By Stefanie Fario It is a common story in every dental office. The patient that has been years between dental appointments. The patient with rampant decay and severely compromised dentition. The patient that it seems needs full-mouth rehabilitation and it is hard to know where to...
Ideally, general practitioners should refer patients to specialists when they have conditions that they cannot address, such as wisdom teeth, temporomandibular joint disorder, “excessive cavities,” etc. (“Why a Good Dentist Will Refer You to a Specialist” 2018). Specialists, such as periodontists and endodontists, have additional...
I have had this question proposed to me no less than a hundred times in my career. By employers, by consulting clients and even by other billers. “Does it really matter if we file the patient’s medical claims?” or “We don’t know how to do...
You may have seen one before. A seemingly innocuous letter creeps its way into your office, usually via your fax machine. A short letter, commonly from Multiplan or Genex or Prime, that offers you an expedited payment if you accept the fee listed and agree...
In dentistry we are so accustomed to providing a tangible product or service. If you think about it, even cleanings we provide something for the patient to take home with them. Medical practitioners are quite the opposite. Generally patients leave with just the knowledge that...
Pets, such as cats and dogs, need dental care like human beings. When problems, such as periodontal disease, appear, they could experience “pain, tooth loss and bone loss. In addition, long-standing infected teeth and gums are known to lead to stress on vital organs and...
Dentists can own and manage a successful dental practice when they know how to “[operate] their practices like businesses…” (Rubin 2016). As owners, they need to know about the factors that affect the clinic’s business, such as “production and collections, end of day reports, collection...
Dentists could open another clinic by buying another practice so long as they consider factors, such as its location, equipment, patient base, etc. (Nuss 2016). Dentists should research different clinics to buy “as early as possible, even two or three years out” (Blatchford 2016). Once...
A dentist can inherit a practice from another dentist by becoming an associate and “buying into a portion of the equity of the practice” (Breiman and Caldwell 2011). Eventually, the associate becomes the owner when “the balance of the equity transitions” to him or her,...
By Stefanie Fario We've seen it many times in our medical billing department. Claims are sent to us for submission of procedures. Chart notes document several visits with exams before the procedures are performed but this is the first claim we've ever seen for this patient....
