The Most Viewed Dentrix Office Manager Posts of 2020 (Part 3)

We've made it! The final week of our countdown of our 15 most popular blog posts of the year. If you missed them, click these links for Part 1 and Part 2 of our countdown series.

Is it any wonder that our five most viewed posts are all centered around topics on how to deal with the pandemic and it's aftermath? There's a lot of good information that can still be applicable in your offices now and in the months to come.

So here they are, our top 5 most viewed blog posts of 2020:

5: Missed Appointments: What's Your Approach?

4: Things to Do When You Can't See Patients

3: Two Reports to Focus on During Down Time

2: Coronavirus Protection for Your Team and Patients

1: Rescheduling Appointments Due to Office Closures

We'll be back the first Wednesday in January with our first post of the new year!

The Most Viewed Dentrix Office Manager Posts of 2020 (Part 2)

Welcome back! Last week we started off with our first group of popular blog posts from 2020. This week we're continuing, breaking into the top 10 posts of the year that cover everything from Dentrix tools your practice should be using to COVID-19 topics. 

 10: Returning to Work - 4 Recommendations and How to Implement Them Using Dentrix

9: 3 Dentrix Tools to Help You Accurately Collect Payment at Time of Service

8: Charging for PPE: What You Need to Set up in Dentrix

7: Setting Up and Using Adjustment Types in Dentrix

6: Spend Time on Updating Outstanding Treatment Plans

Join us next week as be finish up with our top 5 most viewed blog posts of the year! 

The Most Viewed Dentrix Office Manager Posts of 2020 (Part 1)

2020 is quickly coming to an end. What a year it's been! Hopefully our blog posts this year have been helpful and informative. We know that you are busy, and over the course of the year may have missed a blog post or two. So over the next three weeks, we are going to highlight the 15 blog posts that were viewed most often this year. 

We'll break those 15 most-viewed posts into groups of five, starting off this week with a countdown from #15 to #11. We'll continue next week with #10 to #6 and then finish up the week after that with our final top 5 posts of the year.

Let's get started!

15: Verifying Patient Insurance Information

14: Things to Focus on in the Fourth Quarter

13: Finding Patients to Schedule After Reopening

12: Communicating with Patients During the Pandemic

11: 4 Dentrix Features for Saving Time in Your Office

Stay tuned the next two weeks for the remaining top ten popular Dentrix tips of the year!

New Dentrix Features To Help Manage Patient and Provider Balances (Part 2)

In my last blog post, I wrote about allocating balances. In Dentrix, it’s important to allocate patient’s procedures, payments, and adjustments to the patient for accounts to be calculated correctly. Similarly, it’s important to post procedures, payments, and adjustments to the specific provider of the procedure. 

Why is it so important to post to the provider?

Many practices that are privately owned by a solo practitioner have always posted all payments and adjustments to the owner-doctor. This results in messy accounting and inaccurate reports. For example, if a patient comes in for a prophy with the hygienist, which costs $100, and an exam with the doctor that costs $50, and the entire $150 payment is posted to the doctor, reports in Dentrix will reflect that the hygienist has a balance, or is owed $100, while the doctor has a credit of $100.

Why does it matter if providers have balances and credits if the patient's balance is accurate?

If your doctor decides to retire in the future or bring on an associate who is paid on production or collections, it will be imperative that procedures, payments, and adjustments are posted properly among the different providers. Usually, associates are paid based either on their production or on money collected from procedures they performed. In order to determine how much they should be paid, you would run a report in Dentrix to determine the amount of production or collections. Production is determined by the provider ID that the procedure is assigned to. That’s why it’s important to always double-check that the provider ID is correct when setting an appointment complete. Collections amounts are also determined by the provider ID that the payment is assigned to. 

You can use the Spilt by Provider feature when posting a payment to ensure the payment is posted to the provider of the procedure. 

This feature takes the guesswork out of which provider to post payments and adjustments to. In the example I gave earlier, with the $100 that should have been posted to the hygienist and the $50 that should have been posted to the doctor, when you use the Split by Provider feature, Dentrix calculates this automatically and posts the payment accordingly. This feature will prevent the problem of provider credits from continuing to happen in the future.

It's also important to post adjustments by provider because adjustments affect production and collections based on the adjustment type. An example of how this could affect the way an associate is paid is if a patient overpays for a procedure and has a credit. Let’s say the patient paid $1000 for a procedure, their insurance pays more than estimated, and the patient is left with a credit of $200. The patient refund adjustment should be posted to the same provider the payment was assigned to. Otherwise, if the provider is paid a percentage based on collections, they would be paid a percentage of $1000, instead of $800, which would be correct.

The best Dentrix report to use when calculating provider production and collections is the Provider A/R Totals Report. The reason to use this report is because adjustments are calculated into the production and collections to give you accurate totals.

For past provider credits and balances that weren’t allocating correctly, Dentrix has developed some tools to assist in the proper allocation of provider credits with the Provider Credit Balances Manager. This new tool will help your office to clean up provider credits for more accurate reporting. 

With the release of Dentrix G7.4, another new feature has been introduced to help you clean up provider credits and balances. When inactivating a provider, you have the option to transfer provider balances to a replacement provider. 

This eliminates the need to allocate balances for the inactivated provider by individual patient accounts. This is an exciting new feature. Many offices I work with have providers who haven’t worked at the office in years but still have credits and balances. By inactivating them and transferring their balances and credits to a replacement provider, it will save you a lot of time. 

Before inactivating a provider, choose the replacement provider carefully. It’s important that you understand how the balances and credits of the replacement provider will be affected. An example of how balances and credits will be affected is if provider DR01 retires. In Dentrix, payments have been posted to provider DR01, so he has a large credit within the provider credits reports. Provider DR02 is taking over the practice, but payments had not been posted to his provider ID, so he has a balance. When you inactivate DR01, and replace him with DR02, then DR01’s credit will be applied to DR02’s balance. Part of the inactivating process is to review a list of changes that will take place in your database when you inactivate a provider. Watch this short video to get an idea of how the Inactivate Provider feature works.

If you have questions on this topic, please email me vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.  

New Dentrix Features To Help Manage Patient and Provider Balances (Part 1)

In Dentrix there are a couple of new features which will help your office when it comes to the tricky process of allocating balances. I wanted to take a moment to tell you about these new features and how they can help your office. 

First, I’ll explain why balances need to be allocated. 

It’s important that payments and adjustments are always posted to the individual patient and not to the guarantor. If payments aren’t posted to the patient, you’ll find that although the family may have a zero balance, the patient will have a balance in Dentrix, and the guarantor will have a credit. This can cause a mess in your accounting and make answering patients’ billing questions difficult. If you’ve been posting payments to the guarantor in Dentrix and a patient calls and asks you who in the family owes a balance, you know what I’m talking about.

It’s also very important that payments are posted accurately amongst providers. This will become increasingly important if your office hires an associate or if your doctor plans on selling the practice. Payments must be posted accurately in order for collections to be calculated accurately. 

Dentrix has provided ways to simplify the allocation process by using the Provider Credit Balances Manager. With the release of G7.4, there are additional features you can use to make managing family and provider balances easier. 

The first new feature is available when combining or separating families using the Edit Family Relations option in the Family File. When editing family relations, Dentrix walks you through the process, showing you how balances will be affected when moving family members. 

When separating families, you have the option to move the balance to the new family or keep it with the original family. Any necessary adjustments will be calculated for you and you can designate a specific adjustment type to be used.

Another new feature in Dentrix that came out in Dentrix G7.3 is the ability to have up to 255 adjustment types. Because of this, it’s a good idea to create specific adjustment types for both family adjustments and provider adjustments. That way, when reviewing reports, you’ll be able to see exactly why an adjustment was made. 

The addition of these two new features in Dentrix can simplify the process of making adjustments when combining and separating families. 

For more information on the latest features in Dentrix, click here.

Email me if you have questions at  vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.  

New Dentrix G7.4 Insurance Features

 With the introduction of Dentrix G7.4, there have been some exciting changes with how you enter and view patient insurance information. I believe these changes are going to be such a positive improvement for all offices. If you haven’t had an opportunity to upgrade to Dentrix G7.4 yet, or had an opportunity to learn about the changes, let me tell you what you’re missing!

There’s a new Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage window (which you get to by double-clicking a patient’s Insurance block in the Family File and then clicking the Benefits/Coverage button), where all of a patient’s insurance information is consolidated into a single location. This makes it easier for your team to navigate without having to hunt for the information they need.

A feature that I’m especially excited about, is visible when you first access this window. When the Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage window opens, it defaults to show the information on the Insurance Plan tab. 

Here you have the option to enter a waiting period, maximum age for dependents, a missing tooth clause, and whether crowns and bridges are paid on prep date or seat date. While this information is not included in patient estimates, Dentrix will provide you with a pop-up warning when you’re scheduling an appointment that conflicts with the insurance details you’ve entered. This is such an exciting improvement because in previous versions of Dentrix, this information would either be entered into the Insurance Plan Notes or a scanned insurance breakdown in the Document Center. The struggle with that was getting your team to read those notes before scheduling an appointment. Once you have entered that information in Dentrix, and with the new insurance warnings, this will no longer be an issue. 

Another very exciting feature is the information that can be entered in the Exceptions tab. 

This is a designated area for you to enter frequency limitations and age limits. There is an option to insert a template or create your own. I think this is an awesome improvement to the Insurance window in Dentrix, because in previous versions of Dentrix there wasn’t a specific area to keep track of this information. Now it will be easy to view insurance plan details and explain them to your patients when presenting a treatment plan and scheduling appointments.

Another great feature is that this insurance information is accessible from the Family File, the Treatment Planner, and the Appointment Information dialog box. This makes it very convenient for your team to reference this information while creating a treatment plan or when scheduling an appointment. 

There are also new insurance icons that appear in the Family File, Treatment Planner, and Appointment Information dialog box that indicate if exceptions have been entered for a patient’s plan, if there’s a missing tooth clause, and/or if there are insurance plan notes. 

Family File icons example: Insurance Plan Details, Insurance Note, Missing Tooth Clause

Treatment Plan icons example: Insurance Plan Details, Exceptions, Missing Tooth Clause

Appointment Information icons example: Insurance Plan Details, Exceptions, Missing Tooth Clause

The icons make it easy to see what type of insurance information has been entered into Dentrix and serve as a quick reference for your team to know what type of insurance details have been entered for the plan and may need a quick review.

Having insurance warnings for procedures that conflict with the patient’s insurance plan, having a designated area to enter plan details like frequencies and limitations, and having this information easily accessible for several modules in Dentrix are going to make the way your office deals with insurance so much easier. The new details and icons will also help to take the guess work out of insurance plans and allow your office to provide your patients with more accurate information and treatment estimates. 

I recently presented a Dentrix G7.4 New Features webinar which you can view on-demand. You can also get additional information here:

• An Easier Way to Manage Patient Insurance Details

You can email me if you have questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.  

QuickBill Email - A New Way to Send Patient Billing Statements

Earlier this year, I wrote about collecting patient balances. I suggested sending patients a statement immediately after receiving an insurance payment if there is a remaining patient balance. This means not waiting until your office’s next regular billing cycle. Cash flow is always important in a dental practice, and perhaps even more so during these challenging times. The quicker you can send patients their statement and collect their balance, the better. With that being said, I’m excited about the addition of QuickBill Email. 

The previous version of QuickBill allowed your office to send statements electronically using Dentrix and have them printed and mailed for you. I always liked this service because it saved staff time printing, envelope stuffing, and mailing statements. And it saved money by not using the office’s toner ink and other office supplies to print the statements. 

While you can still send statements by traditional mail, QuickBill Email makes huge improvements on that service by allowing offices to send patient statements via e-mail. 

Here are some of the great features QuickBill Email offers:

• Your office maintains control of which patients receive emailed statements.
• You are able to add customized messages on individual statements. For example, you could add a statement note that reads, Exam not covered due to insurance frequency limitation, or Dental insurance annual maximum has been met.
• Emailed statements protect patient’s privacy by requiring a first name, last name, and date of birth to be entered before viewing the statement.
• QuickBill Email provides a convenient way for patients to pay their balance. They click a link in the email and enter their credit card information on a webpage. When your office performs your daily WebSync, you'll see a list of received payments and can easily post them into the Dentrix Ledger. This will save staff time manually entering this information and help to prevent errors. Providing patients with a more convenient way to pay their balance can improve cash flow.
• Sending email statements vs. paper statements via the mail will be far more cost effective for your practice by eliminating the cost of paper, envelopes, and postage.
• By sending statements via email rather than through the mail, patients are made aware of their balances faster and can make a payment immediately.

QuickBill eStatements will save offices money, improve cash flow, and improve the patient’s billing experience with your practice by providing a more convenient way to pay their balance. I’m excited about how this service can improve your dental practice’s billing procedures.

Be sure to check out the following resources:

• Read  5 Reasons You Should Be Sending Electronic Billing Statements in Dentrix Magazine
• Watch QuickBill Email Overview video
• Visit www.dentrix.com/electronicbilling for more information. 

Inactivating vs. Archiving a Patient

Lately I’ve seen some questions about inactivating and archiving patients. While there are many opinions on this topic and offices will vary in their policy on this matter, I thought I would share some of my thoughts.

If you’ve attempted to contact a patient who is due for Continuing Care, has outstanding treatment, hasn’t been seen for eighteen months, and they haven’t responded after multiple attempts, I would suggest sending them a letter and changing their status to Inactive in the Family File.

This doesn’t mean the patient can’t return to your office; however, since they haven’t been seen in the last eighteen months, they aren’t considered an active patient in your office.

When your office decides to inactivate a patient, I would recommend changing the status of any outstanding treatment to Rejected so their outstanding treatment doesn’t continue to appear on outstanding treatment plan reports and in the Treatment Manager. I would also suggest clearing the patient’s Continuing Care so that they don’t continue to show up on continuing care reports.

If you schedule an appointment for a patient with an inactive status, Dentrix will give you a pop-up message to inform you of the patient status. I really like this because you can use this pop-up as a reminder for you to verify or update the patient’s information (address, phone number, insurance coverage, and so forth) in Dentrix.  When you schedule their appointment, you can also let the patient know that they will need to arrive early to update their health history.

When it comes to archiving a patient, my first recommendation is that you archive deceased patients. One reason for doing so is that it prevents the deceased patient’s information from inadvertently being seen. For example, if your office uses Route Slips, all family information is displayed on the Route Slip. You may not want a deceased family member’s information to appear on the Route Slip and upset the family. 

I’ve seen many opinions on the topic of inactivating and archiving patients, so I wanted to share some ideas and insight. 

For additional information, read the following:

• Archiving Patients Just Got Easier!
• Should I Inactivate or Archive This Patient?

For more information, or to share your office policies on this topic, email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.  

No More Tricks, Just Treats

 Halloween is quickly approaching, and I think we’ve all had enough tricks in 2020! Let’s talk about some treats you can implement in your office. 

Treats for Your Patients

It’s been a difficult year for everyone, and now is a great time to show your patients how much you appreciate them. You could send out a postcard or email to all of your patients letting them know you’re thinking of them and you’re thankful that they trust your office with their dental care. Another idea, to show appreciation for your patients is to enter them into a raffle or drawing for a prize, like an electric toothbrush. 

Treats for Your Team

Positive reinforcement can be a great motivator for staff. Compliment your team on areas of their job that they do well. Praise for a job well done can motivate your team to continue to work well in that area and also to improve in other aspects of their job. 

Let your team know how much you appreciate them by buying them lunch or bringing them a sweet treat, like cookies or candy. I’ve often been surprised at how a small act like that can make such a big difference to team morale. 

Treats for Your Doctor

Our doctors need a pat on the back too. It’s been a tough year for them as business owners. With the shutdowns in dentistry and the responsibility to still pay the bills and take care of their staff, it’s been very stressful for them. A small gift, a card, or just a big thank you can make their day brighter. 

Reward your patients, your team, and your doctor with some treats this Halloween season, and give them a reason to smile. Happy Halloween! 

Contact me if you have questions at  vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.  

Contact Patients Now To Schedule Treatment Before the End-of-Year Rush

As the end of the year quickly approaches, the race for patients to complete their outstanding treatment plans in order to use up their insurance maximum begins!

You can help your patients by proactively contacting them to remind them that they have outstanding treatment. This can be done by calling them on the phone, sending them an email message, or sending them a letter. By contacting patients now, you can better manage your schedule instead of having to jam everybody in during the last two weeks of December. 

Contacting Patients By Phone

Although calling patients who have outstanding treatment plans is time consuming, it also gives you the opportunity to schedule their appointment while you have them on the phone. Use the Treatment Manager to generate a report of patients with outstanding treatment plans who have remaining insurance benefits. Contact those patients and make detailed notes in the Office Journal of what was said on the phone call. From the Treatment Manager, you have direct access to the Treatment Planner, so you will be able to easily access treatment plan information if the patient has any questions.

Contacting Patients By Email 

Sending patients an email message is an easy and convenient way to communicate. With Patient Engage, you can create an email message in the Campaign Studio to remind patients that most insurance plans renew January 1st, and any unused benefits will be lost. Encourage them to contact your office to schedule an appointment. If you’re using Dentrix Communication Manager, you can create a similar email campaign reminding patients to schedule an appointment to use their benefits.

Contacting Patients By Letter

In the Dentrix Office Manager, under Letters & Custom Lists there’s an option for Misc. letters. Here you’ll find the Treatment Plan Reminder letter. This is a great letter to use to contact patients because it has a merge field that informs the patient how much of their dental insurance maximum is remaining. When creating the letter, use filters to find specific patients to send this letter to, such as patients who have been seen this calendar year, with remaining insurance benefits between $200 and $2000, who have an outstanding treatment plan. If you decide to send letters, I would suggest including a copy of the patient’s treatment plan to remind them exactly what needs to be scheduled. 

By contacting patients with outstanding treatment plans and remaining insurance benefits, you can encourage them to schedule an appointment to maximize their insurance plans. Scheduling their appointments now will help you to control your schedule instead of everyone calling at once in December to try to get an appointment. 

Contact me if you have questions at  vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Planning for 2021

Now that we’ve entered the fourth quarter of 2020, it’s time to start planning for 2021! Here are some things you can do now in your office to plan for the upcoming year.

Close the Office for 2021 Holidays

Set up your office schedule for the coming year by closing the office for holidays in 2021. For example, if your office plans to take time off for the 4th of July, Labor Day, and/or between Christmas and New Year, it’s a good idea to set the office schedule before entering practice production goals, because practice production goals are generally set up based on the days the office will be seeing patients. It’s important to note when setting your office schedule, if you set a yearly holiday, it is based on a specific date. So, while this feature will work for a holiday like Christmas Day, it won’t work for a holiday that the date changes every year, like Memorial Day. 

For additional information, see the following:

• Setting Yearly Holiday Closures
• Closing the Office for a Day

Set Your Office Goals for 2021

Take some time to meet with your doctor and discuss the practice production goals for 2021. In Dentrix, goals are entered by provider. To calculate the monthly goal, take the provider’s daily production goal and multiply it by the number of days that provider will work that month. For example, if your hygienist’s daily production goal is $1000, and she’ll be working twenty days in January, then her January production goal will be $20,000. 

Enter a monthly goal for each hygienist and doctor in your practice. Goals and scheduled production can be viewed in the Dentrix Appointment Book by clicking on the calendar icon and then clicking Scheduled Production. You can set up views in the Appointment Book to view one provider at a time, or multiple providers. Scheduling production goals for your office can help the office stay on track to meet goals. It is also helpful to have production goals when scheduling so that your team can schedule higher production cases in order to meet your practice goals. 

For additional information see the following:

• Viewing Scheduled Amounts by Provider
• Viewing Scheduled Production Amounts
• Viewing Production Value of Individual Appointments
• Appointment Book Views and Scheduled Production

Evaluate Your Office Fees

Do you plan to increase your fees for 2021? Whether you plan to increase your fees or not, it’s a good idea to evaluate them on an annual basis to ensure your practice fees are competitive for your area. Your Henry Schein rep can help you by generating a report which will show you how your office fees compare to others in your area. If you decide to increase your office fees, it can be done by a percentage or by a dollar amount in the fee schedule set up in the Dentrix Office Manager. 

For additional information, see the following:

• Preparing to Update Your Fee Schedules
• Updating Office Fees using the Automatic Fee Schedule Changes Utility
• A More Useful Fee Schedule Report

Taking some time now to prepare your office for 2021 can help to set your practice up for success! 

Email me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Things to Focus on in the Fourth Quarter

Yesterday was the first day of fall, which means cooler weather, football, and pumpkin-flavored…everything! 

It also means it's time to think about what you can do for your patients during the fourth quarter of the year. 

We are all experiencing challenging times and some patients may be experiencing financial hardships. Your dental office should be doing everything you can to make your patient’s treatment affordable. One way you can do this is by helping your patients use their dental insurance benefits. 

Here are a couple of ways you can help patients take full advantage of those benefits.

Continuing Care

Due to offices being closed because of the pandemic, patients may have missed out on their recall appointments. I would suggest generating a Continuing Care report for patients who are past due for recall, as well as for patients are due for recall in the upcoming months. You could use a due date range of January 1st, 2020 – December 31st, 2020 to view patients who were due earlier in the year or who are going to be due for a prophy or periodontal maintenance sometime before the year ends. 

If you have made a habit of documenting frequency limitations in the insurance plan note, view those notes before contacting the patient to schedule. You can help patients to make the most of their insurance benefits by reviewing this information. For example, if a patient was seen in July for a prophy, and that was their first prophy of the year, they technically aren’t due for six months, which would be in January 2021. But, if their insurance allows for a prophy two times per calendar year, you could schedule them to come in for another prophy in December, so they can maximize their insurance benefits. This research may take a little more work, but would be worth it to get your patients their maximum benefit.

Outstanding Treatment Plans

The Treatment Manager in Dentrix is my favorite tool to find patients with outstanding treatment plans towards the end of the year. You can use filters when setting up the Treatment Manager to generate a list of patients whose insurance benefits renew in January and who have an outstanding insurance maximum remaining. 

This can be very beneficial for patients, especially those with several treatment-planned procedures, as they can split up their outstanding treatment and do part of it in 2020 and the remainder in 2021. This can result in both a higher insurance reimbursement for your practice and a lower out-of-pocket expense for the patient. 

Help your patients maximize the insurance benefits they pay for, before those benefits renew in January! It's not only a service to your patients, but can also help your practice keep a full schedule and consistent production during the final quarter of the year. 

Email me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

A Few of My Favorite Dentrix Reports

Dentrix has so many great reports! There are end-of-day reports such as the Day Sheet and Deposit Slip that you run on a daily basis, reports that help you to gauge the overall health of your practice including production and collections, and so many more. 

Here are just a few of my favorite reports and how I like to use them:

Referral Reports

There are two reports for referral sources: Referred By Patient and Referred By Doctor/Other. I recommend running both of these reports on a monthly basis.

• The Referred By Patient report can be used for internal marketing. If a patient refers a friend or family member, it’s a nice touch to send them a thank-you note. Some offices thank patients for referrals by sending them a gift card for a coffee shop or some other small token of appreciation.
• The Referred By Doctor/Other report is for referrals from other doctors and other sources such as paid advertising or marketing campaigns. This report is especially important if your office has invested in these types of marketing campaigns. When the report is created it will show the number of referred patients by referral source and the production that was generated by those patients. You can use this information to evaluate the return on your investment of the marketing campaign and if it will be worth continuing in the future. 
• For additional information on these reports, read Grow Your Practice with Patient Referrals and Tracking the Value of Social Media Marketing in Dentrix Magazine.

Production Summary Report

The Production Summary report, which is available in the Practice Analysis Reports, can be generated by procedure code category or by a procedure code range. This report shows the quantity preformed of each procedure code as well as the total production generated by that code for a selected date range. It also provides the average fee for the procedure and the percentage of the total production generated by that procedure code.

Here are a couple of scenarios when this report is especially useful. When evaluating how much of a product to order to have available for sale in your office, such as electric toothbrushes or mouth rinses, it’s helpful to know how many have been sold over the last month. Reviewing the average fee charged for the product can also help you to evaluate the fee you charge for the product. Another scenario where the Production Summary Report is very helpful, is when considering purchasing a new piece of equipment, such as a new panorex or CT machine. You can review how many of these procedures have been completed and what the average charged fee was, to compare costs and see if the new equipment will be a good investment for the office. 

Treatment Plan Statistics Analysis

The Treatment Plan Statistics Analysis can be generated as a comparison of treatment-planned vs. completed procedures by provider. This report can be run on a weekly or monthly basis for each provider in your office. 

I find this report to be helpful because if the percentage of completed procedures compared to treatment-planned procedures is low, there are several items to evaluate. Are there appointment times available for patients to complete their treatment? If not, you could consider adding additional office hours in order to offer more available appointments. Are patients accepting their treatment plans? If not, does your team need additional training on patient education? A good goal when reviewing this report would be for 75 percent of treatment-planned procedures to be completed. 

Dentrix has so many great reports. The ones I mentioned are only a few of so many. If you would like to review all the reports available in Dentrix, you can find this information in the Dentrix G7.3 Report Reference. 

E-mail me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Rescheduling Cancelled Appointments

Last week I wrote a post about implementing a more lenient cancellation policy for those patients who cancel their appointment due to being ill. During this pandemic, encouraging patients to stay home if they don’t feel well can protect the health and safety of your staff and other patients.  

I suggested using the Wait/Will Call option instead of breaking the appointment for these types of cancellations. Once you have cancelled an appointment and moved it to the Unscheduled List, I would suggest waiting two weeks before following up with the patient to reschedule. You can use the Unscheduled List to quickly find patients on the Wait/Will Call list and contact them to reschedule their appointment. I would recommend using the Office Journal to record the contact made with the patient and what was said. From the Unscheduled List, you can easily access the Office Journal and drag an appointment directly to an open spot in your schedule.

It’s very important to keep the Unscheduled List up to date, so that when you’re following up with patients on the list, you don’t contact patients who may have already rescheduled. You can keep the Unscheduled List up to date with a little team training. Most likely, you have seen this warning message when trying to schedule an appointment.

Train your team that when they see this message it means that the patient already has an appointment on the Unscheduled List. 

If you click Yes to this warning, the patient’s Family Appointment List will open. From here you can click the appointment labeled as <Unscheduled Appt>, and then click the View Appt button. This opens the Appointment Information dialog box, which will have all of the appointment information (procedures, providers, appointment length, and so forth) already attached to the appointment. From here you can manually assign an operatory, date and time, or use the Pinboard or Wait/Will Call buttons to move the appointment to either of those lists.

If you click No to this warning, Dentrix assumes you want to create a completely new appointment for the patient and opens a blank Appointment Information dialog box. This is where you run into problems with keeping your Unscheduled List up to date. If you re-create the appointment for the patient, the old, broken (or Wait/Will Call) appointment still remains on your Unscheduled List. Instead of recreating the appointment, you should train your team to open the Unscheduled List, find the appointment, and reschedule it from there.  When you reschedule an appointment from the Unscheduled List, the appointment is removed from the list, which will keep your list up to date and more accurate in order to follow up with patients.

By keeping your Unscheduled List up to date, your office will have a great resource from which to contact patients to reschedule appointments. This can help to fill openings in your schedule and avoid unscheduled time. Email me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Dealing with Cancellations in a COVID-19 World

I’m normally a proponent of having a strict cancellation policy in place in your office. I believe that while we should respect our patients’ time and take them back for appointments in a timely manner, our patients should respect our time as well by not cancelling at the last minute or arriving late for their appointments. 

However, during these challenging times, I feel we need to be more lenient with our cancellation policy when it comes to dealing with patients who are cancelling due to illness. For example, if a patient has an appointment today, but they call and say they’re not feeling well, we shouldn’t penalize them for canceling, because they’re helping to keep your staff and other patients safe by not potentially spreading the COVID-19 virus. 

Usually, I recommend breaking appointments for last-minute cancellations. Breaking an appointment in Dentrix counts as a missed appointment, reflecting negatively on the patient. You can track the number of missed appointments in the patient’s Family File. 

However, if patients call to cancel their appointment because they aren’t feeling well, or are experiencing symptoms of COVID-19, rather than breaking their appointment, you should mark it as Wait/Will Call within the appointment. This will move the appointment to the Unscheduled List, which you can use to reschedule the appointment at a later time without it counting negatively as a missed appointment.  

Whether you are breaking an appointment or marking it as Wait/Will Call, I would recommend making a detailed note of the conversation with the patient in his or her Office Journal. This way the entire team will be able to read the note and know why the appointment was cancelled, and why it was marked as either broken or Wait/Will Call. 

Implementing a more lenient cancellation policy as we deal with the pandemic is just one way we can continue to evolve in how we work and communicate with our patients. Train your team on how to deal with last-minute cancellations, and make sure they know what happens with a patient appointment when it is broken or when it is moved to Wait/Will Call so patients won’t be penalized when they cancel due to not feeling well. In the long run, this will help you to protect the health and safety of your staff and other patients. And when those cancellations occur, it’s equally important to make sure you use the Office Journal to document the communication you have with patients, so that everyone on your team can see the reasons why appointments are cancelled or rescheduled. 

Please email me with questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

A New and Improved Health History

Prior to Dentrix G7, Medical Alerts were used to enter a patient’s drug allergies and medical conditions. The Health History module, introduced in Dentrix G7, uses a more comprehensive approach and allows you to separate medical conditions and allergies, as well as document any patient-reported medications. 

Once you have documented a patient’s medical conditions, allergies, and medications, you have the option to mark these health history items as critical, which is indicated by a red cross Health History icon, which displays in various locations throughout Dentrix, such as on the patient’s appointment. This is very helpful to let all team members know that the patient has a medical condition that they should be aware of.

I was excited to see all the improvements implemented in the Health History module; and in Dentrix G7.3, the Health History module got even better!

What’s considered a critical medical condition, allergy, or medication may vary from office to office. For example, most offices consider a pre-medication requirement to be critical. Some offices consider drug allergies, such as a latex allergy, to be critical. The health history items your office decides should be labeled as critical and which items should have a pop-up warning, will depend on your doctor’s preferences.

 Customizing the critical and pop-up settings for health history items is now much easier. Once you have had a conversation with your doctor and decided which health history items should be designated as critical and should display a pop-up warning, you can now change the settings for multiple items all at once. Select the medical conditions you want to change the settings for, and then right-click to set the desired options. 

Once you have set the desired options, you also have the option to apply those settings to all patients with the applicable medical condition or just the patients to which the medical condition will be added in the future.

The improvements that Dentrix has made to the Health History in recent versions can help your office to keep more current and accurate records regarding your patients' health. This is vital as most offices no longer have a paper chart to refer to for patient health histories. By designating a medical condition to pop up or be considered critical, you can easily communicate important health information to your team. 

For more information about the Health History module and its features, read the following:

• You Asked For It! Patient Health History in Dentrix
• Separating Medical Conditions from Allergies in the Dentrix G7 Health History Module
• Adding Patient-Reported Medications to Health History
• Editing Multiple Health History Items as Once

If you have questions on this topic, email me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Efficiently Posting Insurance Payments in Dentrix

 Last week I wrote a blog about efficiently posting patient payments. This week, I wanted to give some tips on the best ways to post dental insurance payments. 

When posting insurance payments, you have the option to post a payment to an individual claim by double-clicking an open claim in the patient Ledger. 

You can also post a payment as a batch insurance payment. I really like using the batch insurance feature because it helps you to post payments accurately. You enter the total amount of the check, and then allocate payment among the patients it applies to. If your allocations do not match up with the total amount of the check, Dentrix will warn you that your amounts don’t match. This can save you a lot of time by knowing right away that amounts don’t match instead of at the end of the day while running your end of day reports.

Whether you decide to use the batch insurance feature or post to an individual claim, I recommend you take the time to post itemized insurance payments and update the payment table. By updating the payment table, Dentrix will remember the amount the insurance company will pay for a procedure code. This is especially helpful when treatment planning that procedure code for any patient covered under the same insurance plan. 

Another feature that can be helpful when posting insurance payments is the ability to split an insurance claim. This allows you to split a claim while retaining any notes attached to the claim. This feature is beneficial when the insurance plan pays for some of the procedures on the claim but requires more information to pay for the other procedures. 

For example, if you file a dental insurance claim for a crown and a core build-up, the insurance may only pay for the core build-up until they receive the date that the crown was seated. In this case you could split the insurance claim, post the payment to the core build-up, and the claim for the crown will remain outstanding. This is beneficial because the outstanding claim will remain on your Insurance Aging Report in order for you to track and follow up on the claim. Dentrix will also calculate patient portions and insurance portions of the family balance correctly when the claim remains outstanding. 

Posting patient payments and insurance payments efficiently results in cleaner accounting for your office and more accurate reports. The features in Dentrix can help you to post patient and insurance payments more accurately. If you have questions, email me at  vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

For additional information about insurance efficiency, read Three Steps For Efficient Insurance Systems in Dentrix Magazine.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Efficiently Posting Patient Payments for Cleaner Accounting and Accurate Reporting

 All dental offices know how to post a patient payment in the Dentrix Ledger, but is your office posting payments in the most efficient way? Posting patient payments efficiently can save your office time, result in cleaner accounting and more accurate reporting. 

When posting a patient payment, there are three options in the Enter Payment dialog box you should be aware of that will dramatically affect reports and accounting:

Posting Payments to a Provider

While the default setting is to split a payment by provider, you have the option to post a payment to a specific provider. What does that mean and why is it important? Ideally, the provider of a procedure should have the payment posted to them for that procedure. For example, if Dr. A completed a filling, it’s important that the payment is posted to Dr. A. If Dr. A is paid based on collections, he would not receive credit for the procedure unless the payment is posted to him. 

Similarly, if a patient has an exam with the doctor, and a prophy with the hygienist, the payment should be split between the providers. You will find that your reports will make more sense when payments are posted this way. Do you have inactive providers who still show up on reports, like the Provider AR Totals report, appearing as if they are owed a large balance or have a credit? That’s because payments weren’t being split by provider. If you have this problem in your office, don’t worry! In Dentrix G7.3 there is a feature that can help to correct this issue. The Provider Credit Balances Manager in the Ledger makes allocating provider credits much easier, by providing you with a list of accounts which have provider credits and allowing you to allocate credit balances with just a few mouse clicks. 

Posting Payments by Patient

By default, the selected patient in the Ledger appears as the patient to whom the payment will be applied. You have the option to split the payment by family members, which will allocate the payment between family members who have an account balance. If Split By Family Members is selected, it’s important to know that the payment is posted to the oldest family balance. 

Similar to the way posting payments to providers works, it’s important to post payments for procedures to the patient who actually had them completed. Have you ever had to audit a family account and experienced that finding which patient actually owes for which procedure is like finding a needle in a haystack? This typically happens when payments are posted to the guarantor for all patients in the family. You can correct this problem by allocating credit balances. In Dentrix G7.3, allocating balances doesn’t affect the aging of the account, so you don’t have to worry about aging being altered by making these allocations. 

Choosing a Split Method

When you choose a method for splitting a payment, it determines the way in which payments are applied to the account. There are four options to choose from:

• Percentage Payments - This option divides the payment among the providers based on the providers percentage of the amount owed. 
• FIFO - FIFO stands for "first in, first out" and will apply the payment to the oldest completed procedures first.
• Equal Payments - This split method splits the payment equally among the providers who are owed a balance.
• Guarantor Estimate - This is my preferred method of splitting payments because it takes into account what Dentrix is estimating insurance to pay for a procedure. So, it’s looking at the patient portion for the procedure and then allocating the payment among the providers based on that insurance estimate. 

Once you’ve decided which payment options are best for your office, you can set them as default by selecting Settings right from the Enter Payment dialog box. 

Posting patient payments efficiently results in cleaner accounting and more accurate reports. It will be easier to answer questions patients may have regarding their account by making it more clear which patients in the family still owe a balance. If your office doesn’t currently post payments to the provider of the service and to the patient who received treatment, this may be something to consider. If you have questions, e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

For additional information about allocating credit balances between providers, read Are Your Provider Credits Making Your Accounts Off Balance? in Dentrix Magazine.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

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 almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.