Medical billing for dental sleep medicine

I practice general dentistry in the Northern Idaho Panhandle. And it is gorgeous! We have the beauty of lakes, mountains, rivers, and trees—lots and lots of trees. Plus, there is not a potato farm in sight. To preserve this beauty, my practice went paperless in 2004. One day we were using paper charts and old-fashioned x-rays, and the next day we were doing all of our notes and radiographs in the computer. So why does it feel like we still use so much paper? Part of the reason is that we do medical billing for sleep apnea treatment, and the medical world revolves around paper. In this article, we are going to discuss the paperwork needed in order to bill an oral appliance. Dust off those fax machines!

My sleep patients come to me in many different ways. The first is through our regular hygiene appointments. Are you screening for potential sleep apnea within your existing patient pool? Are you looking at medical histories? Are you changing your medical history script to ask patients about sleep and snoring? We are constantly looking for patients who take high blood pressure medications, or who have acid reflux, heart conditions, diabetes, bruxing, large tongues, vaulted palates, and so on. If they show these symptoms (there are many more) we begin a conversation and get them scheduled for a consult. My sleep patients also come from outside my four walls. Word of mouth, print ads, and social media have helped boost my consult visits. But my favorite type of sleep patients are those referred by health-care providers in my community. I love hearing my fax machine whirring in the morning. Yes, I said fax machine, not e-mail. We have a person assigned to calling the referrals, scheduling the patients, collecting the sleep studies, and sending off the paperwork.

Before the consult appointment is even scheduled, the front desk person fills out an intake form, so even if we have someone new working that day (there seems to be a revolving door here), it looks like we know what we are doing. The intake form asks all of the necessary questions to get medical information, sleep study results, and contact information. Then, we e-mail the patient the paperwork we have from our software specifically made for dental sleep medicine. If someone has an aversion to technology, we can mail them the paperwork or they can come in early to their appointment.