Use these features in Dentrix to help you calculate patient’s payment amounts, keep a healthy cash flow, and reduce accounts receivables.
I always recommend collecting from patients at the time of service. If you don’t collect from patients when they are seen for treatment, it ends up costing your practice more money. It costs you money to send out statements. It also costs you money when your staff spends time contacting patients regarding their balances. And if patients don’t pay and you have to send the account to a collection agency, there are costs involved in that too.
Here are three of my favorite tools in Dentrix to help you collect accurately from patients at the time of service.
Coverage Table
Every insurance plan in Dentrix should have a coverage table associated with it. The coverage table is used to enter how much the insurance plan will cover for a particular procedure or group of procedures.
My favorite feature of coverage tables is that they are completely customizable. You can create your own procedure code ranges based on trends you see in your office. For example, if you notice a full mouth series of X-rays is being covered with a deductible applied, you can customize the coverage table to reflect that. This customization can be done for each individual insurance carrier or you can change your default coverage table in the Office Manager.
Payment Table
The payment table is one of my favorite features in Dentrix. It allows you to enter in the dollar amount that an insurance company will pay for a specific procedure code. This is extremely helpful for procedures that typically have an alternate benefit applied, like a posterior composite filling. It’s also extremely helpful if your office is out of network with an insurance company when the co-insurance percentages may not be accurate. Procedure codes and payment amounts can be entered in the Family File, or updated when posting insurance payments using the Itemize by Procedure option.
Override Insurance Estimates
If you know a procedure won’t be covered by insurance, (for example, a replacement crown less than five years old) you can override the insurance estimate for the procedure.
That way the patient is aware that the insurance won’t pay for the procedure and you can collect from the patient at the time of service.
Collecting accurately from patients at the time of service can reduce costly accounts receivables for your office. Using the features in Dentrix to help you calculate patient’s payment amounts can keep healthy cash flow and reduce accounts receivables.
Learn More
For additional information, read the following :
- Improve Insurance Payment Estimates with Coverage Tables and Payment Tables
- Improve the Accuracy of Patient Fee Estimates
- Editing Treatment
By Charlotte Skaggs
Certified Dentrix Trainer and The Dentrix Office Manager columnist
Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for over 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.
