Mining for Gold - the 3 reports for searching unscheduled treatment

When I worked in a dental practice, we still had paper charts until 2009 when I helped my practice transition to a paperless environment. This means that we had a ton of treatment sitting in these paper charts that we had to search for manually in order to find patients who were unscheduled. It was an extremely time-consuming process but it is what we had to do in order to keep our doctor’s schedule full.

When you are working in a chartless environment and all your treatment plans are sitting in the computer, you still must follow up with patients who are not scheduled … but the process is much more streamlined. What I love about computer data is that it is all trackable and you can filter it onto a report. I call it “Mining for Gold.”

In Dentrix, there are actually three reports for you to use to track down unscheduled treatment to follow up with patients. I do have a favorite but I will let you decide for yourself what works best in your practice.

1. The Unscheduled Treatment Plan Reporthas been in Dentrix forever and it is what I used back in the olden days. This report gives you information on unscheduled treatment but you have to print it in order to work it and it can be very lengthy. Also, we have to remember that every time we print a report, things will change quickly and then your report is obsolete. To find this report, go to the Office Manager > Reports > Lists > Unscheduled Treatment Plans.
2. The Practice Treatment Case Report is also a printed report but you can filter it by very specific data points that you cannot find in other reports. What I like about this report is that you can search for treatment that has been Accepted, Rejected or Proposed if you are marking your cases with this status. This is good information for your doctor to see. In this report, you can also search by the case severity if you are using the stop light feature (for more information on this, CLICK HERE). This report can only be found on the Patient Chart and Treatment Planner modules. Click on the printer icon as if you were printing a treatment plan estimate, but instead click on Practice Treatment Case Report. Then select the parameters you want and click OK.
3. The Treatment Manager Report This is by far my favorite report in Dentrix. It offers you a way to search for patients with unscheduled treatment and create your own interactive spreadsheet where you can resort the columns to organize the report any way you want. You also do not have to print this report because everything you need to follow up with the patient is at your fingertips. For more details about using this report, refer to the blog I wrote called “Holes in your Doctor’s Schedule?” and learn more.

“Mining for Gold” is my motto when it comes to looking for patients with unscheduled treatment. You need to be proactive when it comes to following up with patients. You cannot expect them to pick up the phone and call you. Keeping your schedule full is something that requires a little bit of work from you. I hope these report options help make the task a little more efficient.

Personal goals = personal growth = practice success

Did one of my recent articles get you thinking about planning for the end of the year? I talked about how you can make adjustments in your appointment book to make room for those last-minute new patients who are trying to get in before the end of the year so you can make your new patient goal number. I also discussed how you can forecast your appointment book production numbers to see if you are coming up short for your production goals. If you would like to re-read this article, CLICK HERE to be redirected.

These practice goals are not only important, but they are critical to the health of the office overhead and the stress level of the team. But what about you? What are your personal goals? When I was working in a practice, I got my hands on as much CE as I could handle. Do you know what goal I think you could set and accomplish by the end of the year? You could become a Dentrix Master and receive a certificate to prove it. This could be your personal end of the year goal.

Clinical CE is great and, for some of you in the dental practice, it is a requirement in order for you to maintain your license. Your entire day revolves around your practice management software and most offices have zero training or continuing education for the software you use every day. You all must maintain a certain level of knowledge of Dentrix in order to function on a daily basis. I am asking you to up your game and not just function, but excel. Become a Dentrix Master.

It’s easy to start and extremely rewarding to finish. The Dentrix Mastery Tracks were launched to help you learn more about your software, things you might not know exist and things you want to learn more about. This is your chance to set a personal goal and help your office at the same time.  I believe in you.

Your first test is free! 

To get started CLICK HERE and Create New User. Then enter code FreeTestDOM

Three tips for an accurate list of patients with unused insurance benefits

We have all heard the phrase “Garbage in, Garbage out.” This phrase comes into play especially when you and your team are trying to generate a list of patients who have unscheduled treatment and unused insurance benefits. Since this is typically the time of year when you want to start reminding patients to use or lose their unused insurance benefits, you want to make sure that this amount used is not a bunch of garbage. 

How do you make sure your unused insurance benefits is a number you can count on? 

Here are three tips . . .

• Make sure you are up to date on month end. One of the many tasks that the month end procedure will tackle is resetting the insurance benefits used back to zero. I was in a practice a couple of months ago and one reason they have never been able to trust their treatment plan estimates is because they had not performed a month end since 2009. RUN MONTH END!
• When you are setting up the insurance plan, make sure that the benefit renewal date is set accurately. Open the Insurance Data window. About halfway down, there is a benefit renewal date. Make sure this is accurate.
• Update the patient’s insurance amount used if he or she has gone to a specialist or used benefits at another practice. Open the deductibles tab in the insurance window and manually update the benefits used. This way, when you search for a list of patients with remaining insurance benefits, you will get an accurate list.

For more information on how to run the reports and exports the lists, check out these past articles.

Unused insurance benefits . . . it's now more than a once a year project

Tis the Season

5 Ways to trust the data on the Practice Advisor Report

Last week, I had the honor of attending the Henry Schein Practice Solutions

consultant summit. It is a time every two years where dental consultants and industry leaders get together with the Henry Schein team and discuss the challenges the dental practice is facing and what lies ahead in the future. This helps the R&D department work on enhancements to the many products and services we use every day in our dental practice. It is one of the most amazing brainstorming sessions I have ever attended. It is also a lot of fun.

With that being said, a blog topic idea came into my head while I was listening to Tammy Barker speak about Profitability Coaching and how her team spends quite a bit of time with their clients on making sure the data being displayed on the KPI reports is as accurate as possible. I share the same goal and want all of you to understand how to make sure your numbers are as accurate as possible.

There are five key numbers on the Practice Advisor that are critical to the health and success of your practice. Your team needs to know what they do in the software affects the outcome of these statistics.

• Case Acceptance – Dentrix can track your case acceptance accurately if your team manages the treatment plans appropriately. The way Dentrix tracks the monthly case acceptance is if the treatment is diagnosed and completed in the same month OR if your mark the case as accepted. For more about managing treatment plans, CLICK HERE.
• Production per day – This is entirely dependent on the setup of the appointment book. You must have your office days, provider days and hours set up accurately in order to get an accurate production per day number. I feel this number is more important than the production per month. To learn more about setting up the appointment to perfection, CLICK HERE.
• New Patients – Dentrix tracks new patients based on the first visit date located in the Family File. It also will count a patient as a new patient if this date is empty. The best way to track this on a daily basis is to use the Daily Huddle Report. If you want to read more about the Daily Huddle, CLICKHERE.
• Referrals – Your total new patients should match the total number of referral sources. This is important because you want to see where your patients are coming from and know how to spend your marketing dollars. For these two numbers to be accurate, the First Visit Date and the Referral Date must match. I wrote about this back in January and you can re-read it by CLICKING HERE.
• Active Patient Base – The active patient base on the Practice Advisor Report looks at the last visit date and how many patients have come in for an appointment within a certain amount of time. This one could get a little tricky for the office that posts a procedure code for things like missed appointments and other non-appointment tracking on the ledger. Every time you post something to the ledger with a procedure code, it will update the last visit date and now your Active Patient Base is updated. You can read more about this topic by CLICKING HERE.

This topic of accurate numbers and learning to trust your reports is so important. It is one of the most requested topics I get and one of the most-asked questions I receive from Dentrix users. 

It's the little things . . .

It’s the little things that matter.  I hear that statement all the time being out in the

dental industry working with dental practices from all over the country. I love it when I show clients something and their eyes light up because they now know something that is so simple but makes such a huge impact on their day.

Dentrix is by far the most comprehensive and feature-rich practice management software in the industry and this is why it is the leading software for dentists.  However, when a keystroke or menu maneuver helps you do something better, faster and easier, it is HUGE.

Here are some of the top “Ah-Ha” moments I have seen over my career as a certified Dentrix trainer.

• Printing the full day of Route Slips or sorting them.  When I walk into an office and I see in the Batch Processor 30-60 single Route Slips being printed, I know this office does not know how to print out the whole day at one time.  There are two ways to accomplish this . . .
• Office manager > Reports > Lists > Daily Appointment List > check mark Patient Route Slips and send to the Batch.  From this menu, you can also sort by provider or operatory.
• You can also print the Route Slips within the Daily Huddle Report.
• Filter the Office Journal.  If you have been reading my blog, you know how much I love the office journal and I recommend all teams use it for admin communication with patients.  However, I find that a lot of offices refuse to use it because it takes so long to load.  Good news! You can filter your office journal so it will load less information and speed it up.  Open the office journal and click on View and then Filters.  Here you can select only the information you want to list in your view and you can select a starting date so it doesn’t look back to the beginning of time.
• Lock your computer with a CTRL + ALT + DEL and select LOCK COMPUTER when you leave your workstation. This way, you do not have to close down all your Dentrix windows to secure your computer.

Let me know what some of your “Ah-Ha” moments are.  I would love to hear your stories and quick tips to share.  You can comment  on this post or email me directly.

The Thriving Dentist with Gary Takacs - podcast

Practice management software is a critical element in every thriving practice. Yet many Dentists and Team Members are only using a small fraction of the capabilities of their practice management software. In this Thriving Dentist Show, Gary interviews his friend Dayna Johnson on specific tips to optimize your dental practice management software. Dayna is an authority on this subject and passionate about helping her colleagues. In this interview, Gary and Dayna discuss; Why many dental offices are still using a paper chart, the four specific benefits of converting to digital records, the three key elements of a successful paperless transition, important security tips, a fool proof back up system and the five most important statistics that every office should monitor with their practice management software.

CLICK HERE to be directed to the podcast

Why don't my reports show the same numbers . . . grrrrrr!

“I have pulled up three different reports trying to find out what my accounts receivable number is and they all have different numbers,” says Nichole from a client office in New York. Renee from a different office states, “I have a patient who has a $6,000 balance and she has never received a statement and she did not show up on my collection report.” Sound familiar? I know these situations can be frustrating and it is easy to blame the software for differences in reporting. However, I want to take you through a few check points to make sure you are getting similar data on different reports and also walk you through what is different on reports.

If you have been reading my blog for a while, you know that my favorite report for managing your accounts receivable is the CollectionManager. There are some things to know about the Collection Manager Report . . .

• This report only shows positive accounts receivable so if you are trying to compare it to an Aging Report or the Practice Analysis snapshot, you will not get the same numbers. The Aging Report can be filtered to show all balances, positive balances or credits, and, if you have a lot of credit balances, these two reports could show very different bottom line numbers.
• The Collection Manager can be filtered down a lot to give you a very specific report or a very broad report and, depending on how you are matching it up to another A/R report, if you don’t select the same parameters, you will get different numbers.

If you are looking at the snapshot Practice Analysis report (Office Manager > Analysis > Practice), then you will also get a different ending balance depending on a few things . . .

• This snapshot is affected by month end so, depending on if you are up to date with month end, will determine how accurate this number is and if it will match up to any other A/R report.
• This Analysis snapshot cannot be filtered by billing type … so if you have balances in billing types like “Sent to Collection,” this will affect this number.
• This report is only run by Entry Date (you cannot change this). If you are running any of the other A/R reports by Procedure Date, then you will get different numbers.

Most of the accounts receivable and collection management reports can be filtered by different parameters to give you different numbers. Here are the most common troubleshooting tips to check if you are matching up reports.

• Did you select the same providers?
• Did you select the same billing types?
• Did you choose Entry Date or Procedure Date?
• What aging category did you select?
• Are you selecting the same date range or ending date?
• Were there any other boxes that were checked that might have filtered out a particular patient from one report over another? In the first paragraph, I had an office questioning why a particular patient did not show up on the Collection Manager Report. It was because she had checked “If not billed since” on the filters so this particular patient had been excluded.

Hopefully this will help you understand how different each report is and why they might give you different numbers. Numbers tell a story and it is important to have as accurate report as possible.

Inactivating providers and team members . . . is it still on the back burner?

Does it drive you crazy scrolling through the list of providers every time you are trying to schedule an appointment when ¾ of them no longer work at your practice? How about when it is time to print out your payroll reports and you are having to sort through a list of team members who have been gone for years? Would you like to clean all this up but not sure really how to do it or what ramifications it will have on your system?

Inactivating providers and team members is one of those tasks put on the back

burner and then just piles up for the next person to remedy. I think one reason it doesn’t get done is that all workstations have to be closed out of Dentrix in order for you to perform this task. My recommendation would be to do it at the same time you run month end since you have to dismiss everyone out of Dentrix for this task as well.

Once you are ready to inactivate some providers, then you get stuck because you have to choose a replacement. What does this mean? Who do I choose? Here are the most important things to remember . . .

• When you choose a replacement provider, it does not change anything in history so don’t worry about the patient ledger being altered. Inactivating a provider and choosing his or her replacement will swap out anything in the future. For example, any future appointments will be changed to the replacement provider, any treatment planned procedures will be changed to the replacement provider, the default insurance claim provider may be switched and, if you have selected a specific continuing care provider, they will be replaced as well.
• If you are inactivating your primary provider (PROV1 in the Family File), the replacement provider will take over in this role. This is common in a practice sale or transition. The PROV1 is used on many reports in Dentrix.
• When you inactive a provider, all Time Clock data will be removed so make sure you have payroll reports as a backup.
• If you are using Future Due Payment Plans, the assigned provider will be replaced as well.

I think once you understand that none of your history will be altered, it makes the process easier to swallow. The most significant change will happen if you are inactivating one of your primary providers because this will change the PROV1 in the family file and will affect some reports. Hopefully this helps and will allow you to move forward with this necessary task.

Recare is the lifeblood of your practice

If you are a general practice or pediatric dental practice, your recare system is the lifeblood of your practice. Your doctor’s schedule feeds off the hygiene patients so it is critical that you have a seamless system. But are your hygiene systems working as well as you think they are? You may have patients falling through the cracks or not receiving the reminders that you think they are.

The most important component of your recare system is the setup and making sure your team understands the details. I want to take some time today to walk you through proper setup, checking your individual patients continuing care, and which report to manage.

First, the setup is key. I wrote a blog post on May 23, 2012, called “KISS your Continuing Care Types,” but obviously not everyone read it so I am going to take some of those tips and re-apply them today. Many offices, understandably, try and create a system for 3-month Perio, 4-month Prophy, etc., by setting up new Continuing Care types but trust me . . . IT DOESN’T WORK! Remember that you can only attach one Continuing Care type to the procedure code. To

understand what I am talking about, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Procedure Code Setup, then highlight the D1110 and click edit. You will notice in the middle of the window there is a >> Auto Continuing Care where you can attach one Continuing Care Type to this code. This means you cannot link up a 4-month Prophy and 6-month Prophy to the same code.

Your options are Prophy and Perio or Recare. You can link the Prophy to the D1110 and the D1120 and the Perio to the D4910, or link the Recare to all three.

After you have this setup corrected, when you schedule your patient for a cleaning, it will link up to the appointment correctly. When you set complete, it will update your patient’s due date.

But what if your patient is a 3-month Perio or 4-month Prophy? How do you get it up update the due date correctly? You can update the patient’s frequency on his or her Family File in the Continuing Care window. Once you change the patient’s recare frequency, then your reports will be accurate. When you schedule the patient for his or her next visit, the system will know when he or she is due.

After you get this setup fixed and the patient’s frequency updated on the Family File, then you can feel confident that your Continuing Care Report is accurate. If you are using the Dentrix eCentral communication manager, you will know that your patients are receiving reminders when they are due. For a full article on the Continuing Care report, CLICK HERE.

Accurate Family Balance or Accurate Patient Balance . . . you choose

In my last post, I talked about the fact that I love how many things in Dentrix can be customized to fit the needs of the practice, from the toolbars to colors on the patient chart. In addition to visual customizations, you can also change the way payments are handled in the ledger as they are applied to the providers and specific patients. You would think that every office would want to handle payments and track collections the same, but this is not the case. Many offices I work with find it is easier to post all the payments to the guarantor and the primary provider, but many offices are very particular about itemizing out the payment to the rendering providerand the specific patient ledger. However your practice handles payments, I think it would be a good time to help you understand how each allocation method affects your patient ledgers.

If you want to walk through it with me, go to your Office Manager > Maintenance > Preferences, under the General Options tab in the upper left area is the Default Payment/Adjustment Allocation settings.

• ·        Provider
• Split by Provider will separate out the patient payment to pay off each producing provider. Your insurance claims already do this … so why not split the personal payments as well?
• To Patients Primary Provider will apply the entire personal payment to the patient’s primary provider (PROV1 on family file) regardless of who the producing provider is. This decision will give too much collections to one provider and, if you run a Provider A/R report, the payments and accounts receivable will be lopsided.
• ·        Patient
•  Family account will post the entire payment to the guarantor. The result of doing this will be an accurate family balance, but incorrect patient balances.
• Current patient will post the personal payment only to the patient ledger you are logged onto currently.
• Split by Family Members is a new feature with G6. It allows you to take one payment and distribute it out to multiple family members with one step. The result of doing this will be more accurate patient balances because it looks across the entire family account for patients with a balance. PLEASE NOTE: if you have archived a patient with a balance and you are using this new feature, it will pull that patient out of archive to apply a payment.
• ·Split Method
• Percentage Payments will equally distribute the patient payment between any providers who has a balance.
• FIFO (first in first out) will pay off the oldest provider balance first.
• Guarantor Estimate is always my first choice. What this allocation method will do is look at any current treatment with an insurance claim pending and allocate the patient payment depending on the insurance estimate. After it has allocated the payment to the estimated patient portion of the claim, it will revert to FIFO.
• Equal payments is very similar to the percentage payments method but will just split the payment into equal payments instead of a percentage.

Why does one office choose an allocation method over another? Well, it depends on how you track collections and how important it is to you to have accurate patient ledgers. I want you to choose the method that fits your practice that is why there are lots of choices. Email me directly if you want to discuss this one-on-one.

Create an environment for efficiency and accuracy with customizing your toolbars

What do I love about Dentrix? I love the fact that you can customize almost anything. I realize that some people think that too many choices leads to confusion and lack of efficiency, but I think the exact opposite. If you can narrow down the choices to exactly what you want in your practice on your monitor, on your reports, on your toolbar, etc., I feel it makes things more precise and streamlined.

I have written a lot of articles on building customized templates, clinical charting button sets, and creating consistent views for the treatment rooms. This systematic type of setup creates an environment where team members thrive on routine and it also creates fewer mistakes. I often hear during training sessions, “What do all these icons do?” or “Do I really need all these icons on my toolbar?” Well . . . the answer is not usually.

In the treatment room workstations, just like you create custom button sets and appointment book views, I would recommend removing several of the icons from the toolbar that your clinical team will never use in the operatory. By cleaning up the toolbars, the eyes have less to scan through which helps make you more efficient. There are two different ways to clean up your toolbars . . .  

The toolbars on the Patient Chart have a drop down menu where you can add and remove items by checking and unchecking. I would recommend setting all the toolbars exactly the same in every treatment room because when the doctor, assistant, or hygienist has to go work in a different room, you want it to look the same. Here are a few icons you could remove (not should, but could) from the toolbars on the Patient Chart. If you decide to remove more than what I have listed, be my guest.

•  DxWeb – In my last blog, you learned that this runs on only one computer (usually a front office computer) so there is no need for it in the back.
• DentriXlink – Unless you are bridging a piece of technology (imaging, CT scan, etc) with Dentrix, you will not use this icon in the back.
• QuickLetters – Most clinical room computers are not equipped with Microsoft Word so this will not work without Word.
• Send Message – Most clinical room computers are not equipped with Microsoft Outlook so this will not work without using Outlook. Also, you would want to send out any protected patient information using a secure email server.
• Treatment Manager – This icon will pull up a report on unscheduled treatment. Since this is a managerial report and will require a phone to be handy so you can call the patient, this icon will typically not be used in the clinical room.
• Marketplace – Even though the Marketplace has some awesome tools that work with your Dentrix software, I hope that the clinical team members are not shopping while they are seeing patients. This can be removed from the clinical room computers.

On all the other modules (Appointment Book, Family File, Ledger, Office Manager), you will need to right click on the empty space on the toolbar to add, remove, and move around the icons. Here are a few recommendations for which workstations should have what on their toolbar.

• If you are using Perfect Day Scheduling in your practice, then I would make sure that it is turned on the clinical room computers so you can see all the blocks but then remove this icon off the appointment book. I have seen Perfect Day Scheduling get accidentally turned off and then all the blocks disappear off the schedule.
• The DxWeb icon can be removed from the computers where it does not run every day.
• The DentriXlink can be removed from the administrative modules if you want.

Keeping your toolbars consistent and clean will create an environment of efficiency and accuracy. Like I said before, “I love how much I can customize Dentrix. It is a wonderful thing!”

If you could save a ton of money and hours of time, would you be interested?

If you could save hundreds of dollars and hours of time per month, would you be interested? When I looked at how much money our office was spending on paper and the amount of hours I spent on busy work, it amazed me that I ever got anything productive done and that our office was actually profitable. One of the specific tasks I modified in my own practice (and I now teach to anyone that will listen) is how we run the billing statements in the practice.

I was working with a doctor in Anchorage, Alaska, many years ago and he asked me to skip over teaching his team how to send billing statements because his office was going to collect 100% at the time of service. At the time I honored his request, but about six weeks later, he was rethinking his decision because his accounts receivable was creeping up and needed to stop the bleeding. Sending patient billing statements is one of those necessary tasks, but it doesn’t have to be expensive or time-consuming.

There are two things you can change with the way you send out billing statements to patients and it will change your life forever.

1. Stop sending statements once a month and start sending them out a couple times a week. My recommendation would be to post the weekend mail and do a statement run on Monday then do a statement run before the weekend. Here are the benefits . . .
• It spreads out the task into smaller pieces. So instead of spending days on your statements, you can spend a few minutes a couple times a week.
• The doctor will like how it evens out the cash flow.
• You will like how it evens out the phone calls.
• You will get paid faster.
2. Use Quickbill. This is where you will save a ton of money. The national average says it costs you about $5.00 per statement to send out a paper statement, but Quickbill is less than $1.00 per statement. I am a control freak so I was very skeptical when it came to having someone else send my statements, but the only thing you lose control of is the printing, folding, stuffing, stamping, and mailing. You keep all the control of writing a personal message on your statements, you still get to decide who gets one and who doesn’t, you can still have your logo on your statement, and your patients still get a return envelope. You eliminate the busy work.

Gain your time back and save your practice a ton of money.

Printout for taxes . . . two options for you

Now that your patients have started receiving their W-2s from their employers and 1099s from their clients for tax purposes, you will start receiving phone calls from your patients asking you for a printout of what they paid last year for dentistry. Depending on exactly what patients need for tax reporting will depend on what printout works best. Do they need a printout with ADA codes? Do they just need a list of payments? Here are a couple of options for you, depending on what your patient needs.

The first option is if the patient does not need the year-end statement to have ADA codes. This will give you a nice clean list of just the payments the family has made in the date range you choose. Open the Ledger, click File and Search Payments. This will open a new window where you will select the parameters for your search (date range, guarantor name, payment types, etc.), then select Print.

 

The second option is if you need a payment history that includes ADA codes (most HSA plans want the ADA codes included). First, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences and make sure the “use ADA codes in description” is checked. Next, from the Office Manager > Reports > Billing, we are going to create a customized billing statement as a year-end printout.  Below is a list of parameters to choose.

• Change the Beginning Balance Forward date to the beginning of the year reported and the Statement Date to the end of the report year
• Select the Guarantor family
• Set the Minimum Balance to Bill to 0
• Uncheck all options
• Clear out the Statement Message
• Uncheck Save as Default

 

Forecasting how a change in fees will affect your production

I am a numbers geek so when I am in an office working with the doctor or office manager who loves to look at reports and numbers, I just go crazy. That brings me to this week’s blog. Last week, I was working with an office manager who takes all 12 of her fee schedules and manually enters them into MS Excel so she can manipulate the numbers. She might add 5% to her UCR fee schedule to see what it would do to their overall production or she might see what it would do to the production if they just added 300 more sealants or if they stopped charging for adult fluoride. She is a wizard with numbers and forecasting what the changes in fees will do to their production. I was amazed.

However, she spends hundreds of hours inputting these fee schedules into Excel. Out of the blue, she said, “It would be great if I could export my fee schedules into Excel.” When I clicked on the button, she was the happiest person in the room … which made me the happiest person in the room.

Maybe you are working with a company that is going to do some negotiating of your fee schedules on your behalf or maybe you want to see what it would look like if you put your UCR fee schedule in the 95% for dental practices in your area and what that would do to your revenue. If you export your fee schedules to Excel, you now have a more powerful tool and you can send it in an e-mail to your consultant, accountant, or yourself to work on at home.

Here is how you do it . . .

Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Fee Schedule Maintenance > then highlight the fee schedule you want to export (you can select multiple by holding your CTRL key), then click on Export, save it to the location of choice, and click OK. We just saved it to the desktop. Then double-click on the file and it automatically launches MS Excel (assuming you have it installed).

Hopefully I just saved you a bajillion amount of hours J

 

Analyzing your new patient numbers

Numbers tell a story . . . they are black and white without emotion.  However, the numbers we see are sometimes only as accurate as what we put into our practice management software.  If you have been reading my blog for a while you have noticed that I am a stickler on numbers and I teach my offices how to make the numbers as accurate as possible.

Starting fresh in a New Year we all have New Year’s Resolutions that we want to achieve in both our professional and personal lives.  We start off strong for the first few weeks like the rivers in the spring and then slowly it trickles down to a stream as we get closer to the end of summer.  If you are watching your numbers on a daily basis you can keep the motivation going consistently throughout the year.

There is one number, however that can be misread on a report if it is not entered correctly.  I found the other day while I was reviewing the Practice Advisor Report that this office had 29 new patients recorded for December but only 7 referral sources.  So one thing that I stressed to the office was to make sure they are entering in how the patient found the office so the doctor can see how some of the marketing campaigns are going.  She was insistent that she enters this information every time and low and behold when we looked at the New Patient List there was a referral source entered for all the new patients.  But why was the Practice Advisor Report not reporting this . . . ? 

The first visit date MUST match the referral source date.

 

Dentrix considers a new patient based on the first visit date found on the Family File.  This date is automatically populated when a team member opens the account.  What can happen is that the team member opens the account a couple days before the new patient appointment date and then when the patient comes in for their visit they add the referral source after reviewing the paperwork.  This is a typical scenario and can be corrected.  When you are updating the Family File with all the demographics, insurance info and personal notes, add it to your list to double check the first visit date and the referral source date and make sure they are accurate and match. 

One easy way to double check your statistics is to review the Daily Huddle Report each morning.  This will calculate how many new patients you have on your schedule for today and how many referral sources are attached to your new patients.   If this number is incorrect for today it is a “red flag” that something needs to be fixed.  If you fix it on a daily basis then the Practice Advisor Report at the end of the month will be as accurate as it can be.

For other articles on the Daily Huddle and the Practice Advisor click below . . .

Your Daily Motivation

The 5 Minute Morning Huddle

Your own Practice Management Consultant

 

Be prepared for Year End

Welcome to December! I always loved December because I would get excited to see how the practice did for the year, how it compared to the previous year, and start setting goals for the next year. It is kinda like “A Christmas Carol” for the dental practice . . . past, present, and future. Hopefully you don’t have too many scary ghosts haunting your office numbers.

I want to help you be as prepared as possible for year end. With that in mind, Dentrix put together a great info sheet for you to reference when the time comes to close out your year. 

CLICK HERE to access the Dentrix Year End info sheet

Your Active Patient Base may not be accurate

We are coming to the close of 2015 and I would like you all to start thinking about planning for next year and what that might look like. However, before we can start looking at annual planning for next year, we need to continue focusing on this year and really critiquing the numbers. If you have been reading my blog posts for a while, you know that I talk a lot about how numbers tell a story and having accurate numbers is extremely important in analyzing the health of your practice.

If you are using the Practice Advisor Report on a monthly basis for analyzing, managing, and forecasting your key performance indicators (KPI) … congratulations! If you are not yet using this amazing tool, you can read up about it by CLICKING HERE. Learning how to make the numbers on this report as accurate as possible is the key to using this report to its fullest potential.

There is one number on this report that could be skewed, depending on how you deal with your missed and broken appointments. I realize that the ADA CDT coding came out recently with procedure codes for Missed Appointment (D9986) and Cancelled Appointment (D9987). However, I am urging you not to use them. When you post a procedure code to the patient’s ledger, it automatically updates the patient’s last visit date. So if you post a D9986 to the ledger to note that the patient missed an appointment today, the family file Last Visit Date will still get updated to today. This last visit date number is used on the Practice Advisor report to calculate your Active Patient Base. You might be asking, “Well, Dayna, how would you suggest we track missed appointments?” I’m glad you asked! Here are some suggestions . . .

·        Use an adjustment code instead. You can have a maximum of 40 adjustment types listed in the definitions so if you have not met this max, then this would be my first choice. If you have maxed out on adjustment types, then I would look to see if you have any duplicates that you can combine together and then add two new ones. With an adjustment, you can post a $0 amount just to document it or you can post a dollar amount to show the fee. This would need to be a + adjustment type.

·        Make sure you are using the Break Appointment feature and not the delete appointment when a patient misses an appointment. When you break an appointment, it will make a note on the Office Journal and update the missed appointments on the Family File.  The Practice Advisor Report will also calculate your lost revenue from broken appointments.

·        Document a missed appointment in the Clinical Note. Now this will not give you a searchable code to look for, but it will give you the documentation in case the patient becomes a risk or argumentative about missed appointments. You can always print the clinical notes if needed.

Like I said, “Numbers tell a story.” If you want an accurate Active Patient Base count, stop posting a procedure code to the ledger when the patient does not keep his or her appointment. If you would like to learn more about the Practice Advisor Report, here are some other blog posts on numbers . . .

Do you know how many patients are leaving your practice?  CLICK HERE

The 5 Stats Every Office Should Monitor . . .  CLICK HERE

 

Top 10 features in Dentrix you are not using

In 2003, my dental practice converted from an archaic DOS-based dental software to the impressive and robust Dentrix practice management software. To say the least, I was completely overwhelmed. Two years later, in 2005, I still felt like I hadn’t even scratched the surface of my new powerful software’s potential so I applied to become a Certified Dentrix Trainer in order to learn everything there was to know about the Dentrix program. What better way to learn than to get a certificate?

Now I know that not everyone has the opportunity to become a Dentrix trainer like I did, but with a little self-motivation and some tips from me, you will be well on your way to being a “Dentrix super user.” Since I am working with dental practices every day, I have the unique opportunity to see what features they are using, what features they are not using, and what features they have no idea even exist. My goal today is to give you my top 10 you might not even know exist.

1. Quick Letters and Letter Merge – Maybe this sounds familiar . . . you have a folder on your desktop with all of your office’s letters you send out to patients, including collection letters, welcome letters, and letters to specialists. When it is time to send a letter, you edit the date, enter the patient’s name, address, and salutation, then sign the letter and scan it into the document center. That process sounds like a lot of work to me. Why not add your custom letters into the Quick Letters or Letter Merge with the proper merge fields and let Dentrix do all the work for you? The best part is it will automatically put a note on the Office Journal and you can “Send to the Dentrix Document Center” without scanning (see #5 on the list).  Here are some more blog posts related to this feature . . .
1. Send letters that make an impact . . . CLICK HERE
2. Can you write me an excuse note . . . CLICK HERE
2. Dentrix Mobile – Have you ever been sitting in the comfort of your home watching the weather forecast and hoping that the power doesn’t go out … then suddenly there’s nothing but darkness. You check the office and the power is also out there … so how are you going to let your patients know not to come in? Has your doctor ever been out of town and received a call from a patient requesting a drug refill but he or she has no way of checking the last prescription or the patient’s last visit unless he or she goes into the office? Both of these two common scenarios can be solved just by registering for Dentrix Mobile. It’s included in your Dentrix customer support plan so there is absolutely no excuse for not using this service.
1. Three reasons you should be using Dentrix Mobile . . . CLICK HERE
2. A lifeline to your patient info . . . CLICK HERE
3. Payment Agreements – I wrote an article called “Get it out of your head and into the computer” back in April 2014. The theme of the article was speaking to office managers who store all their verbal payment agreements in their head. What I am seeing is this is still happening, but I am also seeing new doctors purchasing practices with a significant amount of the accounts receivable over 90 days past due or new office managers taking over a practice where there has been no management of the accounts receivable. Using the Payment Agreement feature in Dentrix will not only help you get organized with patients who are making payments, but also allow the entire team to see on the ledger what the arrangement is with the account.
1. Two options to help you manage your A/R . . . CLICK HERE
2. Get the info out of your head and into the computer . . . CLICK HERE
4. Tracking Gratuities and Referrals - Do you know where your new patients are coming from? Are they hearing about you from friends, Google Search, or the ValPak flyer that cost you $15,000 to send out? Your marketing dollars depend on where patients are being referred from so you should know where to continue spending money and where to stop. When a patient refers a new patient, do you give him or her a thank you gift? Would you like to track if you gave the referral source a Starbucks or Home Depot gift card last time or be able to track a referral source’s gratuity history? Tracking referrals and gratuities in Dentrix is super easy and gives the doctor a lot of good information about where to spend marketing dollars … but I find most offices never use this useful tool.
1. Building relationships one referral at a time . . . CLICK HERE
2. Keep tight reins on your referred patients . . . CLICK HERE
5. Sending to the Dentrix Document Center – This will save your team a ton of time in unnecessary scanning, unnecessary wasted paper, and unnecessary hard drive storage space. When you scan a document into the Document Center, it takes many more steps and the file size of a scanned document is about 100 times larger (just a guess) than that of a file send electronically through the Dentrix Document Center printer driver. Anything you want to print can be virtually printed to the Document Center for file storage. This is such an amazing yet underused feature.
1. A little known secret . . . CLICK HERE
6. Perfect Day Scheduling – Close your eyes for a moment and imagine if you could see your patients on time, complete 80% of your production goal before lunch, get out for lunch on time, and finish your day without pulling the roller skates out of the closet. This can be a reality if you create it. Take control of your appointment book with Perfect Day Scheduling. When you use perfect day scheduling, your team knows exactly how to schedule because you have mapped it out for them. There is no room for error.
1. What if everyday could be a perfect day . . . CLICK HERE
2. The new patient experience, scheduling the appointment . . . CLICK HERE
7. Goal Tracking – Every dental practice has production and collection goals they need to meet in order to keep the financial state of the business healthy. I always encourage doctors to share these goals with the team and be transparent with the key performance numbers with the team. There are several places in Dentrix to watch and monitor your practice goals so the team can strategize and work together on exceeding the goals. You can monitor your goals on the monthly calendar, Practice Advisor Report, and the Daily Huddle.
1. Let's do some goal setting . . . CLICK HERE
2. Looking ahead to  . . . CLICK HERE
8. More Information Button – Have you ever been on the phone with a mom and she wants to know when her three kids and husband are scheduled next for all their future appointments … but you’re not sure what’s the most efficient way to find all these appointments for the entire family? Try the More Information button and I can guarantee you will fall in love with this super quick search tool. You can find the More Information feature on all Dentrix modules. When you are selecting a patient anywhere in Dentrix, you will see it at the lower left corner of the window.
9. Create Batch of Primary Dental Claims – Are you sure you have batched and sent off all your insurance claims from last week? How about last month? Use this second pair of eyes to double check and make sure all your claims have been sent out. Not only will this give you peace of mind, but also keep your accounts receivable out of the 90-day past due column.
1. Are all your insurance claims going out . . . CLICK HERE
10. Patient-Friendly Descriptions – Do your patients often ask what a “resin 2surf, post” or a “Crown-porc fused noble metal” is? Or is your practice in an area where English is not the primary language for many of your patients? If you would like to create a treatment plan that your patients would more easily understand and helps them understand what each procedure is, then start using patient-friendly descriptions. With Dentrix G6.1, it is even easier to use because you can edit these descriptions in the procedure code edit.
1. No speak English, no worries . . . CLICK HERE

Have fun experimenting with these features and working toward increasing your level of efficiency and customer service. Drop me a line at dayna@raedentalmanagement.comif you have other questions. I’m happy to help.

Unused insurance benefits . . . it's now more than a once a year project

Since I have been writing the Dentrix Office Manager blog, I have posted up an article about this time of year reminding you to reach out to patients who have unscheduled treatment withremaining insurance benefits. This year is no different. However, I think that it might be a project you might want to tackle a couple of times each year depending on when the big employer groups start their benefit year. When I was working in my practice in Washington state, we had several groups that renewed at other times than January. Boeing, for example, renews in July and the school districts renew in October. 

If you decide to generate this lists of patients, you can filter the list by benefit renewal month. To generate the report, go to the Appointment Book > Treatment Manager > select the filters you want, including the benefit renewal month.

 

Since I have written on this topic every year, I am going to point you back to the articles so you don’t have to do a search.

               CLICKHERE to read “Don’t let unused insurance benefits go to waste.”

               CLICKHERE to read “Unscheduled treatment . . . the urgency is now.”

               CLICKHERE to read “Send letters that make an impact”

Two options to help you manage your accounts receivable

I recently created an online course called “Show me the Money,” which ties in perfectly to today’s article. As you may have figured out, my online course is all about accounts receivable. Managing your accounts receivable takes into account many factors, including the new patient phone call, treatment planning, follow up, and collection letters. One thing you can do to manage your accounts receivable is to create the appropriate payment plan when needed. There are two different types of payment plans in Dentrix that can help you with the management of your accounts receivable.

The Payment Agreement is one type of payment plan in Dentrix. Use this if patients have already completed their treatment and have an existing balance you want to extend for a period of time. Entering in the payment agreements into Dentrix will help you manage your accounts in three huge ways.

1. If you have read my articles about patient collections, you know that I use the Collection Manager Report for managing accounts receivable. This report allows you to enter columns of information that will show you Payment Agreement Balance, Payment Agreement Amount Due, and # of missed payments. Having this information at your fingertips can be extremely helpful on this report because you don’t have to do any research about the account balance. You can see that the patient is on a payment plan and if he or she is current with payments. Read More . . . on the Collection Manager Report.
2. When you create a Payment Agreement, it will light up the Payment Agreement Summary section on the Ledger so anyone who opens the ledger will see that the account is on a payment plan as well as the status of the payments. If there are missed payments, this will show up in red in the Past Due section. This will be extremely helpful if the financial coordinator is on vacation and relying on other team members to collect money at the time of service or field phone calls.
3. When you send billing statements, if you have entered in the Payment Agreement, it will accurately reflect the amount due from the family. The billing statement will show the total account balance and, in the PLEASE PAY THIS AMOUNT box, it will show the agreed payment amount. Also, if the patient has missed a payment, the billing statement will show a past due amount at the top of the statement to draw attention to this missed payment. If you are not using this feature, you might be writing on the statement … and that takes more time out of your schedule.

The second option for setting up a payment plan is using the Future Due Payment Plan feature. Use this when the patient is going to incur charges over a period of time in the future, such as orthodontic treatment. The Future Due Payment Plan helps you manage your accounts receivable in three ways as well.

1. In a similar manner as discussed above, you can filter your Collection Manager Report to search for patients with a FDPP so you can focus on those accounts and see if any of these accounts have missed a payment.
2. When you create a FDPP, it will remove the balance out of your accounts receivable and bill it out at increments you decide on. For example, if a patient is going to schedule a $5,000 12-month ortho treatment and put $1,500 down, then you can set up the payment plan to “hide” the $3,500 and bill out $291.66 each month automatically. Additionally, you can set it up so it will automatically create an insurance claim to go out to the insurance company as well.
3. Finally, you can print out a coupon book if the patient would like a reminder for their payments.

If you would like more information on my online course titled “Show me the Money” . . . CLICK HERE.