Sourcing standards
Primary sources first. Statutes, regulations, court opinions, agency manuals, and payer documentation. Where we rely on secondary commentary, usually because a primary source is unlinkable, or because a law firm’s analysis is the fastest route to a legislative status, we say so and name it. State pages are built around primary authority. The DSO laws by state table routes to a page for every state and the District of Columbia. Each page identifies the statutes, rules, cases, agency materials, and source limitations used for its summary. Official compilations are preferred; a secondary source should be labeled when it is needed to locate or interpret difficult primary material. Material legal propositions should be traceable. Pinpoints appear next to the proposition or in the page’s source table so an operator can open the authority and frame the unresolved question precisely.
Freshness is visible without manual stamps. Mintlify displays each page’s last-modified date. The text still gives legally meaningful dates, such as enactment, effective date, sunset, compliance deadline, data period, and source publication date. A page timestamp cannot replace those details. Current contracts, agency instructions, and enacted law remain authoritative over a summary.
We say when something is unsettled. Parts of CPOD are genuinely contested; the same state statute reads differently to different practitioners, and enforcement posture moves independently of statutory text. Where that’s true we say so rather than manufacturing false precision.
What we deliberately don’t publish
50-state day-count tables. Refund deadlines and escheatment dormancy periods vary by state and by property type, come from several different sources, and are amended without press releases. A table of specific numbers would be wrong somewhere within months. The refund timing and escheatment pages give the sourcing framework, the rules that are consistent across states, and a defensible internal standard. Licensed code sets reproduced wholesale. CDT is ADA-licensed; CPT is AMA-licensed. We describe the systems and use minimal illustrative codes. For CARC and RARC we summarize the working set and link the authoritative X12 list. Cached payer and administrator assignments. Which dental benefit administrator runs a state’s Medicaid dental program changes at reprocurement. We link the live program page rather than freezing an assignment that will silently go stale. Legal advice. We explain the landscape and cite the sources so you can bring a precise question to counsel licensed in your state. We cannot substitute for one, and pages that touch law say so.Review cadence
Known limitations
Stating these plainly, because they affect how much weight to put on any given page:- CPOD tier labels are ours. Classifying a state as strict, moderate, or permissive involves judgment, and reasonable practitioners weigh proprietor clauses, enforcement history, and board posture differently. We cite the statute behind each classification; verify against it and with local counsel.
- State pages are summaries, not opinions. They orient you and point at primary sources. They are not a substitute for local counsel, and the newest legislation may not yet be reflected everywhere.
- Payer content ages fastest. Portals move, forms change, dental benefit administrator assignments turn over at reprocurement, and timely filing limits are contract-specific regardless of what any table says.
- Vendor content reflects a point in time. The PMS, clearinghouse, and membership-platform markets consolidate and rebrand rapidly.
- Vendor descriptions are descriptive, not endorsements. Where we describe how a vendor fits a use case, we give the reasoning and the caveats. Verify both against your own requirements.
Conflict of interest disclosure
This wiki is maintained by Lemma, which builds dental-first banking for DSO groups. Everywhere else the wiki is vendor-neutral, including about Lemma’s own category. The banking concepts, account structure guide, and reconciliation guide are written to be useful regardless of where you bank, and the all-in-one platforms evaluation rubric applies to Lemma too. If any page reads like a sales document, tell us. The site’s value depends on being useful to readers who will never be customers.Report an error
We would rather be corrected than be wrong. Email contact@getlemma.com with:- The page URL
- What is incorrect
- The correct information, ideally with a source
- Legal or regulatory claims that are wrong or out of date
- State pages that don’t reflect current law
- Broken or moved payer and administrator links
- Vendor descriptions that are inaccurate
- Anything that reads as promotional rather than useful