large air funnels, things that look like vacuum cleaners, faint chlorine smells, HEPA purifiers

Low Aerosol Dental Treatment

In dentistry, water is utilized as a coolant to keep drills and cleaning tools from getting too hot. Unfortunately, aerosols are a big no-no right now, so there will be only the minimal amount of water used during your visits. Expect your preventive dental cleaning to be delivered quietly, with the use of hand tools only.

You may be asked to pre-rinse with iodine or hydrogen peroxide before opening your mouth for the first time, and even may need to hold a cup to spit in to limit the amount of automatic suctioning needed. And don’t be surprised if your hygienist doesn’t apply any grit to your teeth. Cosmetic polishing has been known to cause excessive splatter, so most state dental boards are frowning upon allowing this procedure to be performed.

Watch for: Pre-rinses, hand scraping, spit cups, tongue-grabbing high speed suction, dry mouth

Isolation and Solitary Confinement

Even with all of the precautions taken, each clinician must be very careful not to contaminate anything outside of their direct treatment area while they’re with a patient. Doctors, assistants, and dental hygienists can no longer simply move freely through the office. Instead, they are expected to stay in place until full dental care is completed.

Simple tasks like asking questions and grabbing additional equipment is now largely left to those outside of a treatment room. This is because the time and costs needed to change gowns, masks, shields, and the like have significantly increased. Dental teams are learning new ways to work together, by relying on internal collaboration software programs that give a dentist the ability to stay with one patient yet answer questions about another one via their private computer networks. If you work in a dental practice you may find the article below helpful:

Practice Communication has Changed: Isolation in the age of COVID-19

Watch for: Computerized communication systems, waiting patiently, hand signals, excessive sharing of life stories

Coronavirus has significantly altered the way that dental care is delivered, probably forever, and probably for the better. If you don’t see any differences in how care is given the next time you visit your local practice – watch out! It may mean that, in your case, when asking “is it safe to go back to the dentist?” the answer is no.

References:

ADA News: Dentistry is essential health care. https://www.ada.org/en/publications/ada-news/2020-archive/august/ada -who-guidance-recommending-delay-of-dental-care

World Health Organization: Considerations for the provision of essential oral health services in the context of COVID-19 https://www.who.int/publications/i/item/who-2019-nCoV-oral-health-2020.1

Practice Communication Has Changed: Isolation in the age of COVID-19 https://www.bluenotesoftware.com/isolation-in-the-age-of-covid19

DOCS Education – S.T.A.R. WARS: Addressing Aerosols in Dentistry https://www.docseducation.com/blog/star-wars

Free “return to work guide” from the American Dental Association

April 27, 2020 By DentalBuzz Staff Leave a Comment

Did you try to access this guide on the American Dental Association website, but have decided that you don’t want to share your email address with them? Instead, use the link below to view the ADA COVID-19 pandemic recovery guide immediately:

https://success.ada.org/~/media/CPS/Files/Open%20Files/ADA_Return_to_Work_Toolkit.pdf

As a bonus, if you’re in Texas, or are just nosy about the current guidelines for dental practices reopening in this state very shortly, here’s that link as well:

Guidelines for Reopening Texas Dental Practices