CVS moves into dental care with teeth-straightening service SmileDirectClub

CVS Health Corp. is venturing into dental care with plans to offer a relatively new teeth-straightening service.

The drugstore chain said Thursday that it will add SmileDirectClub locations to hundreds of its stores where customers can get started on getting their teeth straightened without an in-person visit with a dentist or orthodontist. That lack of an office visit has drawn criticism from orthodontists.

CVS and other drugstore chains have been pushing in recent years to add more services to their store locations, in part to help their customers stay healthy. They’re also trying to attract customers for profitable beauty products and stave off competition from online retail giant Amazon.com, which provides same-day delivery for many of the products that drugstores sell outside their pharmacies.

Under the CVS plan, customers get a 3-D image of their mouth made by a SmileDirect employee at one of the drugstore locations. The image is sent to a dentist or orthodontist who approves the patient’s treatment plan. Patients are shipped clear, removable aligners designed to straighten their teeth.

They check in remotely with a dentist or orthodontist, often by smartphone. The service costs $1,850 before insurance.

The American Assn. of Orthodontists has criticized the service, warning that in-person visits are important in this type of care. Dentists can spot gum disease during these visits and X-rays can detect bone loss not seen in a photo, the group’s lawyer Sean Murphy said.

“Our concern is patient health and safety,” Murphy said.

CVS Pharmacy President Kevin Hourican said he has no concerns about safety with SmileDirect, which he said provides a “high-quality” product and limits care to patients who don’t have complex dental needs.

SmileDirect spokeswoman Carrie Moore said her company, which started in 2014, has served more than half a million people. It is common for “traditional industry representatives to balk” when a new business model gains acceptance, she said in an email.

CVS Health also will add SmileDirect service as a covered option in the dental care network of its recently acquired Aetna health insurance business. Another insurer, UnitedHealthcare, announced a similar coverage expansion Thursday.

The SmileDirect locations will appear in only a small percentage of CVS Health’s 9,800 retail locations nationally. But company officials say they may eventually expand to more than a thousand locations. The company started testing the approach in a few stores last fall.

CVS Health found in its pilot that the SmileDirect locations attracted younger, new customers.