The ADA’s CDT companion is like the encyclopedia of dental procedures and nomenclature. How many times have you looked for a procedure code in your clinic computer program and you couldn’t quite pick a code that met your procedure in particular? Patients situations, diagnosis and your treatments are often difficult to categorize into a set list of codes. However, what many of us don’t know are that there are so many codes out there that we are unaware of. In dental school, we aren’t always taught the importance of coding, and coding with accuracy. If you aren’t careful about what you are coding, there can be severe consequences. There have been reported cases of dentists coding inaccurately and therefore suffering legal consequences. Understanding what you are charging the patient for, and what you are filing through insurance is extremely important…
As dental professionals, we strive to provide a pain-free experience to our patients. We use topical and local anesthesia to alleviate pain during the procedure, use our tactile grace to ensure that our patients have a positive dental visit, and prescribe our patients with pain medications after certain procedures to ease the recovery. However, when a patient comes into our office complaining of pain, how can we distinguish whether they are genuinely in pain or in search of pain medication for non-medical related reasons? Chances are, you will encounter this fraudulent seeking of prescription medications in your practice, known as “drug shopping.” According to the 
In recent years, ASDA, ADEA, and the ADA have publically denounced the use of live patients during licensing exams. ASDA’s L1 policy clearly states that any clinical licensing exam should, “be a non-patient based examination emphasizing the recognition, diagnosis and treatment planning of disease, in conjunction with the treatment of simulated disease by use of a typodont.” While much progress has been made to create alternate pathways to licensure including: a PGY1 residency, portfolio review in California, and an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) in Minnesota, there is still much work to be done to eliminate the live patient component.
With the recent popularity of the recreational use of e-cigarettes and hookah pens as a “healthier” decision to traditional cigarettes, consumers are falsely convinced there are no harmful effects to these water vapor alternatives. The notion that these products pose no threat (or a lesser threat than the accompanying two) has encouraged smokers, nonsmokers and young people to consume them. Some consumers have bypassed any further research on these water vapor products and have already allowed it to become a replacement to cigarettes…
One night, after ordering my books online, I randomly looked up “Extracted teeth” and found several websites based all across the globe selling extracted human teeth. Surprisingly, none of these websites mentioned how the teeth were acquired and whether they were collected for sale ethically upon receiving patient consent. 
Pictured here is the model for a virtual dental home concept at the University of Pacific School of Dentistry. Using cloud technology, the university is able to manage a program that delivers care to virtual dental homes for traditionally underserved populations. You can read more about this program in the winter issue of Mouth,