Understanding Bundling in Dental Billing—and How Slash Dental Is Helping Fix It

When it comes to dental billing, one of the most common (and often confusing) issues patients face is bundling. Bundling happens when a dental provider combines multiple procedures into a single billing code, which can be more expensive, rather than listing them individually as cheaper components. While this can sometimes simplify billing, it often leads to inaccurate charges, denied insurance claims, or patients paying more than they should.

Common Examples of Bundling Errors:

• Cleaning and fluoride treatments grouped together as one when they shouldn’t be
• Procedures like crowns and build-ups incorrectly billed both together and apart
• X-ray billing (as a more expensive package rather than listing the specific images taken)

In the U.S., bundling errors are surprisingly prevalent. According to industry audits and insurance data, billing mistakes like improper bundling contribute to millions in overpayments each year. Many patients don’t realize they’re affected—and even fewer know how to spot or correct it.

But here’s the twist: While improper bundling can inflate costs, failing to bundle correctly can also cost patients—sometimes even more. This is because sometimes it's cheaper to bill the "whole package" as "the sum of the parts," than bill each part individually.

How Failing to Bundle Can Hurt:

When procedures that should be billed together under a single code are split up (a practice called unbundling), patients often end up with:

• Higher out-of-pocket costs, because insurance may cover the bundled code but not the separate individual ones
• Denied claims, if insurers flag the bill for incorrect coding
• Longer delays in reimbursement, due to manual review or resubmission

For example, a patient might receive a periodontal scaling procedure that should be bundled with local anesthesia. If the provider bills them separately, insurance might only cover one—and leave the patient with the rest.

Identifying and correcting bundling issues is just one aspect of dental billing where Slash Dental is changing the game. Slash Dental empowers patients by analyzing dental bills to find savings and then negotiating on their behalf directly with providers to secure those savings. Slash Dental helps spot errors, request corrections, and make sure patients aren’t overpaying due to simple (but costly) coding mistakes. As a dental billing startup, Slash Dental is still experimenting with its processes, and currently looking for volunteer patients who need help negotiating their dental bills (at no cost!); contact us below if you're interested.

Bottom line: Bundling in dental billing is a tricky but critical part of fair billing. Whether it’s done wrong or not done at all, the patient can end up footing the bill. Slash Dental is here to help make dental billing transparent, accurate, and fair—for everyone.