California Dental Health Plan Creates PPO of 3,000 Dentists

Following a trend toward managed care in all health fields, California Dental Health Plan, a dental health-maintenance organization based in Tustin, said Monday that it has created a preferred provider organization of 3,000 dentists.

Dentists across Southern California are feeling the pinch of the recession because of widespread layoffs at companies that usually contract with them for employee benefits, said James R. Lindsey, president of California Dental Health.

Contracting dental services under California Dental Health’s new preferred provider organization, or PPO, will give dentists more patients while offering employers cut-rate prices.

“Dentists, like everyone else, are hurting out there,” Lindsey said.

Dentists joining the PPO would agree to drop their prices as much as 50% for some procedures, the company said. In exchange, dentists would be included in the company’s referral system, which includes 450,000 employees working for 5,000 companies, the company said.

California Dental Health is a privately held company with annual revenue of about $43 million.