The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services began accepting and processing claims for Medicare dental services July 1.
Five notes:
1. CMS finalized its 2024 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule in November 2023, which finalized payments for certain dental services linked to head and neck cancer treatments under Medicare Part A and Part B.
2. In its final rule, CMS also said it would pay for services linked to other covered services as part of cancer treatments. These include dental services performed before or during chemotherapy, chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapy and antiresorptive therapy.
3. CMS previously used the American Dental Association's paper claim form for submitting dental claims, the ADA said July 26. However, CMS has since adopted a new system to process the claims electronically as part of its multi-year Medicare Payment System Modernization project.
4. CMS is looking for dental providers to participate in a controlled launch of the system.
5. Dental providers could save $1.5 billion each year by switching from manual to fully electronic transactions, according to the Council for Affordable Quality Healthcare’s 2023 annual index.