Dental Items
Dental items are defined as 'Miscellaneous for Service' types as these items are processed differently in the reporting process.
- Practices that provide dental services to patients usually have contractual payments for the services they offer. MedicalDirector recommends using the ADA (Australian Dental Codes) as these are recognised codes similar to MBS items.
- Dental invoices do not use the multiple scaling rule, additional teeth are often 'discounted' to encourage the patient to have all the work done at the same time. Quantity fields do not work for this type of invoice.
- Dental invoices are also required to display the tooth number (position in the mouth) as part of the item description. The contract payment is the same regardless of the number of teeth involved but the tooth number is recorded to avoid duplicate servicing.
- Some dental codes are procedural like 432 (Apicectomy) whilst the 576 (stainless steel
crown) are restorative items and need to be listed on the invoice and episode.In the following example two teeth have been removed and two teeth replaced by steel crowns. The first item contains the contractual amount, the secondary items indicates the additional teeth worked on.
- 323C $960 Wisdom tooth removal 18
- 323 $0 Wisdom tooth removal 28
- 576 $0 Steel crown 25
- 576 $0 Steel crown 26
When transferred to Day Surgery, the Hospital Claim form (HC21) in the episode displays the same information as the as Bluechip invoice, and is attached to the invoice for payment.
Coding the episode is easier because the number of teeth operated on is evident and will assist the coder in choosing the correct ICD10 procedural code without having to refer to the case notes .