Bob Conte As the year draws to a close, I am very grateful to have CEREC in the office for reasons beyond the obvious. The ability to deliver beautiful ceramic crowns in a single visit is clearly a wonderful service to our patients and a very efficient use of our chair time. It is also a great way to satisfy some of the many “rules” the pesky insurance companies impose upon us.
As much as we would all love to be 100% insurance free, the reality is that a large majority of practices participate in several insurance plans. The common rule that you cannot submit a claim for a crown until the restoration is cemented used to pose a challenge at the end of the calendar year. Many patients who tried to use their benefits before year-end often could not get the procedures completed in time when using an outside laboratory to process their crowns. This was both an inconvenience and production lost.
In the old days, pre-CEREC, offices would utilize a number of workarounds. Begging your over-worked lab guy was popular even though you received that letter firmly stating “Any crown cases received after December 12 will not be ready before December 31”. If your lab offered a rush service, you would pay the additional fee and likely not pass it on to the patient. It was also common for some to do some creative charting and claim processing to date the crown insert in the present calendar year. This last approach was not exactly by the book.
These games all disappear when an office has the CEREC system in place. If your patient begs for a crown on New Year’s Eve, you can deliver and bill the insurance with a clean conscience. In fact, you can use the “use it or lose it” approach to insurance benefits to motivate patients that have been dragging their feet on needed dentistry. You can’t beat the insurance companies, but having CEREC on your team can level the playing field.
