Complete these important tasks in your dental software whenever a new associate joins your practice.
Updated 10/29/21
When you have a new associate join your practice, there are a couple of Dentrix settings that you need to make sure are correct to avoid delayed or rejected claims and to ensure accurate provider payment allocation. Depending on whether your new associate is paid based on production or collection will determine how you set up your default payment allocation. It is also important to know how Dentrix reports on the provider when you use some of the management reports.
The first thing you will set up is the provider ID. In the Office Manager, from the Maintenance menu, point to Practice Setup, and then click Practice Resource Setup. In the Practice Resource Setup dialog box, under Provider(s), click New, and then add the new provider information in the Provider Information dialog box. This is where you will enter the provider’s StateID#, TIN#, DEA#, NPI, Provider#, and so forth. The doctor’s personal (Type I NPI) number goes in the NPI field, and the office tax ID number goes in the Office# field. When finished, click OK.
After the provider setup is finished, verify that the claim is set up the way you want it. From the Maintenance menu, point to Practice Setup, and then click Practice Defaults. Under Default Insurance Claim Providers, verify that the Billing Provider, Rendering Provider, and Pay-To Provider all specify the correct provider information]. The information you provide here is used in the bottom two boxes on your insurance claim form, and the insurance companies use this information to know who to send payment to and if the rendering provider is a contracted provider. When finished, click OK.
Depending on how your associate is being paid, you may want to also verify your default payment allocation setup. From the Maintenance menu, point to Practice Setup, and then click Preferences. If your new associate is being paid on collections, this is going to be extremely important.
For Provider, select one of the following:
- Split by Provider will separate out the patient payment to pay off each producing provider. Your insurance claims already do this, so why not split the personal payments as well?
- To Patients Primary Provider will apply the entire personal payment to the patient’s primary provider (PROV1 on family file) regardless of who the producing provider is. This decision will give too much collections to one provider and, if you run a Provider A/R report, the payments and accounts receivable will be lopsided.
For Patient, select one of the following:
- Family Account will post the entire payment to the guarantor. The result of doing this will be an accurate family balance but incorrect patient balances.
- Current Patient will post the personal payment only to the patient ledger you are logged onto currently.
- Split by Family Members is a new feature as of Dentrix G6. It allows you to take one payment and distribute it out to multiple family members with one step. The result of doing this will be more accurate patient balances because it looks across the entire family account for patients with a balance. Please note: if you have archived a patient with a balance and you are using this new feature, it will pull that patient out of archive to apply a payment.
For Split Method, select one of the following:
- Percentage Payments will equally distribute the patient payment between any providers who has a balance.
- FIFO (First In First Out) will pay off the oldest provider balance first.
- Guarantor Estimate is always my first choice. What this allocation method will do is look at any current treatment with an insurance claim pending and allocate the patient payment depending on the insurance estimate. After it has allocated the payment to the estimated patient portion of the claim, it will revert to FIFO.
- Equal Payments is very similar to the percentage payments method but will just split the payment into equal payments instead of a percentage.
These are the critical things you need to do to ensure that billing and claim forms are set up correctly for your doctors. You will also need to set up your new provider with the appointment days, hours, and a special color for the Appointment Book.
Learn More
To learn more about setting up new provider hours, see the Setting Up Providers topic in Dentrix Help.
Read The Importance of Inactivating Providers in Dentrix to get more insights into maintaining your staff and providers in Dentrix.
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.
