Discover how using billing types helps you streamline collections and get more focused information in your reports.
Updated 6/30/20
As we go about our day, checking patients in and out, creating new patient accounts, and talking about treatment plans, we don’t often stop to think about how we categorize our patient accounts. We definitely don’t think about how account labels can make our everyday tasks easier. But they can! Knowing more about your patient accounts not only helps you in your everyday work, but also helps you to make more informed business management decisions.
Dentrix gives you the ability to apply a label to each patient account with a billing type. When you use billing types, you can easily identify the collection situation of an account, collect payments more effectively at the time of service and beyond, and get more focused information out of the regular reports you use.
Identify the Accounts You Want to Track
Have you ever wanted to get specific information about your PPO accounts? Do you want to know how many patients have signed up for your in-house discount plan? Do you want to identify special accounts like Medicaid or staff member accounts? Create a billing type for them!
When you use billing types that are meaningful to your office, everyone in the office can be on the same page. For example, if you attach a billing type to your non-insured patients, you can easily see that billing type in the Family File and Ledger. Then, as you check those patients out, you will know that you need to collect payment for services today.
Assign a Billing Type to Your Accounts
Billing types are account-specific, meaning that all the patients within a family will be assigned the same billing type. You can assign billing types from either the Family File or the Ledger. From the Family File, double-click the account information block. From the Ledger, click File > Billing/ Payment Agreement. In the Billing/ Payment Agreement Information dialog box, select the billing type you want to assign from the Billing Type list, and then click OK.
Improve Your Collection Routines
Billing types will help your team know how to better handle collections on patient accounts. For example, you can use billing types to see patients who have no co-pay, patients who are part of your office discount plan, and so forth.
When it comes time to run billing statements for the month, you can quickly generate statements for specific groups of patients because you can filter statements by billing type. You can even exclude billing types from your statement run, such as accounts sent to collections.
Get Custom Report Data
Many reports in Dentrix can be filtered by billing type. You can generate the reports for a specific billing type, or you can exclude certain billing types from the totals on the reports.
For example, you can generate the Patient List and filter it by billing type to find accounts with no insurance or accounts on a specific PPO insurance plan. Or, you can find the exact accounts receivable belonging to all patients assigned to a specific billing type by including only that billing type in your Aging Report filters.
You can also use billing types to create and send letters to specific groups of patients. If you want to generate letters for all of your uninsured patients to offer them membership in your new dental health savings plan, you can do so quickly if you have all of your non-insurance patients attached to a billing type.
If you want to take patient account management to the next level, billing types can help you. Billing types can help you get more information out of Dentrix reports, collect money more effectively on the date of service, and make educated decisions about the management of your practice.
Learn More
To learn more, see the Customizing Billing Types topic in Dentrix help.
By Cris Hays, Dentrix Profitability Coach
Originally published in Dentrix Magazine, Winter 2014
