Insurance

Because each dental practice is unique in how and where they are located and plans can vary widely in fee schedules, it is difficult to understand when plans are negatively affecting your patients and your practice.

Keeping your fee schedules up-to-date is imperative to keeping your practice healthy. There are many important factors to take into account including geography, your patients, how you practice and data from other practices in your area. However, quality data on fees in your zip code can be challenging to find-so Sikka Software did the work for you.

"We can learn from our mistakes. But isn’t it better to learn from other people’s mistakes?” Dr. Roger P. Levin explores the biggest mistakes that dentists make-and how those mistakes can be avoided. In this edition, Dr. Levin discusses dental insurance policies.

No one has their finger on the pulse of coding changes that will affect your practice more than Teresa Duncan. She stops by to tell us what tweaks have been made that will affect your business.

Billions of dollars in dental insurance benefits are left unused every year. These benefits can be used for both general maintenance care as well as dental procedures, like root canals or emergency procedures. According to Forbes, only three percent of patients use all of their dental benefits annually, indicating that there is a significant dollar amount of benefits left untapped at the end of December.

"It isn’t difficult, but it takes team cooperation, new thinking, and practice." That's the mantra from author Patti DiGangi in this article.

Teresa Duncan, insurance editor for Dental Products Report, offers advice on how to lower some of the pain that dental insurance causes for so many practices.

Dental professionals are a patient’s primary source of screening within the oral cavity; thus attention must be paid to the most common oral malignancy: squamous cell carcinoma. Historically such malignancies were attributed only to patients with a history of extensive alcohol and tobacco use. However, other risk factors such as human papilloma virus and medication use are shifting the profession’s perception of who may be at risk for oral cancer.

Dental technology and the material sciences are advancing at a rate never before experienced by the dental industry. It is difficult, if not impossible, for the average practitioner to understand and appreciate all the new “stuff” that has been developed and introduced to dentistry over the past 10 years. Things that not too long ago seemed like science fiction have now become reality.

With November upon us, it is once again time for what has become our annual review of the additions, changes and deletions in CDT benefit coding. Changes in CDT 2016 came under the two general categories: Stand-alone changes and interrelated changes.

Regardless of your practice philosophy regarding insurance management, you are bound to have heard this kind of statement from patients many times in the past.

It’s a dark and stormy night in the small town where your dental practice is located. It’s also one of the first late, late afternoons you’ve worked in the practice since it relocated from the center of town to a new location out by the lake.

As we enter the fall season, chances are that you have patients with remaining dental benefits who also require dental care. According to Forbes, only three percent of patients use all of their benefits in a given year.

The new ICD-10 diagnostic code set will be implemented on October 1. So, what do you need to know? Here are the top 10 things that will make the transition to ICD-10 a little bit easier.

The adjustments report is one of the most emotion-inducing reports to read and analyze. It may even be the most depressing one, but it certainly is necessary.

Introduced by Rep. Earl “Buddy” Carter (R-GA), the bill-the “Dental and Optometric Care Access Act (DOC Access Act)"-seeks to ease potential conflicts between dentists and eyecare providers and insurance companies.

As we cross the midway point of the year, now is an excellent time for a dental practice to examine its fee structure and see what needs to be updated and improved, said Teresa Duncan, DPR’s insurance editor and a noted practice management consultant.

October 1, 2015 marks the deadline for the transition to the 10th revision of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10), which will introduce a whole new set of codes for dental and medical practices nationwide.

The dental industry is rapidly changing with the introduction and adoption of dental EHRs. This technology affords us the ability to have functionality that we could have never done before on a manual level. One of the big changes that's happening is the introduction of new, more detailed granular and sophisticated coding sets. 

Since 1991, people have had questions about alternating codes D4910 with D1110 for follow-up of periodontal care.

Most of the dentists are confused about their Medicare status. They ask each other what options are the best to pursue with no one understanding the ramifications of their choices. 

For many of us, we’re pretty partial to where we live and work. We think it’s a great place with a lot of great features. Maybe you love that you’re close to the mountains or ocean. Maybe you love the big-city vibe or the small-town feel. Maybe you think this is the best place to raise a family or the best place to be single and free. Maybe, just maybe, it’s the place where you were born and raised and you can’t imagine living anywhere else.

The insurance aging report is one of the least favorite reports for administrators to run, but is so important for keeping up your practice’s cash flow.

Dental office websites often have financial sections that state, “You are responsible for knowing your insurance benefits, but we will help you file claims” or, “We’re happy to help you with your claims, but you are responsible for knowing your plan details.”

When I moved to New York, I was still on the insurance plan of my company, which was headquartered in Oklahoma. What was a great benefits package in Oklahoma was slim pickins in New York City, and I was forced to choose between two or three dentists within all five boroughs who would accept my insurance. Naturally, I chose the one closest to me (after checking his Yelp reviews, of course).

A new survey from Western University of Health Sciences’ College of Dental Medicine found parents in the general population bring their children to the dentist for the first time at the average age of 2.5, while parents who fall under the U.S. poverty threshold bring their children to the dentist for the first time at approximately 3.5 years old.

Flexibility is the name of the game in today’s dental insurance world. Administrative roles have shifted greatly in recent years to include the growing, evolving role of insurance in the dental office.