Westborough, MA, April 30, 2026 — Effective April 15, 2026, AM Best has reaffirmed Eastern Dentists Insurance Company’s (EDIC) Financial Strength Rating of A- (Excellent) with a stable outlook. EDIC, domiciled in Burlington, Vermont, is a leading dental professional liability insurer created and governed by dentists, for dentists. AM Best’s rating reflects EDIC’s excellent financial strength and claims paying ability. AM Best credit ratings serve as independent evaluations of an insurer’s financial stability and its ability to meet ongoing policy and contractual obligations, offering a trusted benchmark for both consumers and industry professionals.

“We are pleased that AM Best continues to recognize EDIC’s prudent financial management and commitment to its policyholders,” said Dr. Stephen McKenna, Chairman of the Board of EDIC.

In its report, AM Best stated that the latest rating decision was based in part on EDIC’s financial strength at the highest level as “strongest,” organic surplus growth through earnings, favorable loss reserve development as reported in each of the prior ten years, and high quality of capital. The report also notes EDIC’s strong, seasoned management team with significant industry experience specific to MPL and dentistry.

About EDIC – Founded in 1992, Eastern Dentists Insurance Company (EDIC) is a mutual-based company located in Westborough, MA governed by dentists and owned by dental policyholders. We remain steadfast in our commitment to the field of dentistry as well as our dental institutions and students. The company has grown to include thousands of dental colleagues in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Indiana. For more information, visit EDIC’s website at www.edic.com.

Copyright ©2026 Eastern Dentists Insurance Company. All rights reserved.

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Westborough, MA, June 18, 2024— Eastern Dentists Insurance Company (EDIC) announced today that Stephen McKenna, DMD has been elected as Chair of the Board of Directors effective June 2, 2024. EDIC is a leading provider of dental professional liability insurance in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic states.

Dr. McKenna, an EDIC Board Director since 2003, has played a crucial role in EDIC’s success. Dr. McKenna hails from a long line of orthodontists, with the first McKenna Orthodontics office opening in 1918, McKenna Orthodontics is potentially the oldest continuously operated orthodontics practice in the country. He has received numerous awards, has held leadership roles in organizations including The Massachusetts Dental Society, Massachusetts Association of Orthodontists, Valley District Dental Society, and is a member of the American Dental Association, American Association of Orthodontics, Northeast Society of Orthodontics, Pierre Fauchard Academy, American College of Dentists and the International College of Dentists.

“The mission of EDIC is to provide exceptional service and coverage, ensuring that insureds feel supported by a knowledgeable ally,” said Dr. McKenna. “The Board of Trustees, including thirteen experienced dentists and one insurance regulator, understands the daily challenges faced by insureds. Reflecting the commitment to being “By Dentists, For Dentists,” the Board has become more diverse, and three of the six Committee Chairs are now held by women. Under the former Board leadership of Dr. Richard LoGuercio, EDIC has become a respected dental malpractice company, well positioned to protect practices from external influences. Thank you Dr. LoGuercio for your dedication and unwavering commitment to the company.”

As Chair, Dr. McKenna will oversee EDIC’s Board of Directors alongside the recently elected Board Executive Committee: Dr. Michael Cooper (Vice Chair), Dr. Barry Brodil (Treasurer), and Dr. Peter Arsenault (Secretary). During his term, Dr. McKenna will prioritize working with the Board to further EDIC’s mission and execute on its strategic framework. “Dr. McKenna has been an incredible champion of EDIC and its vision throughout his entire tenure on our Board,” said Ed Carroll, Esq., President & CEO of EDIC. “I am confident that Dr. McKenna’s leadership will continue the success of EDIC well into the future.”

Dr. McKenna, a Tufts University School of Dental Medicine graduate with postgraduate studies in orthodontics and a pediatric residency at New England Medical Center, resides with his wife Ellen in Longmeadow, MA. He has three adult children, including a daughter, Catherine, who is a general dentist in Boston. Dr. McKenna and his business partner, Dr. Michael Caban, operate five orthodontic offices in central Massachusetts.

“As a third-generation orthodontist, I am dedicated to advancing EDIC to become the gold standard in dental malpractice insurance. With President Ed Carroll and his outstanding team, I am confident we will achieve great success.”

About EDIC – Founded in 1992, Eastern Dentists Insurance Company (EDIC) is a mutual-based company in Westborough, MA, governed by dentists and owned by dental policyholders. Committed to supporting dentistry and dental education, EDIC now serves thousands of dental professionals in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New Hampshire, Vermont, Maine, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, North Carolina, Michigan, and Indiana.

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When we completed our dental education, our instructors emphasized a focus on dentistry by learning to implement our skills to better serve our patient population. It’s often the sole focal point for recent graduates fresh out of their respective programs. With that said, the actual practice of dentistry involves much more than how you treat a patient. You now must learn how to manage an entire operation with many moving parts. These parts can, and will, contribute to an overall positive patient experience.

It’s impossible to write an article that will encompass and appropriately capture everything that should be done in a dental practice. In fact, running a practice with no prior experience or background in ownership has a steep learning curve. Many of us learn as we go, taking classes and sourcing colleagues’ opinions for guidance. And although there are multiple philosophies on how to approach a successful operation, I think many can agree on some basic tenets that will keep your office running smoothly. Outlined below are a few practice management tips that I’ve found to be impactful to not only my staff, but myself and my patients as well.

Communication/Values: Have you ever had a poor customer service experience? Or even frustrated when someone can’t communicate an idea or feeling clearly to you? Communicating effectively with your staff and setting expectations early on can help eliminate confusion. Occasionally, office staff can be caught up in their own work and forget the needs of the dentist or the patient. Having monthly team huddles can ameliorate this road block. While I know some practices have team meetings weekly or daily, I believe that this can create a system where staff are too micromanaged. Micromanaging can breed resentment and lack of trust.

To communicate your values effectively to staff:

• Leverage your team’s talent to your advantage and take their input seriously.
• Treat your team with respect and come to a mutual agreement on divisive issues, as long as that compromise doesn’t affect other team members, your patients, or yourself.
• Always advise your team of your goals and values on how you want your office to run. Great organizational and behavioral development gurus like Drucker and Schein talk about having clearly articulated beliefs and values. Running an established and well-functioning practice boils down to whether or not your staff (and patients) share
  your values and philosophy.
• Communicate early in order to minimize contention in the workplace.

Finances: Be cognizant of your finances. Ultimately responsibility for the practice’s financial situation cannot be delegated.

At a minimum, practice owners should:

• Check your production sheet at the end of the day and look through your invoices to make sure you aren’t
  being overcharged by suppliers. While I know many Practices delegate these tasks, at the end of the day it’s your practice and you should know what your suppliers are billing.
• Do your due diligence and become familiar with common codes and what their general reimbursement rates are. People make mistakes and codes get miss-billed.
• If there is excess petty cash in your office, lock it up in a secure area. Cash can’t be tracked if it’s missing versus an electronic payment.
• Organize your finances by hiring an accountant or use a software program such as Quickbooks or an excel spread sheet to track your finances, business expenses, and payments, or to view your profit and loss ratio.
• Track bad debt expenses. I do this by having an adjusted entry in my financial statements. It’s important to know how much of collections goes uncollected, i.e., Patients not paying and writing off uncollected copayments, etc.

Patients: I can’t count how many times patients have told me they “hate” going to the dentist. Lots of people have had some adverse experience and I empathize whenever a patient tells me of a situation that left them unhappy. I try to take every encounter with a grain of salt but make every effort to listen regardless of my personal opinion. We, as clinicians, are already pressed for time and gaining a patient’s trust in several minutes is a feat requiring finesse.

To encourage your patients to feel comfortable and safe:

• Always try to make treatment clear in layman’s terms, and if you don’t know the answer, tell them you’ll get back
  to them.
• Don’t over promise. If you don’t feel comfortable doing a treatment or procedure, refer to a specialist.
• If patients have questions regarding costs, don’t get involved. Let your front desk staff handle it. No one likes
  surprises. Send a pre-treatment estimate. Disclosing costs and terms of payment up front work best.

Overall, practice management can be overwhelming. Try to tackle each issue one step at a time. Organize your framework into a simple equation for success. At the end of the day, if you pay attention to problems as they develop, you’ll put out the small fires before they become unmanageable flames.

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Dental malpractice is a form of negligence that arises when a patient is harmed because the dental professional fails to perform duties according to the appropriate standard of care. To be found negligent, the plaintiff’s lawyer must prove that the action (or lack of action) was below the accepted standard of care. Generally, the standard of care requires you to provide your patients with the degree of care a reasonably prudent dentist would provide under the same or similar circumstances.

If your dental practice has been hit by a cyber attack and you’ve temporarily or permanently lost access to certain equipment, communication links, imaging and lab results, or patient records, the standard of care doesn’t change. When your computers are down, the impact on patient care is significant. How can you continue to practice safely?

Aside from stopping the hack and activating your cyber breach response plan, during a cyber attack your practice should make decisions about patient safety. In the same way that you triaged your patients during the early days of COVID, deciding who needed referrals, who needed immediate care despite office closures, etc., during a cyber attack you should make individualized decisions about your patients and, if necessary, send them elsewhere for care that you cannot safely provide. Document these decisions on paper!

A good process might be to imagine you’re going to be out of office. Who is on the patient schedule for those days? Then notify and/or refer every patient who needs attention.

For example, if a patient is scheduled for an imaging appointment to monitor a benign tumor, a reasonably prudent dentist, in the face of a cyber attack and the inability to access prior imaging studies, would likely refer this patient immediately to another dentist without a lapse in care.

If a patient suffers an injury due to care you provided during a cyber attack, the cyber event will not provide a legal defense to a resultant malpractice claim. Always practice with patient safety as your foremost concern!

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Accommodating patients under the Americans with Disabilities Act has been largely facilitated (making buildings and offices accessible to patients in wheelchairs, etc.) to the point where one need not worry too much about it. But one disability that sometimes doesn’t hit everyone’s radar is hearing impaired patients. Many people don’t know that a hearing-impaired patient can rightfully require the dentist to provide an interpreter for his or her appointment. If a patient requests this, the dentist must provide the interpreter at his or her own cost. It is the law. The charge cannot be passed along to the patient, even if it exceeds the fee for the appointment.

Not all hearing-impaired patients request this. Some patients read lips, others communicate by writing notes back and forth, and others will bring interpreters with them. You need only provide an interpreter when the patient requests it. Telling patients you are not able to provide an interpreter may result in a claim against you for discrimination.

It is important to be aware of this regulation and adhere to it to keep your patients and yourself safe.

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Can I still charge the patient if I did the procedure to the wrong tooth? Can I withhold a procedure to a patient who hasn’t paid in full? Will it make me look liable if I return a fee to a patient? We receive various questions into our claims department on a yearly basis. Here are the answers to these commonly asked questions.

I did endodontics on the wrong tooth. Can I still charge for it?

No, the implied contract here between you and the patient was to perform endodontics on another tooth. Since you did not uphold your end of the bargain, there should be no obligation for the patient to pay for this mistake on your part.

Can I refuse to insert a bridge or a crown until the patient has paid his fee in full?

No, this refusal would be abandonment. Dentists can make whatever financial arrangements the patient agrees to prior to beginning treatment, but once a tooth or teeth have been prepared and the crown or bridge is fabricated, it must be inserted to avoid any potential further damage to the patient. The dentist should insert the crown or bridge and attempt collection afterward.

If I return a fee to a patient would it be viewed as an admission of negligence?

Dentists can return fees in a manner that avoids any further liability. Simply state to the patient, and follow it up in writing, that the offer to return fees is a gesture of goodwill and not an admission of any negligence.

The more you know, the more protected you and your patients will be.

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When you document your clinical records, you should be completely objective. Remember that patients have a right to obtain their records. If you have a particularly unpleasant patient and write, “Mrs. Smith was very nasty at her appointment and did not cooperate at all,” you can imagine her reaction if she read the note.

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