You must know the eligibility criteria set out by CDCP, prior to sending a pre-authorization request to your PCC.

Pre-authorization submissions MUST include if the Crown/Denture is an initial placement. If not initial, you must indicate approximately how many years ago the existing was placed. You must provide this information to your PCC/Insurance Coordinator to avoid delaying your pre-authorization.

Ensure you check your patient in and out. This is not only needed so everyone in the clinic and front desk are aware of patient flow and activity but also for safety reasons incase of a fire or emergency.

You must have a procedure code swiped for each patient's visit. It may take a number of sessions to complete a single procedure code so you are either in processing the same parent code at each appointment until treatment is completed or you are in processing/completing the step codes as appropriate.

Pay attention to the codes and information you are entering into axium. Patient records are legal documents and as such must accurately reflect the treatment provided at each session.

Having gone thru your mini clearance you can hopefully appreciate that keeping your patient documents accurate and up to date makes sense.

For patients who have completed all planned dental care and are assigned to a hygiene student only, ensure these patients have a current (within 12 mos.) recall exam. This can be completed in the hygiene chair by the hygiene recall D4 student. D4 students need to ensure they input a recall exam code into the patient's chart and progress notes.

Remember to send out a general referral for undergrad student assignment and to have the interprofessional note completed at the session. 

For those students who have patients that have been assigned to them from the OHAF outreach program ensure that you contact these patient's immediately to schedule a treatment plan and start on treatment.

OHAF funding ends on 31 March 2026. What does this mean:

Some patients are referred to us from private practice offices. These referrals are for select procedures such as single implants, endo, crowns, and dentures. Sometimes we need to do a "limited" screening for these patients to determine if the referred treatment is within our students' appropriate learning level. This will be booked in the screening chair and will be labelled "LTD TX".

Do NOT do a comprehensive screening for these patients. When we have a limited referral from private practice, we only want to ensure that we are able to complete the specific care referred to us; we do not want to take over the comprehensive care for the patient. You can appreciate that we will lose out on private practice offices referring limited care to the college clinic if we proceed to take over the patient comprehensively.

If there is a need to contact a parent/guardian of a pediatric patient, this must be coordinated through the Pediatric PCC at the front desk. Students should not use their personal means of communication to contact parents/guardians of the Pediatric Program Patients. 

students must use the Emerald S scanners even if the Primescan is functioning.

This is not something that you can forget at any point in your career. Make sure you are flushing your lines, washing your hands at all key points, and following all IPAC protocols. Breaches may result in loss of clinic privileges.