the simple blog

With all the identity theft going on, a lot of people are legitimately asking, "Do I need to give out my social security number at the dentist's office?"   If dental insurance is involved, the answer is ideally no, but the reality is sometimes different for some carriers.

All dental insurance claims require a subscriber identification number, a group number and a date of birth. The social security number, because it is universal and unique, became the de facto  identification number for both the dental and medical insurance industries.  It was an easy way to identify patients because everyone had their own number, and most people remember it.  The problem was that with rampant identity theft, the social security number became target #1 for would be thieves.

The insurance industry has been requested by several states, employers, and employees to stop using social security numbers to identify policy holders.  Some insurance companies have complied, and now issue a policy holder ID# or a subscriber ID# for the employee receiving the insurance.  The subscriber's ID# is reused for each member of the family, including spouses and dependent children.

Some insurance companies do not issue ID cards.  If that's the case, they are probably still using social security numbers for identification.  In those limited cases, we will still have to have just the policy holder's social security number.  We urge all insurance companies to stop this practice and to start issuing subscriber ID numbers in place of social security numbers.

To protect our patients from identity theft, our office will no longer routinely collect social security numbers.  We've instructed our staff to collect social security numbers only if there is no insurance ID# available, and only on the policy holder.   Dates of birth on ALL patients are still required for filing insurance claims.