Do you provide sleep apnea appliances for your patients? This seems to be all the rage in dentistry these days. I see articles everywhere talking about how 50% of CPAP owners are not actually wearing their CPAP machine at night – and how this group is a perfect target for a dental appliance. Henry Schein offers courses and several different labs that will make an oral appliance for sleep apnea – just ask your Schein rep and you’ll discover a mountain of information available.
One of my general dentists has provided a handful of sleep appliances – and the results he is achieving by looking at the before/after sleep studies are amazing. Last year, my orthodontist came back from a national conference also on fire to get into the sleep apnea craze. I’d guess I receive at least 3 emails each week inviting “Dr. Nesbitt” to sign up for their sleep apnea courses.
Despite the many clinical issues with sleep apnea which I’ll skip for now – if you’re interested in providing this type of treatment, then one of the many things you’ll need to learn is how to submit to medical insurance. At the Dentrix Business of Dentistry conference this summer, I talked with Nierman Practice Management and discovered they offer some very nice resources for practices that are providing sleep apnea appliances to patients. Here’s a short video to introduce you:
Rose Nierman and her company, Nierman Practice Management have created a software package called DentalWriter. DentalWriter www.dentalwriter.com (about $5,300) allows you to answer a series of health history questions for your patient and then it automatically selects the codes and creates the necessary claims and forms. For DentalWriter subscribers, a free iTunes application Dental CrossCode offers over 100 claim examples and a quick dental-to-medical code translator as well.
Nierman Practice Management is also a provider of seminars: Unlocking the Code to Medical Billing and Implementation of Dental Sleep Medicine into a Dental Practice for Sleep Apnea Appliances and provides a Coding Hotline. If you want to learn more: www.dentalwriter.com.
