Re: CDT-5
From: Bill (dentaldoc_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 12/07/04
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Date: 7 Dec 2004 09:38:21 -0800
Steve wrote:
Has everyone run out and bought their copy of the new CDT-2005
standards
yet? Anyone beside me annoyed that the ADA uses our dues money to
develop
this standard, but charges us to obtain a copy of the standard once
completed. Then, we pay again to have out PMS licensed to incorporate
it
into the software.
Am I alone in expecting the ADA to send dues paying members a copy of
the
standard as a benefit of membership? At least, just a list of revisions
for
the new standard. Even a Password protected link to the standard or its
revisions.
-- ~+--~+--~+--~+--~+-- Stephen Mancuso, D.D.S. Troy, Michigan, USA Bill's reply: Back in the 1970s, many insurance companies wrote their own revisions to the first ADA code set. The result was a mishmash of various codes and subcodes. A dentist had to use a different revision for each insurance company. I found this to be very frustrating and inefficient. By the early 90s the ADA published their own code set in the ADA Journal, and started legal proceedings to assure their copyright to the CDT codes. (That in itself is a reason to support the ADA. If the code set and its revisions weren't in the hands of dentists through the ADA, you can bet that forty different insurance companies would still be using forty different procedure code systems. They would still be revising them at whim, as they always did before, so you couldn't even be sure that any of the forty different complete code sets you kept on file would be valid for any of the insurance claims you tried to file each day. I do NOT want to go back to those days again.) As the federal government started writing the HIPAA regulations in the 1990s, the ADA was savvy enough to realize that if you don't lead the government where you want to go, they will simply steamroller over you. So a permanent committee and sizeable resources were devoted to establishing a credible means of input into code writing and revisions, with the result that the ADA has been able to coordinate code revisions without undue governmental impositions. Just imagine the dental profession suffering under a diagnosis-related code system similar to that which the government devised for Medicare. It's not far-fetched to think the government would impose a system that would say to dentists: "No more itemized billing. Just use the diagnosis code for caries, for example. If the diagnosis is caries, we will pay $100 per patient for the total case, regardless of the amount or extent of caries." That is the general approach the government has taken to the medical profession. Don't think they wouldn't do the same to dentistry if they had the chance. Yeah, I would like to get the CDT-2005 free too. But I don't think that forty bucks will break any dental practices these days. And if you are as thrifty as Joel and I are, you can still get the code free from Delta or from the many PPO's who have to send out revisions anyway. I won't even mention a Google search . . . ;-) - dentaldoc
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