September 29, 2015
Dr. Eric Studley
Ergonomics in Dentistry

 

October 20, 2015
Dr. Marianna Evans
3D Guided Approach to Mucogingival Problems in Adult Patients

 

November 17, 2015
Dr. Barry Raphael
Airway Orthodontics: A New Paradigm

 

January 19, 2016
NJDA Officer’s Night and Life Member Presentation

 

February 16, 2016
Dr. Tom Viola
Pharmacology Declassified

 

The rest of the schedule will be announced at a later date.

 

“In Conclusion”
As I write my last newsletter, I am amazed as to how time has flown. The job was exciting and not as daunting as I imagined it to be, but the reward was outstanding. I learnt a lot more about leadership and team efforts from past Presidents and other experienced members of our Board of Trustees. Dr Sunny Satwah did a wonderful job organizing all the CE courses throughout the year and I want to congratulate him for good communication and execution. I wish to thank Robert Silverstein, our newsletter and website editor and all the committee members who volunteer their time for the benefit of our organization. Special thanks to Mitch Weiner for his words of wisdom at many points in time during the last year. The leadership will soon be in strong hands of Alyssa Bernstein. She will be an excellent President and I am certain you will continue to provide the same support for the society that I observed over the last year.
Lisa Philp of Transition Consulting Group was the speaker at the last general meeting and also for the full day course on April 22nd. She provided valuable insights into improving the business end of the practice of dentistry to dentists and staff. This full day course was sponsored by Benco. I wish to thank Ira Rosen for his continued efforts in bringing sponsorship and also all our sponsors for their continued support. We hope to continue and grow this mutual symbiotic relationship. Once again, I want to invite you all to come and attend one of our board meetings and become part of organized dentistry.
Finally, I would like to thank you all for allowing me this opportunity to serve you and for supporting me during my presidency. It has been an honor. Have a colorful and enjoyable spring and summer.

Attendance: Drs. Nainesh Desai, Alyssa Bernstein, Devang Modi, Genevieve Fernandes, Richard Kahn, Mark Schambra, Mark Vitale, Bob Silverstein, Ira Rosen, Sunny Satwah, Ethan Glickman, Nima Mir-Madjlessi, Mitch Weiner, Bob Ashmen, Sandy Goldstein, Peter DeSciscio, Antoinette Tauk, and Ms. Marlene Glickman
Acceptance of 3/10/15 Minutes- vote unanimous.
Treasurer’s Report-Amit Vora
See detailed report on page 3.
Education Coordinator’s Report-Sanjeev Satwah
Lisa Philp will be speaking at this month’s general meeting on practice management.
NJDA Trustee Report-Mitch Weiner
NJDA BOT will be dissolving the Council on Dental Education and reassigning some of it’s duties to staff and the Council on Governmental and Public Affairs or abolishing some duties altogether.
The NJDA BOT voted to continue it’s program with Bank of America that rewards each component financially for allowing BoA to exclusively promote practice acquisition and financing at one of their component meetings.
New Director of Membership Brendan Breen, after a thorough analysis of NJDA membership data over the past several years, will be allocating more time to membership retention than his predecessor. Recruitment will not suffer as a result as the resources are already in place.
Any questions related to insurance claims should be directed to our new Director of Dental Benefits, Dr. Joan Monaco.
NJDA is requesting that Bank of America be given the opportunity to visit each NJDA Component once during the 2015 calendar year without competitive presence of other banking sponsors.
NJDA will be revamping its annual officer, council member and delegate assignment forms given to component secretaries to fill out using pen and paper with many redundancies. The process will be redeveloped in a more user friendly digital format for ease of completion.
NJDA President Bryon Roshong has informed our 4th District Trustee and ADA President Maxine Feinberg of the NJDA BOT’s desire for the ADA BOT to vote to help fund ADA Delegates and Alternate Delegates to take this financial burden off of the state associations.
Dean Feldman gave an update on the Rutgers School of Dental Medicine to the Trustees and responded to questions concerning the Rutgers Board of Governors withdrawing support for the Center for Oral Health legislation that NJDA COGPA still supports. The Dean stated that the Board of Governors was concerned with the establishment of such a Center via legislative mandate and the precedent it would set going forward. The dental school is collaborating with NJDA to facilitate the attendance of 3rd year dental students at the NJDA Annual Session’s Residency Fair on Friday May 1st.
The BOT was given a governmental affairs update on proposed amendments to the Prescription Monitoring Program legislation, water fluoridation challenges in East Brunswick and Egg Harbor City, a legislative initiative for EOB reform that would mandate disclosure of traditional versus self-insured plans on all EOB’s, and an out of network reform bill we oppose that dentists will be excluded from due to recent positive dialogue between NJDA and Assemblyman Gary Schaer, a key figure behind the legislation.
New Director of Membership Brendan Breen discussed his statistical analysis of membership loss in recent years and is developing strategies to target and retain the demographic groups that are discontinuing their membership. While recruitment efforts will still be of great importance and effort, more focus will be directed towards retention efforts than was given in the past.
Art Meisel reported that the ADA has formed a work group to focus on the growing trend of Corporate Practice throughout the country. He also discussed that member dentists should begin the process of deciding whether to opt in or opt out as a Medicare provider as the deadline is June 11th. The NJDA website contains information to guide member dentists in the decision making process.
Facebook Editor’s Report-Deborah Brown
I am updating our Facebook page as events come up. I will post next weeks general membership meeting.
NJDA Council Reports:
Membership- Genevieve Fernandes, Nima Mir-Madjlessi
A meeting of the Council on Membership was held on March 16th, 2015 at
7 pm at the Association headquarters. The following points were discussed:
Member Data: Brendan discussed the drop off in Active members over the past 3 years. New Member Category: A motion was made & seconded to create an employee dentist membership category. The motion was tabled until the next meeting so staff can get more information on this.
Garden State Dental Conference & Expo: NJDA staff will be sending out an email looking for volunteers to staff the membership booth. Part of the ADA grant that they received will be funding the Early Career Reception. This is one of 4 receptions being held at the convention on Friday evening from 5:30-6:30pm. The next meeting will be on Thursday May 14, 2015
Peer Review-Sandy Goldstein
There were no new cases assigned or mediated last month.
Committee Reports:
Corporate Sponsorship-Ira Rosen
We are pleased to have our five corporate sponsors coming to our April general membership meeting. We are grateful to Biomet 3i, Benco Dental Supply Company, Dentsply Corporation – Tulsa and Caulk divisions, TD Bank and Kuwata Pan Dent for their support. This year, Benco Dental Supply Company will also be sponsoring our all-day practice management course on April 22nd with Lisa Philp, RDH from Transitions Dental North America.
Mentor-Nima Mir-Madjlessi
Our bi-annual OSHA program that satisfies the OSHA standard on Occupational Exposure to Blood Borne Pathogens, which is required annually for dentists and staff, will be given on June 30,2015 at JFK Hospital in Edison NJ.
Two CEU credits will be awarded to the Dentists & staff members attending these 2-hour seminars. These seminars are available as a member benefit of MCDS.
A very big “Thank You” to Dr. Devang Modi for arranging all our room accommodations for the MCDS-OSHA-Mentor programs at JFK Hospital in Edison, NJ. The next OSHA recertification course will be held on October 15, 2015 at St. Peters hospital.
Please see the registration form in this newsletter for additional information and registration for the Mentor program.
New Dentist Committee-Sanjeev Satwah
We are focusing on the residency fair and specialist dinner at the upcoming annual session. Our new dentist state conference will follow in the fall.
Continuing Education-Mark Schambra
There are about 130 people signed up for the April 22th, 2015 course.
Hygiene Study Club- Alyssa Bernstein
The next CNJDH meeting will be on Wednesday May 6, 2015 at the Crowne Plaza Hotel in Edison. The speaker will be Dr. Cohen and the lecture is “How to Diagnose Dental Symptoms” Two CEU credits will be awarded for this seminar.
This CNJDH study club is available to our hygienists as a Dentist-member benefit of MCDS.
Please contact Marlene Glickman, our Executive Secretary for MCDS, at 732-764-MCDS(6237) for additional information and registration in advance for the program.
MCDS Study Club- Genevieve Fernandes, Nima Mir-Madjlessi
Mr. Mike Rizk from Lifestyle and Performance Catalyst presented ‘Balancing the demands of Dentistry’ on Wednesday April 8th, 2015 from 6:30-9 PM at the NJDA headquarters, North Brunswick, NJ. We learned how to reverse the effects of repetitive stresses encountered within any form of dental practice. Two CE credits were awarded to those attending this seminar. This tuition free course was available to our MCDS members as a member benefit.
Old Business
Dr. Alyssa Bernstein proposed that during her upcoming Presidency year we would start the board meetings at 6:45 PM. All members present were in favor with that.
New Business
Dr. Devang Modi mentioned that the JFK residents will be presenting at our April general meeting. One of the JFK residents has accepted an Oral Surgery fellowship. The September general meeting will be on the 5th Tuesday on September 29th, 2015.
Good & Welfare
Dr. Nima Mir-Madjlessi announced the arrival of their new baby boy Rodin.
Respectfully Submitted, Dr. Genevieve Fernandes, Secretary

Insurance Claims Problems?

The Board would like to remind you that Claims Resolution Service is available through the NJDA to help you resolve any dental claim issue. Please contact Dr. Joan Monaco at 732-821-9400.
This service is provided free to you as a member benefit.

Provide MCDS with your email address!

By having your email address, we can get vital and timely information to you, such as meeting cancellations due to inclement weather. Register by clicking here.

 

ADA DENTAL SNIPPET: CLAIMS SUBMISSION FOR MEDICAL PLANS WITH EMBEDDED DENTAL COVERAGE

Since the Affordable Care Act was passed, the number of medical plans offering embedded dental coverage has increased significantly. Even though these are medical plans, the plans will still accept dental claim forms and CDT procedure codes; however, there may be confusion as to where to send the dental claim.

Do you send the claims to the medical plan or is there a separate address for the dental benefits coverage? This is a relatively new concern that dentists have with these types of embedded plans.

Recently, a member dentist received a claim denial for a patient who had dental coverage through the patient’s medical plan. The dental office submitted the claim to the address for the medical plan which was printed on the patient’s ID card.
The doctor was surprised when the explanation of benefits (EOB) statement arrived at his office indicating that the claim was denied because “dental was not covered”. Upon investigation, it became apparent that the dental benefit coverage was provided by a different company (a company that was not providing the medical coverage). Unfortunately, the address for dental claim submission was not on the patient’s ID card. The dentist had to call a phone number provided on the ID card to obtain the information for the dental plan.

Given that more medical plans are offering embedded dental coverage, when a patient presents with a benefit plan that you may not be familiar with, we recommend that dental offices call the toll free dental plan number to get information on the dental claim submission.

 

Technology Column - How are you archiving your patients’ data? by Bob Silverstein

We should all be backing up our practice related data regularly. Most practice management software will have some mechanism for this, and your IT company has likely set this up for you. Some examples of this might look like having a second internal hard drive in your computer that mirrors everything that is stored onto the primary drive, an external hard drive, a flash drive, or some form of Cloud/Web based service. You may, or may not be aware that the media (hard drive, flash drive, optical disc) you are relying on is in fact, unreliable. Magnetic media only lasts 1-5 years, and for drives with moving parts, like hard drives, the drive mechanisms themselves will fail. Data on flash drives lasts 5-8 years and although the drives themselves have no moving parts, they can only be written to a finite number of times, and they are prone to physical damage and electro/magnetic deterioration (even if you write to them once and lock them in a safe, they are only going to last about 10 years). If you use a Web based service, you are hoping that they would at least notify you if they are going out of business so you can download your data. For practice management software, having a backup solution fail may not be that big a deal. If your external hard drive was failing, for example, you would have time to replace it and might just be without a backup for a few days. But what about a long term solution for archiving your patients’ digital photos, xrays, etc.? A long term solution would mean that the patient’s information can be retrieved 20, 30 or more years from now, and you wouldn’t know if your solution worked until you tried to retrieve the data. The archived data should be in a standardized, universal format that multiple software programs can read. Some examples of standardized formats are JPEG, TIFF, TXT, RTF and PDF. They should not be in a vendor specific proprietary format (I learned this the hard way when my original Paxorama digital xrays were stored in a proprietary format by Orex, and they went out of business). What are you going to do with all of those .dex files if Dexis goes out of business or gets bought out by someone else who wants to use a different format? How many of you still have Wordperfect documents on your computer that are now a challenge to open? How often does Microsoft change their format (just look at their “Save As…” dialog box)? The media that you are archiving to needs to last a very long time. If it doesn’t, you will need to plan to re-archive all of the data on new media at regular intervals before the old media goes bad. Again, hard drives only last 1-5 years. Flash/SSD drives last 5-8 years. CDs and DVDs only last 3-7 years, even if stored in a cool, dry, dark place, because the dyes that are used to store the information are organic, and they degrade over time. Even the “gold” CD/DVD media that was recommended by the National Archives a few years ago, that was thought to last 100 years, was found to degrade because of the organic dyes. The method of connecting the media to your computer (the interface) could be an issue. What if you are relying on the USB standard and at some point in the future that standard either ceases to be supported, or becomes less widely used (the parallel port, SCSI, Firewire, eSATA)? Even if the media lasts 100 years, you need to be able to hook the drive up to whatever computers look like at that point. You should have more than one method, or location, for the archived information (backed up to both physical media and an online storage service, or make two copies of the media and store one at the office and the other off site (home, safety deposit box, etc.)). If you are using a Cloud service, you should consider not only the cost, but whether the data is encrypted not only on their server, but also during the transfer of data. In addition, these services have been know to go down, be hacked, and experience glitches that irretrievably loose your data (this recently happened to Dropbox). So for long term storage 1) the media itself must last a very long time, 2) the digital format that the data is stored in should have a track record for being supported for a very long time, 3) the technology used to get the archived data back onto your computer should be something that is expected to be around for a very long time, and 4) your solution should be redundant - either stored in multiple locations or using multiple methods. I have been backing up my patients’ records for years using first CDs, then DVDs, and making two copies of each, with one set stored at my office, and the other at home. When the National Archives recommended the Mitsui Gold Archival Optical Discs (MAM-A), I re-burned all of my data onto those DVDs. These DVDs are supposed to last 83-116 years (depending on which page of their web site you are on), but are still based on organic dyes and are influenced by temperature, humidity, and light and therefore could degrade significantly faster than that. Recently, I came across a new optical disc technology that does not use organic dyes, called “M-disc.” They claim a 1,000 year storage solution (I plan to retire before that). The discs come in DVD (4.7GB) and Blu-ray (25GB) formats, but they do require a burner capable of burning them (or “engraving” them, as the company, Millenniata, calls it). They have a list of compatible burners on their web site (www.mdisc.com). You can find the burners on Amazon (do a search for “m disc burner”, and they are in the $35 - $86 price range, depending on write speed, etc. The media itself is about $3 per DVD or $4.50 per Blu-ray. The discs are readable in any DVD player capable of reading the DVD+R format (for the DVDs) and any standard Blu-ray player. I figure the only thing I don’t have control over is the technology used to connect the writer to my computer, but I can always buy a new burner/reader if this changes. If you have any questions, you can email me at [email protected].