Discover how the Insurance Aging Report can help you check on past due insurance claims, and learn several tips to help you use this report more effectively.
Updated 10/29/21
Being a financial coordinator in a dental practice is a huge responsibility. It requires that you wear many hats, including collection call expert, insurance bulldog, treatment plan closer, and bonus plan motivator. What I love about Dentrix is that you can manage all these responsibilities within your practice management software. However, the one task that I see getting pushed to the side the most is managing the insurance money.
Many offices ask me to help them use Dentrix to its fullest potential, and one of the reports I always check during my assessment is the Insurance Aging Report. The Insurance Aging Report is one of the best tools available for you to check on past due insurance claims. Running this report should be part of your regular weekly management routine. It includes each insurance carrier with outstanding claims, the insurance plan name, group plan name, insurance phone number, group number, and each outstanding insurance claim for that insurance carrier.
Running the Insurance Aging Report
To run the Insurance Aging Report, in the Office Manager, from the Reports menu, point to Ledger, and then click Insurance Aging Report. The Insurance Claim Aging Report dialog box appears. Specify what you want included in the report, and then click OK. After you’ve run the report, use the information to follow up with your insurance carriers.
Here are some best practice tips as you run and use this report:
- If the patient has dual insurance, and the primary insurance pays in full, make sure you create the secondary claim and then pay it off with a $0 payment immediately. This will ensure that the secondary claim doesn’t sit on your Insurance Aging Report as an open claim.
- When you need to check on a past due claim, make sure you are documenting all information or phone conversations in the Ledger’s Claim Status Note box. These notes will print on your Insurance Aging Report for easy follow-up.
- If an insurance payment was sent to the patient, make sure you apply a $0 payment on the claim to close it out and make a note in the Ledger’s Claim Status Note box.
- If you are using the eCentral Insurance Eligibility feature, you also have access to electronic claim status and the archive of your transmission reports. When you have a Document Control Number (DCN) from the insurance company indicating that they have received the claim, copy and paste this number into the Ledger’s Claim Status Note. This way, when you are calling on a past due claim, having that DCN ready could help you avoid having to resubmit the claim.
Learn More
To learn more about the Insurance Aging Report, see the Insurance Aging Report topic in Dentrix Help.
Visit https://www.dentrix.com/products/eservices/ecentral/insurance-manager to discover how Dentrix can help you manage your insurance processes.
By Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer
Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.
