# Oral/Maxillofacial Surgery anyone?



## Treetoad (Apr 30, 2008)

Hello All,
Our general/trauma practice has acquired an Oral-Maxillofacial surgeon.  The problem is.........none of the coders here have coded for these type of services.  The coders in our department have a zero comfort level with his services and we have no-one to ask questions.  Also, did I mention the surgeon isn't very staff-friendly?  Also, his documentation leaves much to be desired.  Do any of you know of any particular seminars or other training information that would be helpful to our department?  Also, legitimate source documentation would be extremely helpful to us.  We have been doing the best we can, under the circumstances, but we feel that we're sitting ducks.  Please help us, if you can.

L


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## jenndeshon (May 1, 2008)

*It is a complicated field!*

I started in an OMS practice last year and it is a completely different animal! OMS doctors frequently use both medical and dental codes and you have to learn how to convert from one to the other. I have been lucky enough to have a co-worker who doesn't do coding but has worked in the billing area long enough to understand how some things work. I would be happy to help with whatever questions I can but remember, I am also relatively new to this field. Here are a couple of resources that can help you, I think:

www.aaoms.org - American Academy of Oral and Maxillofacial Surgeons. I just finished an online course through them for Advanced Coding that was intense and informative. They also offer a Basic Coding online course and several workshops at seminars throughout the nation all year long including a Beyond the Basics workshop. The website also has lots of information about OMS.

In addition to your regular coding books, I suggest you invest in a CDT (current dental terminology) book if you do not have one. Also, Ingenix publishes a coding guide to dental services that helps you convert basic codes from dental to medical. They also have an OMS guide, but I bought it last year and found it to be totally useless for my purposes. That guide might be helpful for you, though, since it gives detailed descriptions of OMS procedures and your OMS surgeon is not staff friendly (mine are, usually ). However, the OMS guide does not convert codes.

I keep hoping that AAPC will add a forum just for OMS coders and/or seminars as I am always interested in hearing how other practices handle the same situations I see. There are at least four or five of us on these boards and it is difficult to find information for OMS on other sites. (Sorry! )

Hope this information helps out a bit! Good luck!

Jennifer, CPC


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## Treetoad (May 3, 2008)

*Thank you for your help*

I appreciate your response.  We do have a CDT book, so that's somewhat helpful.  I will make sure if he isn't already a member of the AAOMS, he will be.


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## tamera234 (Aug 31, 2013)

*Oral and maxillary surgery*

I've worked in it for years! Here it is 6 years since the last post frustrated there is not more help for us in this industry! I'm almost finished with the CPc course and have learned hardly anything about my industry!


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