New Associate? Get the setup right from the start

Do you have a new associate in your practice and not quite sure how to make sure the provider settings are correct? Let me help.

There are a couple of settings that you need to make sure are correct to avoid any delayed claims, rejected claims and provider payment allocation. Depending on if your new associate is paid on production or collection will determine how you should setup your default payment allocation. Also, it is important to know how Dentrix looks at the provider with some of the management reports.

• The first thing you will set up is the provider ID in the Practice Resource Setup. This is where you will enter the NPI, Tax ID, DEA and provider license number. The doctor’s personal (Type I NPI) number will go here and the office tax ID number.
• After you have the provider setup finished, then double check that the claim is set up the way you want it. The claim setup in located in the Practice Defaults, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Practice Defaults. This is where you want to double check that the Billing/Pay To Provider and the Rendering/Treating Provider is set up the way you want it. The information here makes up the bottom two boxes on your insurance claim form and the insurance companies use this information to know who to send the check to and if the rendering provider is a contracted provider.
• Depending on how your associate is being paid may prompt you to double check your default payment allocation setup. Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences and look in the upper left corner of this window to see how it is set up now. There are four choices and you can read a blog I wrote recently about these options by CLICKING HERE. If your new associate is being paid on collections, this is going to be extremely important.

The above list are the critical things to makes sure the billing and claim form is set up correctly for your doctors.

You will also need to setup your new provider with the appointment days, hours and a special color for the appointment book.  You can read more about how to set up the appointment for your new doctor by CLICKING HERE.

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.

Why do I need to run Month End?

January is right around the corner and that means we are coming up on Year End.  I get asked a lot of questions about what the process is this time of year.  Is there a special report I should run?  Is there anything I need to know about running Year End?  The fact is there is nothing different to running Year End as there is to running Month End. 

Month End is a very important process to keeping your system running smoothly and making sure all your data is as accurate as possible.  It is also a very important security feature and should not be ignored.  I am surprised how many offices have not run a Month End for months, or even years.  Let’s go through exactly what the Month End process does so you have a clear understanding of how important it is. 

The Month End process does four main things . . .

• It will age your account balances.  This will move your current balance into 30 days, 30 days into 60 and so on.  On many reports, including the Provider A/R Totals report, it will move your ending accounts receivable balance into the beginning balance for the new month.
• Your ledger for that month will now be placed into history, which means that you cannot edit or delete anything on the patient’s ledger.  You will need to make an adjustment if you want to fix something on the ledger.
• The Month End will lock up any clinical notes that have not been signed so there can be no editing to your clinical documentation.  If you need to change a clinical note, you can do an addendum. 
• It will reset any insurance benefit used back to zero if the insurance plan is scheduled to renew.  This becomes very important for your December Month End because so many plans renew in January. 

For more information about the Month End process, please check out these other blog posts.

CLICK HERE for some sample reports to run

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.