Preventing Dental Coding Mistakes
Posted by Administrator at 2:58 PM on Sep 15, 2016
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Making sure there are no coding errors in your dental practice is an important part to staying profitable, successful, and out of trouble! Even if a member of your staff unintentionally makes a mistake, you as the dentist will still be held responsible. Punishment can include late or denied payment, having your dental license revoked, fines, or even imprisonment.
No matter who in your office is in charge of assigning codes to certain procedures, the dentist is the one who will be held legally responsible in the event of a mistake or error in the coding.
How can I prevent coding errors in my dental office?
Below are a few ways that you can protect your dental office from making costly coding mistakes:
- Make sure you know the codes. Here at Dental Bookkeeping, we recommend that you and your staff attend coding courses. This is a simple and easy way to ensure that your staff knows what they’re doing and can code dental procedures correctly. Dentists should attend these coding classes as well, in order to catch any potential coding errors before it’s too late.
- Put an emphasis on communication between your staff and yourself. If your office doesn’t have a coding communication system, it’s much easier for mistakes to slip through. Make sure you’re charting correctly, as this is the main form of communication to your billing staff. To add extra security, you can even add a sticky-note to each chart showing the correct code for each procedure done.
- Utilize practice analysis reports to help avoid mistakes. You can deactivate any codes in your dental software for procedures that you don’t perform at your office. There are 600 existing dental codes, but individual practices don’t usually use more than 80-100 of them. Getting rid of these extra, unused codes can decrease the chances of a mistake.
Here at Dental Bookkeeping, we want your dental practice to be successful! Using correct codes will not only keep you safe from any legal trouble, but the correct codes can actually increase the income for your office. For more information regarding coding procedures or any other dental bookkeeping needs, please contact us today!