Dentalcompare
Clinical Director
One of the goals of Dentalcompare is to help dental professionals find the perfect product for their practice. That being said, there are certain indispensable pieces of equipment that every office should have. The obvious choices would be things like a high speed handpiece, or an x-ray generator to take radiographs. One device that still seems to optional, but shouldn’t be, is the intraoral camera. There have been countless times in which I was able to take a picture to better explain treatment to a patient. The treatment was then more readily accepted because we were better able to show the patient what the problem was.
One often overlooked attribute of the intraoral camera is its use with dental insurance. We have been sending digital x-rays with our electronic claims for a few years now through Dentrix. The cost is minimal compared to the time savings, and convenience, of sending and tracking everything electronically. Even then, there are times in which the radiograph does not quite show the problem, potentially leaving room for the insurance company to deny the claim. Now you are stuck with having to resubmit the claim with additional documentation and hope that your concise explanation is enough for anonymous dentist reviewing the case.
This morning we had a case exactly like that. If you look at the radiograph we took with our Dexis system, you can see an existing large composite on tooth #3.
What you don’t see is any recurrent decay or fracturing of the tooth. Normally, a claim sent for a crown on this tooth would be denied since there is not really conclusive evidence something is wrong with the tooth. Now take a look at the picture we took of the same tooth using our DexCam 3.
Now you can see that the large composite has recurrent decay, multiple fractures, and a chunk missing from the mesial marginal ridge. This is undeniably a tooth in need of a crown. So as the electronic claim goes out, we just attach this picture with our documentation. We haven’t had an issue with denied claims in years. A few denied claims that result in write-offs for your practice would pay for the camera in a second.