A Steigerungsfaktor (severity factor) is assigned by your dentist and is related to the difficulty of a procedure. This means that a more time-consuming and demanding treatment will have a higher severity factor than one that is relatively simple.

For professional dental cleanings (and other personal dental services), we will only cover up to a severity factor of 3.5. If you’re still concerned or want to know how it works, we’ve written this guide for you.

The base rate for German dentists in 2022 is €1.57 per tooth for all professional cleanings. This is multiplied by the severity factor to get your total cost.

Let’s use an example of someone getting 28 teeth cleaned and how much it would cost and how much they would be reimbursed depending on the severity.

Once you reach 3.5, this is the maximum reimbursement you can get for a professional cleaning. It’s very rare that a dentist goes above this limit, so you’ll pretty much always get a full reimbursement. If your dentist applies a severity factor above 3.5 the law requires that they hand you a written statement as to why before proceeding with the treatment.

Please also note that some dentists round up in terms of cost, and we will reimburse this as well.

Below, you can see a bill for a severity factor of 1.4. This was fully reimbursed. Note that the number of teeth that were covered is under “Anz” or Anzahl, which means that 30 teeth were cleaned for a 1.4 severity factor which costs €66 or €2.2 per tooth.

Below, you can see a bill for a severity factor of 3. While more expensive, this person had 28 teeth cleaned for €4.8 per tooth. This was fully covered because it's still below the max of 3.5.

Below, you can see a bill for a severity factor of 5. While it’s uncommon to see such a high severity factor, it does sometimes happen. This person paid €120.30 to have 15 teeth cleaned, which cost them €8.02 per tooth. Since we only reimburse up to a severity factor of 3.5, they were covered up to €5.51 per tooth for a total reimbursement of €82.65.