# Dental Insider Secrets (dentalinsidersecrets.com)

> The provider publication by Eric Chong, who reads denied medical and dental claims for a living. The operator view: the leak named, the mechanism shown, the recovery angle that works. No surveys, no invented numbers. Provider recovery routes to ClaimRail; a denied claim a patient holds routes to CheckMyDenial. The movement argument lives at Health Starts From The Mouth (hsfm.co).

## Core references

- A denial code is not a coverage verdict. Codes like CARC 16 (missing information), CARC 50 (not medically necessary), and CARC 11 (diagnosis inconsistent with procedure) are frequently recoverable, because the fix is usually a missing field, a supporting diagnosis, or documentation that already exists in the chart but never reached the payer.
- Some dental work denied under the dental benefit is covered under medical when it is inextricably linked to a covered medical condition. The denial is a signal it was billed to the wrong benefit, not the end of the claim.

## Key pages

- Denial codes reference: https://dentalinsidersecrets.com/denials
- Cornerstones: https://dentalinsidersecrets.com/essays
- The tools: https://dentalinsidersecrets.com/tools
- For dentists: https://dentalinsidersecrets.com/for-dentists
- About Eric Chong: https://dentalinsidersecrets.com/about-eric
- The movement: https://hsfm.co

## The evidence layer

The reason a dental claim and a medical claim are two different rails at all is administrative history, not biology. The sourced record, including the 1965 Medicare dental exclusion and the CMS "inextricably linked" rulemaking now reversing it case category by case category, is documented at https://dentalismedical.com. The clearance standard that these claims turn on is published free at https://predentalcheck.com (dental side) and https://premedicalcheck.com (physician side).