Our History

Ed Cleland, a Michigan dental hygienist, founded DenteMax in 1985. Ed believed and had a vision that preferred dental PPO networks were the best way to deliver high-quality, cost-effective dental care. He started with a limited staff recruiting a small number of dentists in the metro Detroit area of Michigan and then went door-to-door to local businesses to lease the network.

As with all start-ups, DenteMax went through some rough beginnings, but the company’s culture of connecting with our dentists, client partners and their members through excellent customer service, administration and management began taking shape. Soon more and more businesses signed on and DenteMax continued its recruiting efforts and began customized recruitment to meet the specific needs of these businesses. The addition of larger companies, self-funded groups and insurance companies like Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan built a solid base for DenteMax to stand on.

DenteMax’s book of business kept growing along with the network as the company began adding structured management teams for business and network development. Sales representatives quickly began learning the specific needs of insurance companies, third-party administrators and major companies as the dental PPO network business model began to grow in the late-nineties. DenteMax eventually expanded gradually throughout the entire United States to become one of the nation’s largest leasable dental PPO networks with a solid client partner base.

In 2002, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan, a long-term client partner of DenteMax, acquired the company to enhance its existing dental network and expand its product line. DenteMax then entered a period of tremendous growth with consistent double-digit network expansion, solid profits and consistent additions of major client partners. One of these new clients was Dental Network of America (DNoA), the network administrator for all Health Care Service Corporation (HCSC) dental programs, including Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Illinois, New Mexico, Oklahoma, Texas, and its subsidiary, Dearborn National.

In 2009, Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Michigan sold DenteMax to Dental Network of America, a wholly owned subsidiary of HCSC. The acquisition brought two strategically focused dental PPO companies under one umbrella to offer an even stronger network for client partners and their members. In 2010, DenteMax also started aggressively marketing that it had the largest seamless network approved for Medicare dental benefits. The new network began with more than 65,000 approved dental access points and was built on the strong foundation of the commercial DenteMax PPO network.

Currently, DenteMax remains one of the nation’s largest independent dental PPO networks with more than accesspoints dental access points, serving over 20 million members nationwide with more than 200 benefit client partners. Its high-quality network continues to grow annually.