Tips for Generating and Sending Billing Statements

What’s your process when it comes to sending billing statements in your office? Some offices send statements on a monthly basis, some on a semi-monthly basis, and some on a weekly basis by breaking them up into smaller batches by guarantor last name. 

No matter how often you are creating and sending statements, it’s important that patients are receiving them on a monthly basis. This will improve the office cash flow and help prevent accounts from becoming past due. 

Here are a few of tips I’ve learned when it comes to sending billing statements: 

• After posting an insurance payment, if the patient still owes a balance, send them a billing statement right away, even if it’s outside your normal billing cycle. This will help to have them pay their outstanding balance more quickly.
• Add custom billing statement notes to individual accounts so the patient knows why they have a balance. For example, you could add a note that says, “Your insurance maximum was met. Please pay balance.” This will communicate to the patient why they owe a balance and could help to eliminate questions.
• It’s much easier to answer a patient’s question about their billing statement if you can open it in the Document Center and view it as you speak with them. In the Office Manager, select Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences. Under the Print Options tab, select the option to Copy Billing Statements to Document Center. By selecting this option, Dentrix will automatically copy the billing statement into the patient’s Document Center.
• In the Office Manager, when choosing your billing statement options (Reports > Billing) be sure to save your settings as your default. When creating billing statements in Dentrix, you can choose many options based on the type of information that you want to be included. Saving the settings you use most often as the default is a real time saver because you don’t have to try and remember the specific settings you want each time you generate statements.
• Some offices choose to skip accounts with a claim pending. However, I don’t usually select that option. Because the patient is ultimately responsible for their balance, I want them to be aware of their balance, even if we’re expecting an insurance payment. 
• I recommend printing a due date on statements so that patients are aware of the time frame in which they are expected to pay. I’ve noticed statements that don’t include a due date take longer for patients to pay.
  
  
  
  
  
• There is an If Not Billed Since option with a box where you can enter a date. This is a good option to select if you send a statement immediately after receiving an insurance payment. By selecting this option, you can choose to only create statements for guarantors that have not been billed in the last month. For example, if you enter the date of 12/26/2020, then only patients who have not received a statement since 12/26/20 will have a statement created.
• If you’re using Dentrix G6.5 or newer, you can set up the Reports and Tasks Scheduler to automatically generate your statements on the recurring frequency you set, and with your desired statement options. This is a time saver and is one less thing you must remember to do in your monthly tasks.
• Dentrix now offers the option to email patients statements and allow them to pay online. This new option makes the process of paying a balance much more convenient for patients, making them more inclined to do so in a timely manner.

Creating billings statements regularly and consistently can help your office to maintain steady cash flow, by prompting patients to pay outstanding balances more quickly. Use the features in Dentrix to help make this process quicker and easier. 

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.  

Dentrix Tools to Help You Optimize Your Schedule

If you work with Dentrix in the front office, you know how to schedule appointments. However, there are several Dentrix features that can help you to optimize your Dentrix Appointment Book that you may not be aware of. 

Practice, Provider, and Operatory Availability

Make sure your practice schedule, operatory schedule, and provider schedules are set up correctly and accurately reflect your availability. This accomplishes two things. First, unscheduled time units will be calculated accurately on reports. Secondly, having your available hours set up accurately will help when you are scheduling appointments. If a provider or operatory isn’t available at the desired appointment time, Dentrix will give you a warning, which can help to eliminate scheduling errors.

Find New Appointment Time

The Find New Appointment Time feature is typically an underutilized tool in the practice. When searching for an opening, Dentrix allows you to enter a desired provider, operatory, appointment day, time, and length. Dentrix will then search for available appointments that fit within the selected parameters. This can help to schedule appointments more quickly than having to scroll day by day to search for an appointment opening.

Fill Appointment Feature

Fill Appointment (available in Dentrix G6.6 and higher with Dentrix eCentral Communication Manager) is a feature you can use to easily fill a cancellation. The feature allows you to text a group of patients and offer them an appointment. It’s best to text patients a message like, “We have an opening for a cleaning today, call the office if you’re interested.”  Make sure you say in your text message to call the office to claim the appointment, otherwise, you may have several patients just show up for that appointment without notifying your office first. 

Insurance Limitations

Dentrix G7.4 offers some new features to alert you to patient’s insurance frequencies and limitations. This is a nice feature because it will eliminate the problem of scheduling a patient before they are actually insurance eligible for their next continuing care procedure like a prophy. It will also alert you to insurance limitations such as a missing tooth clause or waiting period.  

Events

Scheduling events (instead of “fake appointments”) for things like staff meetings ensures accuracy in Dentrix reports that show provider time and lost revenue. 

Flip Tabs

Set up flip tabs in the Appointment Book on computers that schedule appointments most often. Flip tabs are workstation-specific and can be customized per user. You can use them as shortcuts to jump forward or backward to open the Appointment Book to a specified date to quickly and easily schedule the patient’s next appointment. For example, the hygienists in your office may have flip tabs set up for three, four, and six months to schedule the patient’s next prophy or periodontal maintenance; while the assistants may have flip tabs set up for two weeks, three weeks, and four weeks in order to schedule crown and bridge delivery and four-week follow up visits. 

Perfect Day Scheduling

When you use Perfect Day Scheduling, you set up time blocks in the Appointment Book for specific types of appointments or for certain providers throughout the day. This can be a good way to help your team to meet production goals by scheduling high production throughout the day. For example, you could schedule a high production appointment block in the morning and another right after lunch. Creating these blocks helps direct your team to schedule certain types of appointments during the day. 

Your Dentrix Appointment Book is the daily road map for your office. By using features in Dentrix to optimize your schedule, you can be more efficient when scheduling appointments. 

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.  

Track More Than Cleanings with the Continuing Care Module

Does your office use Dentrix Continuing Care to track when patients are due for procedures? Many offices track procedures like prophys and perio maintenance, but do you also track procedures like X-rays and oral cancer screenings? You can use Dentrix Continuing Care to remind patients when they are due for a procedure such as a prophy, by sending reminder texts and email messages, but it’s also a great tool for your office to be able to track what needs to be done at each appointment. 

Continuing Care in Dentrix is fully customizable and allows you to create continuing care types to track procedures and how frequently you should perform them in your office. 

Instead of taking time to review a patient’s chart to see when the last time they had X-rays, you could set up a continuing care type in the Dentrix Office Manager and attach it to the corresponding X-ray procedure code. 

For example, you can set up a continuing care type called BITEWINGS and attach that type to procedure codes D0272 and D0274. 

When you attach procedure codes to a continuing care type and assign that type to a patient, you have a quick visual of when the patient last had the procedure and when they are due next. The due date information is visible in several areas of Dentrix including the Family File, through the More Information icon, and on a patient route slip. 

You can use Continuing Care to track other procedures too. Some offices track when they record patient’s periodontal probe depths to ensure they are recording them once a year. To do this you could create an in-office procedure code for recording periodontal probe depths and then attach that code to a corresponding continuing care type. 

In Dentrix G7.4, an individual patient’s continuing care information is available from the new Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box. This is a nice feature because as you are entering all the information that you received from the insurance company, including coverage, frequency, and age limitations, you can also edit the patient’s due date for a procedure. 

For example, if you learn from the insurance company that the patient won’t be eligible for a full mouth series of X-rays until July 16th, 2022, you can adjust the patient’s due date for Continuing Care without leaving the insurance window. From the Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box, click the Continuing Care button and double-click the FMX continuing care type. Edit the due date as needed to match the insurance coverage for the patient, and then click OK.

The Dentrix Continuing Care module can do so much more for your office than just remind patients when they are due for a prophy. Think about what procedures you track in your office and how much time it costs you to research when the patient is due for that procedure. It may be beneficial and save you time to add some new continuing care types for those procedures. 

For more information, see my three-part blog post on Dentrix Continuing Care found here:

1. Part One
2. Part Two
3. Part Three

If you have questions, 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.  

Planning New Year's Resolutions For Your Practice

 Happy New Year! Now that we’ve put 2020 behind us and started a new year, what are your New Year’s resolutions for your office? Increase production? Increase collections? Have fewer no-shows and cancellations? Improve interoffice communication?  

Here are some ideas of how you can use Dentrix to help you implement your office’s New Year’s resolutions.

Increase Production

One way to increase production is to maximize every patient's appointment:

• Always take X-rays when the patient is due.
• Offer fluoride to every patient, regardless of insurance coverage. Many patients are willing to pay out of pocket for it once you have explained the benefits.
• Check if your younger patients are eligible for sealants. It’s a quick and easy procedure which will increase the production for that appointment.
• Record periodontal probe depths regularly and place an antimicrobial agent if needed.
• You can add dental plan exceptions in the Dentrix G7.4 Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box to record all the patient’s insurance plan coverage details, age limits, and frequencies, so the entire team has easy access to this information. This will make it quicker and easier to present treatment plans to patients for these types of procedures.

Increase Collections

• Be sure to always collect patient portions at time of service. Over the counter collections can be tracked on the Dentrix Practice Advisor Report. You can set up the payment types that should be considered as over-the-counter collections in the Practice Advisor setup. It’s recommended that you collect 30-40 percent of production at the time of service. 
• Use the Collections Manager in Dentrix to follow up on patients who have an outstanding balance.
• Follow up on outstanding insurance claims using the Insurance Aging Report. Make detailed notes in the Claim Status Notes to remind you of why the claim is delayed in being paid.
• If you’re using Dentrix Pay, you can securely save credit card information and apply payments to Payment Agreements. This will ensure balances are paid in a timely manner.

Decrease No-Shows and Cancellations

• Confirm appointments. Sounds obvious, but I’m not satisfied an appointment is confirmed until I have spoken to the patient or received confirmation via text message or email. Don’t assume that leaving a message on a voicemail is a confirmed appointment.
• Have a strict no-show and cancellation policy. Advise your patients of your policy and be sure to enforce it. 
• Have an ASAP List available for the times you do have a last-minute cancellation so that you can fill the appointment and avoid lost revenue. Appointments can be put on the ASAP list which is available in Appointment Lists in the Appointment Book.

Improve Interoffice Communication

• Use an instant messaging system to communicate throughout the office. This can save a lot of time going back and forth to tell the doctor that the hygienist is ready for an exam, or to tell the office manager that she has a phone call. Communicating via text message also avoids patients overhearing conversations that may be about another patient.
• Use Patient Route Slips or Patient Visit Forms to communicate from the clinical team to the administrative team information like procedures that were completed for a patient and what their next visit should be. This eliminates confusion when setting appointments complete. 

Whatever your New Year’s Resolutions are for your practice in 2021, Dentrix offers many great features to help you implement them.

If you have questions, please 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.