Dental Bonus Booklet
The bonus booklet is very important because it reminds you to regularly do something for your own teeth health and to make regular appointments with your dentist to prevent oral and dental diseases.
Bonus booklet – for members of statutory health insurance funds
Since 1989 this booklet for regular visits to the dentist has been introduced by the Health Reform Act. If you do not yet have a bonus booklet, you should ask your dentist about it during your next visit to the practice.
Every member of a statutory health insurance – and also the co-insured family members, e.g. children and adolescents – should have a bonus booklet and have the booklet completed regularly at the dentist’s check-up.
With “Bonus” more money from the health insurance company for dental prostheses
Every member of a statutory health insurance fund is entitled to a bonus booklet. A regularly updated bonus booklet is worth cash if dental prosthesis – a crown, a bridge or a removable prosthesis – becomes necessary. Those who practice careful oral hygiene and are regularly treated by the dentist and his team as part of individual prophylaxis and carry out the measures recommended by the dentist rarely need dental prostheses. Some people have problems with careful oral hygiene for various reasons, others neglect brushing their teeth for a while in certain circumstances. And not everyone has done correct tooth brushing correctly in his childhood and youth. Today’s generation of children and adolescents have learned correctly that their teeth need care and how to do it best – that is why the average dental health of children and adolescents today is better than that of adults.
Regular check-ups by your dentist Dr. Hayim in Essen mean that the first diseases of the tooth and gums can be detected early and treated with little effort.
However, if one or more teeth need to be replaced by a dental prosthesis – bridge, prosthesis, crown – you will receive a fixed allowance for regular check-ups.
And this is how the bonus booklet works
According to the legal situation, the patient receives an extra subsidy (bonus) in addition to the normal subsidy from his health insurance company in the form of a bonus booklet which is kept regularly. However, only occasional checks are not enough. Only if regular examinations by the dentist over a period of five years are proven to be complete, does the fixed subsidy for dental prosthesis increase by 20 percent. If these control examinations can even be proven over a period of 10 years, the health insurance subsidy is increased by a total of 30 percent.
According to the bonus regulations, patients over the age of 18 should have been to the dentist for an examination at least once a year. For children from the age of 6 and adolescents up to the age of 18, there is a special prevention programme that includes various activities to prevent dental diseases. This special programme is abbreviated to the “IP Programme” (IP = Individual Prophylaxis) and requires children and adolescents to visit the dentist twice a year. The examination or the prophylaxis measure is bound to a fixed time rhythm. Your dentist will tell you more. The costs for these preventive treatments according to the IP program are covered by the health insurance. In the bonus booklet, the dentist either marks the “dental examination” of an adult or the “individual prophylaxis” of a child or adolescent. The day of the examination or IP-treatment is recorded and confirmed with the dentist’s stamp.
What to do if the stamp is missing?
If the evidence of the regular examinations in the bonus booklet
- one stamp per year for adults
- two stamps per year for children and adolescents
is missing, you should ask your dentist to add the stamp. In this case, you should not wait too long to have the visit to the dentist added. However, the prerequisite for the “postmarking” is that the examination (adult) or the prophylactic measures (children, adolescents) have been carried out during the period in question, which is documented in the patient file.
Those who have not met the prescribed deadlines cannot fall back on the advantages of the bonus booklet, the bonus regulation no longer applies. Then you have to start all over again and wait five years (and regularly keep to the dentist’s appointments) until you are again entitled to the bonus subsidies.
What to do if the bonus booklet cannot be found?
If your bonus booklet or that of the children has been lost, the dentist can help – he can fill out a new booklet. The patient file can be used to track who was with him for an examination or prophylaxis treatment.
If a change of dentist is imminent, the bonus booklet of course does not lose its validity. The new dentist can continue with the necessary entries or issue another bonus booklet to the new patient. In this case, the “old” bonus booklet must not be placed in the trash. It must be presented to the health insurance company together with the 2nd booklet for a planned prosthetic treatment.