Dental Sleep Medicine Blog

No Blog post today due to Memorial Day weekend

5/25/2017

I took time of from the website today to get started on my holiday weekend. I promise to write next week. I hope everyone has a great holiday weekend.

How do you disinfect oral appliances?

5/17/2017

Most of my sleep patients, denture patients, or any other type of patient that wears some removable appliance ask me how do I disinfect my appliance.

For years I have been asking them to soak their appliance in chlorhexadine for about 30 minutes once a week. That kills all the fungus and bacteria.

Now I have discovered something better. Dr. B Dental Solutions Cleanadent Crystals. These work great for killing off the bad things on removables and keeping the appliances clean. You can purchase these and give them to patients or you can sell them to patients or even tell them where to order them.

I have listed a few key points for the product to help highlight the main benefits.

Cleanadent Crystals
Kills Pathogens like Candida and Strep
and Removes Heavy Plaque, Stains and
Calculus
Most Oral Appliances Become Infected
with Candida Over Time, yet Many
People Don’t Know
Economical – Individually Packaged
and Provides up to 180 Deep Cleanings
per box
Others Only Kill Odor-Causing Bacteria
Sonic Cleaners
Uses Sonic Waves to Mechanically
Remove Heavy Plaque, Stains and
Calculus
No Matter What Cleanser You Use,
Doctors Recommend Sonic Cleaners
as Essential for Oral Hygiene
Sonic Cleaners Ensure More
Complete Elimination of Pathogens
and Prevent Recolonization
Works on All Removable Appliance
To learn more go to:
http://www.drbdentalsolutions.com or email them at info@drbdentalsolutions.com I am not being paid or compensated for this endorsement.

Medical Billing Companies

5/10/2017

Why use a Medical billing company verses billing medical insurance and Medicare yourself? This is a common question that I am asked.

The answer is difficult because you need to look at the individual office.

If the office is very busy and low on staff than adding in extra work like calling medical insurances and following up on claims or rejections can be hard. Often times a phone call to the medical insurance can take several hours. Also making sure all the papers needed for submittal and follow-up can be difficult.

If the office is slow and there is an extra person then that person can afford to spend the extra time needed to deal with the medical insurance.

Switching back and forth from dental to medical insurance can be confusing and can lead to many mistakes. Many dentists do not want their staff to do both.

Medicare, and most medical insurance now require offices to file electronically. This can be done with some low cost software for under $100 a month, but still you need to learn how to do this.

In my office we use a billing service. This allows us to hire less staff and lower our overhead. It also allows us to focus on dentistry and not the medical billing. The billing company does pre-verifications and pre-authorizations for us, and tells us what we need to do if we want to be paid. The billing company also keeps following up with claims that have not been paid or dealing with rejections. It has made treating sleep apnea so much better.

Which billing company should you use? There are many to chose from. What you need to ask is do the handle Medicare if your a provider. How many sleep cases have they billed and how many dentists do they represent? What procedures do they have success billing for in your region. What insurances are they used to dealing with? Not all billing companies live up to their promises and most charge to set up an account so firing them can be costly. The one I recommend the most is GOGO Billing in AZ. there are other good ones, but I have experience with GoGo.

Dexterity of patients

5/3/2017