About Abrechnung

Abrechnung

Abrechnung — published online as "abrechnung dental" at abrechnung-dental.de — is a German specialist knowledge portal for dental billing, serving dentists, dental technicians and billing professionals who handle the complex fee systems of German dental practices. Operated by the Zahnärztlicher Fach-Verlag (zfv), the dental specialist publisher behind the weekly DZW – Die ZahnarztWoche, the portal presents itself as an all-in-one billing wiki: a searchable database of all German dental fee schedules, thousands of commentaries, billing examples, analogies and model justifications, supplemented by a blog with billing news and a library of live webinars. It markets "fifty years of billing knowledge," drawing on the publishing house's long history as a provider of billing aids for dental practices.

Overview

German dental billing is famously intricate. Practices must navigate parallel fee systems — the GOZ (fee schedule for dentists) for private billing, the BEMA (uniform assessment standard) for statutory health insurance patients, the GOÄ for medical services, plus fixed subsidies (Festzuschüsse), the BEB '97 for private laboratory services and BEL II for statutory laboratory work. Correct billing directly affects practice revenue, and errors or omissions cost money; the industry's own literature notes that many ancillary services are wrongly billed, producing avoidable losses. Abrechnung dental addresses exactly this problem: a single portal where billing staff can look up any fee item, understand its requirements, see worked examples and find the right justification wording.

The portal's content is organized as a knowledge database. Its core is the complete set of fee catalogs — every fee number with point values, multiplication factors and euro amounts — enriched with practical billing helpers, commentaries from both the statutory (KZBV) and private (PKV) perspectives, more than 1,400 commentaries, over 160 billing examples and more than 100 analogies for services not explicitly listed in the schedules. Model justifications and documentation blocks give practices ready-to-use text for the written explanations that German fee law frequently requires. An intelligent full-text search is designed to answer the everyday question of the billing desk: how is this specific service correctly charged?

Around the database, the portal operates as a trade publication in the digital sense. A blog publishes billing news and analysis — topics range from forgotten billable services and the billing of specific treatments to economic efficiency audits and budgeting issues in periodontal therapy. A media library and webinar program provide continuing education: live webinars on important billing topics plus an archive of past sessions. A newsletter keeps subscribers current. In this combination — reference database plus editorial news plus education — abrechnung dental functions as the digital successor to the printed billing aids the publisher has produced for decades.

History

The portal's history is inseparable from that of its publisher. The Zahnärztlicher Fach-Verlag (zfv), based in Herne, developed over decades into a leading media specialist for communication, specialist information and organization for dental and orthodontic practices, with a broad offering of books, reference sheets, appointment and patient consultation systems. Billing was always central to that portfolio: the publisher's billing aids have been a staple of German dental practices for generations, and the company's own materials speak of fifty years of billing knowledge accumulated in its publications.

In 2016, the publisher extended its billing portfolio with the online portal abrechnung-dental.de, placed under the "Dr. Hinz Praxis und Wissen" umbrella brand — the imprint associated with the practice-management expertise of Dr. Hinz, a well-known name in German dental practice consulting. The move reflected a broader shift in professional publishing: from printed reference works and loose-leaf collections to searchable, continuously updated digital knowledge bases that billing staff can consult chairside or at the reception desk.

Since its launch, the portal has been steadily expanded. New features, additional commentaries and examples, the webinar library and the blog have grown the offering from a fee-schedule database into a comprehensive billing companion. Press materials from 2023 presented a relaunched and improved portal, emphasizing the depth of its knowledge base and the addition of expert consultation features in the higher subscription tiers. The portal remains under active development, with new blog articles and webinars added on an ongoing basis.

Coverage and Content

The heart of abrechnung dental is its fee-schedule database, covering the GOZ, GOÄ, BEMA, Festzuschüsse, BEB '97 and BEL II in full. Each fee item is presented with its number, point value, applicable factors and resulting amounts, plus the treatment area and a description of the service content. For a billing professional, this is the daily reference: whether a treatment plan item, an anesthesia service or a laboratory step is correctly captured depends on exactly these details.

The editorial layer turns the raw schedules into applicable knowledge. Commentaries explain the billing rules from both the statutory-insurance and private-insurance viewpoints — a crucial distinction, since the same clinical service may be billed entirely differently depending on the patient's insurance status. Billing examples walk through realistic cases step by step, such as the correct application of a fee number in an emergency treatment scenario, showing which items can be combined and which documentation is required. Analogies address the common problem of new or unusual services that have no dedicated fee number, showing how they can be billed by analogy to listed items. Model justifications provide the written reasoning that fee regulations demand when standard factors are exceeded.

The blog extends coverage to strategy and news: articles on overlooked billable services ("even small things add up"), on billing specific treatments to statutory insurance, on economic efficiency reviews and on the tension between treatment guidelines and budget constraints. Webinars — live and archived — deliver structured training on important billing topics, and the newsletter summarizes what's new. Together, these formats serve the portal's promise: not just a database, but practical expertise for maximizing legitimate practice revenue.

Organization and Ownership

Abrechnung dental is published by the Zahnärztlicher Fach-Verlag GmbH (zfv), the dental specialist publisher headquartered in Herne, North Rhine-Westphalia. The zfv is an established media company for the dental profession: since 1987 it has published DZW – Die ZahnarztWoche, described as the only independent weekly newspaper for dentists, alongside journals such as Prophylaxe Impuls and Chance Praxis, plus extensive book series, patient films and digital consultation systems. The portal sits within this portfolio as the digital billing specialist, under the "Dr. Hinz Praxis und Wissen" brand.

The commercial model is subscription-based, with three tiers aimed at different practice needs. The "Silber" level, positioned as the everyday billing companion with all billing items and additional services, is priced at 19.50 euros per month; the bestselling "Gold" level adds further specialist knowledge including analogies, special cases, model justifications and live webinars at 41.50 euros per month; the "Platin" level adds individual expert billing consultation on the subscriber's own cases at 79.00 euros per month. A four-week free trial is offered to prospective subscribers. Contact and support run through the publisher's channels, with the Haranni Academie named as a contact point for the portal.

Digital Presence

Abrechnung dental exists entirely as a digital product: there is no print edition, and the website is the publication. The portal's design centers on the search function — the full-text search across all fee schedules and knowledge articles is the primary navigation tool, reflecting the use case of a billing professional looking up a specific item under time pressure. Subscriber login gates the full database, examples and webinars, while the blog and selected content are publicly accessible as a showcase of the portal's expertise.

The newsletter extends the portal's reach into subscribers' inboxes with current billing topics, and the webinar program — live sessions plus an on-demand library — gives the brand a regular rhythm of events that a pure database would lack. Feedback mechanisms invite users to suggest improvements, indicating an actively maintained product. For a niche B2B publication, this digital-only model is well suited to the audience: billing knowledge must be current — fee schedules and regulations change — and a continuously updated online portal serves that need better than any print cycle could. The site's imprint, terms, FAQ and cancellation information follow the standard structure of a German subscription service, underscoring that abrechnung dental is run as a professional SaaS-style publishing product rather than a traditional magazine.