Codes and treatment plans · 1 of 6
How Mesio picks a code
Rules and a licensed dictionary do the deciding. A model reads your sentence. It is never allowed to name a code the dictionary did not already offer.
Coding is where software is most tempted to be clever and where clever is most expensive. A code that is confidently wrong gets billed, and it is your name on the claim.
So the division of labour is deliberate. Understanding the sentence is a language problem, and a model is good at that. Deciding which CDT code a piece of work is, is not a language problem. That is done by rules and by the licensed dictionary.
The order it tries
First match wins, strongest evidence first.
- You said the codeProvided it is a real one.Said
- Your practice’s own phraseYour word for it beats any general rule.Taught
- Keyword rulesNarrow rules fire before broad ones.Rule
- The dictionary’s own descriptorsWhere that produces an unambiguous answer.Matched
- A model choosing between close candidatesIt picks from a list. It cannot answer off it.Ranked
- UncodedSurfaced with your words and the closest descriptors, for you to settle.Yours
A code can only come out of the licensed dictionary. That is a hard boundary, not a preference. When the model is asked to choose, its answer is checked against the offered list, and an answer that is not on it is discarded rather than used.
Advice is not a procedure
This is the trap worth naming, because every recommendation you make has a procedure code that looks like its match.
Telling a patient to buy a desensitizing toothpaste is not applying a desensitizing medicament in the chair. Suggesting a fluoride rinse at home is not a fluoride application. Advising better brushing is not delivering oral hygiene instruction as a service. The codes exist for the delivered procedures, and coding the advice as the procedure bills for something that never happened.
Mesio recognizes advice as advice and leaves it in the note where it belongs.
Nothing is quietly dropped
A plan item Mesio cannot code does not disappear. It comes back as a prompt carrying your exact phrase and the closest codes the dictionary has, or an honest statement that there is no close match and this one needs a code by hand.
This matters more than it sounds. Silent omission is the worst failure mode in this part of the product, because nothing on the screen tells you it happened. A plan that quietly lost a procedure looks exactly like a plan that never had one.
It will not bill the same work twice
If the same procedure on the same tooth appears both as work done today and as work recommended, that is caught. Once as completed and once as planned is two claims for one thing.
When it disagrees with itself, your words win
Your sentence and the structured reading of it can disagree about which teeth you meant. When they do, the sentence wins, because the sentence is what you actually said. The reading is only trusted where you named nothing.