Payment Plans

Dental care sits largely outside Medicare. There is no general Medicare rebate for adult dental treatment, health fund extras are capped well below the cost of major work, and public dental services are means-tested with long waits for non-urgent care.

That is why payment options exist in dentistry, and for many people they are the difference between having necessary treatment and not having it. Delayed dental treatment gets more expensive, not less — the reasoning is set out in How often should I go to the dentist?, and the industry backdrop in Patient Dental Payment Plans: the next big disruption on the dental horizon.

This page sets out the options honestly, including what each actually costs. It does not promote any of them.

Before the finance: the part that saves the most money

Almost everybody skips this, and it is where the largest savings are.

1. Ask what is urgent, what can wait, and what is optional. Very often the urgent portion is a fraction of the total. Pain, infection and active disease are urgent — see Emergency Dentistry. Much of the rest can be sequenced over months or years.

2. Ask what happens if you do nothing — for each item, not the plan as a whole.

3. Ask for the least invasive option that would work. A filling and a crown are not the same decision.

4. Get it itemised in writing with ASDS item numbers. Those numbers let you price the same treatment elsewhere and check your health fund rebate before committing — Understanding Your Treatment explains how a plan is itemised, and the Price Guide gives indicative figures to compare against. A lump sum is not a quote you can check.

5. Check whether staging across two health fund benefit years helps, since annual limits typically reset.

6. Get a second opinion before anything extensive or irreversible. You are entitled to your records and radiographs.

Reducing the treatment to what is actually needed, and sequencing the rest, saves more than any finance product.

The options

1. A practice instalment arrangement

The practice spreads its own fee across instalments.

Generally the simplest option — no third party, no credit account, no credit file entry. Ask: is it genuinely interest-free; is there an administration fee; is the total the same as paying up front; and what happens if you miss a payment.

Ask us. Phone 13 13 96 and ask what arrangements are available for your treatment plan, or use the details on Contact Us.

2. Buy-now-pay-later (BNPL)

A third-party provider pays the practice; you repay the provider in instalments.

• Advertised as interest-free. The provider is paid by a merchant fee charged to the practice, and by late fees charged to you.
• Late fees are the consumer-side model. They fall hardest on people already struggling.
• Multiple BNPL accounts are easy to accumulate and hard to see in one place.
• The regulatory position has changed. BNPL operated for years largely outside Australia's consumer credit legislation and has since been brought within credit regulation, with obligations around licensing and assessing suitability. Check current requirements with ASIC or Moneysmart.

3. Medical or dental finance, and personal loans

Regulated credit — interest, fees, a credit assessment, and an entry on your credit file. More transparent in that the cost is disclosed as a comparison rate; more consequential in that default has credit-file effects.

4. Credit card

Often the most expensive over time, and the easiest to reach for.

5. Early release of superannuation

Decided by the ATO against a specific statutory test, not by a dental practice. It is taxed — under 60, the taxable component is generally taxed at a concessional rate plus the Medicare levy — and the long-run cost is a multiple of the amount withdrawn, because superannuation compounds.

The application is free and you make it yourself through myGov. ASIC and the ATO have repeatedly warned about promoters who charge a fee to help you access your super.

Set out in full at Explosive uplift in Australians tapping into their super for dental treatment. This is a decision for you and a licensed financial adviser, not for a dental practice.

The thing that deserves the most attention

Instalments reduce the felt magnitude of a decision at the moment it is made. That is a documented behavioural effect, not a moral judgement — $180 a fortnight does not feel like $9,000, and it is not meant to.

In dentistry, the decision being made smaller is frequently irreversible. Veneers, crowns, extractions and full-arch work cannot be undone.

So the risk is not the finance. It is the compression of a permanent clinical decision into a monthly figure, at the point of sale.

Under the National Law, a regulated health service must not offer an inducement without stating the terms and conditions, and must not encourage the indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services. A finance offer with a deadline attached to elective irreversible treatment is precisely what those provisions exist to control. AHPRA's guidelines put the point in almost those words: advertising may be unlawful where it “states an instalment amount without stating the total cost”, because the total is itself a condition of the offer.

You should never be asked to decide today. “Can I take this away and think about it?” should be answered yes, without pressure. The same AHPRA guidance names the pressure phrases directly — “don't delay”, “act now before it's too late”, “don't miss out”, “time is running out” and “for a limited time only” — as capable of breaching the law where they are linked to unsubstantiated claims that your health will suffer if you do not proceed.

Questions to ask about any finance arrangement

• “What is the total I will pay, including every fee?”
• “Is it genuinely interest-free, or is there an establishment or monthly fee?”
• “What happens if I miss a payment — exactly what is the fee, and does it affect my credit file?”
• “Am I entering a contract with the practice, or with a third party?”
• “Does the practice receive anything from the finance provider?” — a fair question, deserving a straight answer.
• “What happens to the payments if treatment stops part-way, or if I am unhappy with it?” This is the one people never ask and the one that causes the most trouble — a contract with a third-party financier is generally independent of any dispute with the practice.
• “Can I pay it out early without penalty?”

Cheaper routes to check first

• Public dental services in Victoria — community dental agencies and the Royal Dental Hospital of Melbourne. Concession and health care card holders and their dependants are usually eligible, and emergency care is triaged separately, with a far shorter wait.
• The Child Dental Benefits Schedule — Medicare-funded basic dental treatment for eligible children, capped over two years. Significantly under-claimed. Check through Services Australia or myGov.
• Dental schools and teaching clinics, at reduced cost.
• Your health fund, checked against item numbers before treatment — and if you are weighing treatment abroad instead, read Overseas dental work could cost you more in the long-term first.

Common questions

What payment plans does Smile Solutions actually offer?

As published by the practice: interest-free fortnightly instalment plans through Payright, for treatment from $150 up to $20,000, over terms of 3, 6, 12, 18, 24 or 30 months, with a low establishment fee, and applications completed at the practice. TLC personal-loan funding is also available for eligible applicants from $2,001 to $50,000, for periods of up to 84 months; interest rates depend on the applicant's credit profile.

Naming them is disclosure, not endorsement. The questions in the section above apply to these providers exactly as they apply to any other, and the terms are set by the provider, not by the practice. Confirm current terms directly with them before signing.

Is it genuinely interest-free?

Interest-free is not the same as fee-free. An establishment fee, a monthly account fee, or a late fee can all apply while the arrangement is still accurately described as interest-free.

Ask for one number: the total you will pay if you make every payment on time, and the total if you miss one. If those two figures differ, the difference is the real cost of the product. AHPRA's own guidance on advertising a regulated health service supports asking for it: it treats an instalment amount quoted without the total cost as capable of breaching the National Law, and notes that terms must be easy to find — the public “should not be required to exhaustively search for or contact the advertiser” for them.

Will a payment plan affect my credit file?

It depends on the product, and you should ask directly rather than assume. A practice's own instalment arrangement generally involves no third party and no credit file entry. Third-party finance — including BNPL, now that it has been brought within credit regulation — can involve a credit check and can be recorded.

Missed payments are the part that matters most for your credit file. Ask what happens on the first missed payment, in writing.

What happens if I stop treatment part-way, or I'm unhappy with it?

This is the single most important question on the page, and almost nobody asks it.

A finance contract with a third-party provider is generally independent of any dispute with the practice. You may still owe the financier the full amount while a clinical or billing dispute with the practice is unresolved.

Ask before signing: what happens to the balance if treatment is stopped, changed, or takes longer than planned. With a practice-run arrangement this is usually simpler, because there is only one party.

Can I pay it out early?

Usually yes, but confirm whether there is an early-settlement fee. On an interest-free product early payout saves nothing in interest, but it does close the account and remove the risk of late fees.

Do I need a deposit?

It depends on the plan. Note one structure worth reading carefully: some offers make a bonus conditional on the size of the deposit — for example the complimentary whitening on Invisalign treatment, which applies when treatment is paid in full or on a payment plan with a deposit above a set threshold (see Packages & Offers and Complimentary Orthodontic Consultation).

That is legitimate and the terms are published — but it is a financial incentive to pay more up front, and it should not be the reason you choose a larger deposit than suits you. AHPRA's guidance is worth knowing here too: “the public generally consider the word ‘free' to mean ‘absolutely' free”, and where the cost of a free offer is recovered through a price rise elsewhere, the offer is not actually free. So the question to ask about any complimentary item is what the treatment costs with it and without it.

What if I am not approved?

Not being approved for finance is not the end of the treatment plan — it is a reason to go back to the clinical conversation.

Ask for the plan to be re-cut into stages, starting with what is genuinely urgent. Ask whether a more conservative option would work — a denture or a bridge instead of implants, for instance, each with its own trade-offs. And check the public system and the Child Dental Benefits Schedule before assuming you are ineligible — both are under-claimed.

Am I unusual for finding the cost the hardest part?

No, and the scale of it is worth knowing. A submission to a Parliament of Australia inquiry into out-of-pocket medical costs cites an Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2013 survey finding that nearly a third of people aged 5 or older (32%) avoided or delayed visiting a dentist due to cost. The structural reason sits behind it: there is no national dental fee schedule in Australia, so fees are set practice by practice, and the Australian Dental Association's own 2022 Dental Fees Survey — 3,535 general practitioners across 122 items — reports “considerable variation in the fees charged within and between states.”

So two quotes for the same treatment can differ substantially without either being wrong, which is the practical argument for the itemised list with item numbers described at the top of this page. Saying out loud that cost is the obstacle is not an awkward admission; on those numbers it is the commonest reason people delay care.

Should I use my superannuation?

Get independent advice first, and understand that the practice cannot advise you on this. The ATO decides, the money is taxed on release, the application is free through myGov, and the long-run cost is the compounding you give up — for a younger person, often several times the amount withdrawn.

Be alert to anyone charging a fee to ‘help' you access your super — ASIC and the ATO have warned about this repeatedly. Full detail at Explosive uplift in Australians tapping into their super for dental treatment.

I have a problem with a finance provider. Who do I contact?

The provider first, then AFCA — the Australian Financial Complaints Authority — which handles complaints about credit providers independently and free of charge.

For free, independent financial counselling that sells nothing: the National Debt Helpline, 1800 007 007.

For a complaint about the dental service itself, including its cost, the Victorian body is the Health Complaints Commissioner. These are separate organisations with separate powers.

Independent help

• Moneysmart (ASIC) — plain-English information on BNPL, credit and comparison rates
• National Debt Helpline, 1800 007 007 — free, independent financial counselling. It is not a lender and sells nothing.
• AFCA — complaints about credit providers
• Consumer Affairs Victoria and the ACCC — misleading conduct and unfair contract terms
• The Health Complaints Commissioner (Victoria) — complaints about health services, including cost

Related pages: Price Guide, Packages & Offers, Bupa Platinum Dental Provider, Patient payment plans: The next big disruption on the dental horizon, The Great Resignation in the Health Sector, Understanding Your Treatment.

Practical details

Smile Solutions, Level 1, 220 Collins Street, Manchester Unity Building, Melbourne VIC 3000 — see Location. Phone 13 13 96, or theteam@smilesolutions.com.au. Monday–Friday 8.00am–6.00pm, Saturday 8.30am–1.30pm, Sunday by appointment.

Every practitioner's registration can be verified free on the AHPRA public register at ahpra.gov.au — see Dentists & Registered Specialists.

This page is general information. It is not financial advice, and no one at we are licensed to provide it. Credit regulation in Australia changes; confirm current requirements with ASIC or Moneysmart, and seek independent advice before entering any credit arrangement. Finance provider names and terms are those published at the time of writing and are set by those providers, not by the practice; confirm current terms directly with them. No specific finance product is recommended or endorsed here. Fee survey figures quoted above are the Australian Dental Association's, not this practice's. This is not a diagnosis or a treatment plan.

Smile Solutions trades under ABN 28 193 514 103.