Our Mission
To make high-quality dental care attainable, affordable and hassle free for everyone, and to ensure dental care providers are fairly compensated for their services.
Our Story
PayDent was founded in late 2019 by Kevin Patterson, a dentist with three decades of practice experience, and Steve Valentor, a successful serial entrepreneur and technology innovator.
Patterson grew up in small town in northern Pennsylvania, where his dad was a blue-collar worker at a coal mine. Living there, Patterson learned to appreciate the challenges working-class families faced.
Throughout his career, Patterson has cared for thousands of patients, honoring his roots by practicing mostly in working-class neighborhoods. But by 2019, he had become frustrated by what he felt was unfair treatment of his patients by dental insurance companies. For many consumers, dental insurance just didn't make sense anymore, even for those who could afford it.
He envisioned a new model — one that would make high-quality dental care attainable, affordable and hassle free for everyone, especially working-class consumers. In addition, knowing the challenges of running a dental practice, he wanted the new model to make life easier for dental care providers by eliminating paperwork, doing away with rejected insurance claims and service limitations, and ensuring practices would be paid — and paid fairly — for their work.
Together, Patterson and Valentor shaped that vision into PayDent.
PayDent provides patients a structured way to save money to pay for their dental care. Instead of paying monthly insurance premiums, patients deposit funds — in amounts they choose — to their PayDent account, building funds that will be used to pay for any treatment they want or need. There are no annual minimum outlays, no surprise premium increases no guessing if, or how much, insurance will pay for a procedure, and no lost deposits because they never expire.
PayDent saves dental care providers money by eliminating or greatly reducing time-consuming and frustrating paperwork, rejected claims, service limitations and the need to have complex financial discussions with patients. It also enables dentists to immediately request payment for services rendered and provide dental care exclusively determined by them and their patients without approval from third parties.