Supporting Your Hygiene Department

While dental offices were closed for non-emergency treatment, patients weren’t able to get their teeth cleaned. Now that offices have re-opened, their hygiene departments have been very busy catching up with their patients who are behind on their recall schedule. Many offices are booking months out for hygiene appointments. 

Here are some ideas of how you can help your hygiene department during their busy time. 

Have your front desk team review the hygiene appointment the day before the patient arrives. The front desk can save your hygienist time by checking for the following information:

• Is the patient due for X-rays? This is probably something you are already tracking in the Continuing Care module. Take a quick look to see if it’s something you’ll need to plan for during the appointment.
• Is the patient eligible for fluoride treatment? You can usually find this information where you store other insurance information, such as limitations and exceptions. I like to keep track of this type of information in the Insurance Plan Note in the dental insurance Coverage Table.
• Does the patient have any medical conditions to be concerned about such as pre-medication requirements? This information can be documented in the patient’s Health History.

Following the visit, most offices have their hygienist schedule the patient’s next recall appointment. While your hygienist is so busy, you may want to consider having the front desk set the appointment complete and schedule the patient’s next appointment. 

In some offices, the dental assistants are responsible for taking patients’ X-rays. This could be an option for your practice if you are finding that your hygienist doesn’t have time to take X-rays because of a busy schedule. 

Use the ASAP List in Dentrix to find patients who have scheduled an appointment but would like to come in sooner. This is a great way to fill your schedule if you have a last-minute cancellation. 

You can contact patients by phone or by using the Fill Appointment feature in Dentrix to text a group of patients and offer them an available appointment. Especially while available hygiene appointments are limited, it’s important that your hygienist doesn’t have any unfilled appointment times. 

Your dental office staff should work as a team. As such, we need to support each other for the benefit of the patient. While your hygienists are so busy catching up with recall appointments that had to be postponed due to COVID-19, the rest of the team can help to support them by doing some of the things I mentioned above. 

If you have any questions, please e-mail 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.

A Few Thoughts About Working with Patients Who Have a Balance

I am a big proponent for patients paying their portion at the time of service. However, there are inevitably times when patients will have an account balance even after their insurance has paid. This may be because they have exceeded their annual insurance maximum, there was a frequency limitation, or some other reason. 

Below are some ideas on ways you can work with patients with a balance owed.

When you receive an insurance payment and the patient owes a balance, I would suggest creating a billing statement immediately after posting the insurance payment instead of waiting to send a statement during your regular billing cycle. This will help patients to be aware of their balance and pay it more quickly, improving your cash flow. 

Then, when you create your regular monthly billing statements, you can select the If Not Billed Since option and enter the date you last created monthly billing statements. This will avoid sending another statement to patients you billed when receiving an insurance payment. 

When I send billing statements, I also like to save a copy of the statement in the patient’s Document Center. If a patient calls with a question once they receive the statement, it’s nice to have a copy, so you can see exactly what they’re looking at. 

If you need to make notes about a patient’s financial situation, you make those in the Guarantor Notes in the patient Ledger. You’ll find the Guarantor Notes are accessible from all modules related to patient finances, such as the Collection Manager and Payment Agreement Manager, which makes them very convenient to view. You can even print Guarantor Notes on the Aging Report. 

If you make a formal financial arrangement with a patient, it can be entered as a Billing/Payment Agreement in the patient’s Ledger. When setting up a payment agreement with a patient, you have the option to save a credit card on file, which can be run on an agreed payment interval.  You can track payment agreements using the Payment Agreement Manager. 

When you need to find and contact patients regarding outstanding balances, I recommend using the Collection Manager, which is accessible from the Office Manager. The reason I like to use the Collection Manager is because the report can be generated using multiple filters, so you can find specific groups of patients. Plus you can easily access the patient’s other Dentrix modules, like the Ledger, directly from the Collection Manager. 

Even if you have patients pay their estimated portion at the time of service, there still may be occasions when patients are left with a balance. When you use the Dentrix features mentioned above, you can effectively send  patients a statement and record contact and financial arrangements you have made with your patients. Using the Payment Manager and Collection Manager, you can easily track payments that are due and contact patients that have a balance. 

If you have questions on these topics, please e-mail 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.

Updating Payment Tables with Insurance Coverage for PPE

Last month, I wrote about charging a fee for personal protective equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic*. The American Dental Association has suggested the use of the code D1999 to bill for the charge of additional PPE. In that blog post we talked about the best ways to set up that code in Dentrix. 

Recently, some dental insurance companies have announced that they will compensate providers for the cost of PPE. Whether an insurance plan will pay this charge or not, I do think it’s a good idea for practices to charge patients this additional fee. Although some PPE is the norm in dental offices, the additional requirements of gowns, face shields, and N95 masks are an additional cost that practices should be compensated for. 

The average of what offices are charging for PPE is around $10. If you expect dental insurance to pay a portion of the charge for PPE using code D1999, I would highly suggest using the payment table in Dentrix in order to collect accurately from patients.  

The payment table in Dentrix is a great way to enter in the exact dollar amount that an insurance plan will pay for a particular ADA code. By entering in the dollar amount that the insurance will pay for code D1999, you can collect accurately from the patient at the time of service. 

For example, if the insurance will pay $7.00 for code D1999, you should enter that information in the payment table. You can edit the payment table by double-clicking the Insurance Information block in the patient’s Family File. 

That way, when the code is set complete in the patient’s Ledger, Dentrix will estimate the insurance to pay $7.00 and the patient portion at $3.00. You can then collect the patient portion at the time of service. It’s always best to collect from patients at the time of service in order to reduce outstanding accounts receivable. Also, it wouldn’t be cost effective to send a patient a statement for a $3 balance. 

Another great thing about updating the payment table is that when you enter new information into it, the insurance estimate will be used for all patients who are covered under that same insurance group plan. This will result in less data entry for your team.

I’m hearing from offices that patients are understanding of the cost for PPE, and even if their dental insurance isn’t going to cover the fee, they are willing to pay a reasonable fee to offset the cost for the office. 

If you expect dental insurance to pay for a portion of the code, use the payment table to enter that information into Dentrix, so you can accurately collect any patient portion at the time of service. If you don’t expect any insurance payment for code D1999 for a particular group plan, you should enter $0 into the payment table, which will result in the charge being added to the patient portion in both the patient’s Ledger and in the Treatment Planner. 

If you have questions about how using the payment table can help you accurately collect for D1999 for personal protective equipment, please e-mail me at  vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

*Please consult the laws and regulations in your state for guidance on charging for Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) and other COVID-19 related costs and particularities. You should not rely upon the material or information provided by HS1 as a basis of making any decisions without the proper legal or other professional advice specific to your situation as needed.

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.

Building Your Online Reputation

Last week, I wrote about re-training your staff during this time when your office is slower and seeing less patients.   

Another area you can focus on while you have additional time is the online reputation of your practice. 

As consumers, we all read reviews whether we’re wanting to find a new doctor or check out that new restaurant in town. 

You can’t please everyone all the time, and there may be a times when your practice gets a negative review. If you do get a negative review, it’s important for potential patients to see that you also have lots of positive reviews. The more positive reviews your office receives the higher your overall online rating will be.  

So while you're less busy in the office and are able to spend more time with each patient, I suggest asking them to review your practice online. If a patient tells you they had a great experience, ask them to make sure and leave a review to that effect. In my experience, most patients are happy to leave a review when they have had a positive experience at your office. 

Using Reputation Manager, you can send surveys to patients as a way to encourage them to leave a review to help you maintain a positive online reputation. Here are some of the great features Reputation Manager offers:

• It integrates fully with Dentrix.
• Your office has control of which sites your reviews are posted to, like Yelp, WebMD, Vitals and more.
• You can set up Reputation Manager so that surveys are automatically sent to patients after their appointment to allow them an opportunity to leave a review. 
• You can easily post positive reviews on your practice website and Facebook page.
• Reputation Manager verifies that the reviews being left are from real patients of your office. 

Although we are currently living in uncertain times, you can use it as an opportunity to improve your practice. One aspect that you can work on is the online reputation of the office. Reputation Manager can help by sending surveys and posting reviews. If you have questions on this topic, e-mail 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.