Top 10 Blogs of 2014

1. Get Creative with Your ASAP List

I was working with an office recently and they have a program specifically for patients who do not pre-appoint. These patients are mostly retired and have very flexible schedules. They don’t want to tie down their schedules in four or six months so they just say, “Call me when you get an opening.” This office had a manual tracking system for these patients but wanted to find a way to incorporate this into their Dentrix system. Since you cannot put a patient on the ASAP list unless they have a scheduled appointment, we had to come up with something creative … so we gave these patients a specific status that we could search for within the Continuing Care system.CLICK HERE to continue reading

2. Top 5 reports every doctor should look at

I received an e-mail from a doctor the other day who had a situation that needed attention. Her clinical team had started posting procedures in the patient chart and had accidently posted a root canal as “complete” rather than “existing.” The root canal was not only posted to the patient’s ledger, but it was also sent electronically to the insurance company and paid. The patient called concerned about the EOB that he received and wondering why the office had billed his insurance company for a root canal he never had. When the doctor asked me what kind of safeguards she could put into place for her clinical team, my response was that this issue was an administrative boo-boo, not a clinical mistake. CLICK HERE to continue reading

3.  "Can you write me an excuse note for school?"

I was at the mall yesterday shopping for some curtains for my mom’s new condo and the mall was bustling with kids shopping for back to school clothes, shoes, and backpacks. When I was working in a practice, we had a middle school directly across the street from our office and kids would walk over from school for their dental appointments. Since these kids were usually not with their parents, we would write them a note to take back to school so they could receive an excused absence. For a long time, our office would photocopy the excuse notes and write the name and date of the appointment on the note. Then I got smart . . . I added a new Quick Letter so all we had to do was click on the appointment, open Quick Letters, highlight the excuse note, and click print. My team thought this was the coolest thing ever!  CLICK HERE to continue reading

4.  2014 New Year's Resolution - Credit balance clean up

Today we are going to tackle the issue of allocating payments properly on the Ledger and fixing the provider credits. In Dentrix, you can apply payments to the patient and allocate the payment to the different providers. However, most practices do not split the payments accordingly and then the patient balances and the provider A/R is not accurate. To fix the patient’s ledgers can be bit of a project, but, if this is one of your 2014 New Year’s Resolutions, here is how you do it.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

5.  2014 New Year's Resolution - Clean up you database

Is your New Year’s Resolution for 2014 to clean up your Dentrix Database? Do you find that you have duplicate insurance plans taking over your system? Do you have several unnecessary or duplicate medical alerts that have nothing to do with caring for a dental patient or you have maxed out your 64 limit and you need to find a way to create some space? My focus on the next few blog posts will be to help you straighten things out a bit.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

6.  Re-Evaluate your PPO insurance plans

The beginning of the year is usually the time where the doctor and team are getting back in the swing of things after vacations and preparing for a new year. With all of the uneasiness in the insurance world, I have had many offices looking to re-evaluate their contracts with PPO insurance companies. But, if you are using your fee schedules and billing out the PPO fee to the patient and not posting adjustments to the ledger, how do you assess the amount of your write-offs? Use the Utilization Report for Dental Insurance or The PPO Analyzer report.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

7.  Opting out of virtual credit card insurance payments

The issue of using a virtual credit card for insurance payments has not only become a frustrating situation for the dental practice, but also costs the office money they don’t need to be spending. My friend and colleague, Jennifer Schultz, who is owner of The Virtual Dental Office Manager, is also having the same issues with her offices. She recently wrote an article on the same topic, CLICK HERE to read it.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

8.  It's only an estimate so make it as accurate as possible

Are you looking for a more accurate way to accommodate the difference that the insurance company calculates for posterior composites? What about the fact that perio maintenance is in the perio category but is usually paid at 100%? Would you like to be able to give your patients a more accurate out-of-pocket estimate? If so, then using the Payment Table will make you very happy.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

9.  Treatment Plan Estimates . . . personal and efficient

When I am working with an office, I love to customize things in Dentrix to make it personal for the office and the patient experience, but I am also a stickler for efficiency. If you have read any of my blogs about using templates, you know what I am talking about. Well, the same goes for when we are printing a patient’s treatment plan estimate. I want it to be customized, but efficient for the front desk. You can create customized print options and save these options when you are generating a patient treatment plan estimate. Below is a screen shot of the print page and a description of all the options from which you have to choose.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

10. Jump start your medical billing

Last week, I wrote about how to set up medical cross-coding inside your Dentrix software. However, medical billing is not just about setting it up in Dentrix. Today, I am bringing in Christine Taxin, a medical billing and coding expert, to give you some information and resources that will help guide you through some of the insurance rules you need to know.  CLICK HERE to continue reading

Challenge yourself to become a Dentrix Master and get recognized on the Wall of Fame

This is your year to become the best you can be in your career.  Challenge yourself to become a Dentrix master.  Join me on the Wall of Fame as I post up your accomplishments on my blog all throughout 2015.   CLICK HERE to start your success.

Watch my video to hear all the details . . .

 Wall of Fame



CONGRATULATIONS!
You are a Dentrix Master









Delta EPO's and Co-Pay plans, how to setup

Lately I have been seeing a few new insurance plans creeping up in the market. In Colorado, I have seen these new “EPO” Delta Dental plans that have a patient co-pay instead of the traditional coverage %. Then, when I was in Washington recently, the office showed me a plan where the patient pays a total dollar amount on certain procedures. These plans sound similar, but the setup is slightly different.

With the “EPO” plans, I would use the co-pay feature inside of the coverage table. The reason I would use the co-pay is that there is a different patient co-pay for every procedure code. View the image below to see the fields to use for this type of setup.

 

Then I have seen other plans where the patient pays $65 for the exam, X-rays, prophy, etc., or pays $800 for a crown, but nothing else is covered. In this situation, I would use the Payment Table because there is not a co-pay on every procedure code. Remember, the Payment Table will override the Coverage Table. Set the coverage % to 0 because anything that is not listed on the benefits sheet is not covered. See the image below for the fields to use with this setup.

 

 

 

Low Stress Year End

No need to get all worked up about Year End,  it happens every month.  Yep you heard me right.  Year end is just like running Month End, there is nothing different you need to do.  Just run your Month End process exactly the same as you always do and you are all good.

The month end process does several things in your system:

• It puts transactions from the previous month into history.  This means you will no longer be able to edit or delete a completed transaction, payment or adjustment.
• All your clinical notes for the month are locked up.  So if you have not signed your clinical notes they will get locked up anyway for security purposes.
• If an insurance plans benefit year starts over this month the maximum used will be reset to 0.

Then, there are some optional things the month end process can accomplish:

• You can purge old appointments from your schedule.  This is a good idea after a couple years.  I would recommend keeping about 2-3 years worth the data on your appointment book.
• If you are using the month end wizard you can send billing statements, run certain reports and post finance charges.
• Also during the month end wizard you can post future due payment plans and assess late fees to your payment agreements.

For more information on reports to run for Year End check out these articles:

CLICK HERE for reports to run
CLICK HERE for more about year end
DOCTORS CLICK HERE to see what reports you need to be watching

I am looking forward to a great 2015!

For the Accountant in the practice . . .

We all know how amazing Dentrix is for managing your patient information, charting your patient’s clinical data, and providing you with a mountain of reporting options … but what about going a step further and downloading the numbers directly into your Quickbooks software? I bet you didn’t even know Dentrix could do that, did you? Let me tell you how.

If you have access to the Dentrix Resource Center, you can go directly to Article #22921 and read all about it. However, if that is not an option for you, here are some basic instructions with screen shots. First, go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences and click on the Paths tab to check the DXPort path. This is where it will export the information. To set up the export to Quickbooks, you will go to the Office Manager > Analysis > DXPort Setup, then follow the instructions.

After you have successfully exported your Dentrix file, you can import and open it up in Quickbooks. Open Quickbooks for the “Company” the office uses. Choose File > Utilities > Import, then browse to the DentrixAR.IIF file that was exported and double click on it. Click chart of accounts and you should be able to view the figures just imported.

NOTE: If you need more help with importing the DentrixAR.IIF file into Quickbooks, you will need to call Quickbooks because the Dentrix customer service department does not support the Quickbooks program, only the DXPort program.

Using this feature in your Dentrix software could save you time and import more accurate figures for your accountant.

Patient reviews and Family messenging . . . Whoo Hoo!

Electronic correspondence such as e-mail and text messaging has become one of the most sought-after services in the dental offices. I am often asked, “Who do you use for sending e-mails to your patients?” My response is, “I use the Dentrix eCentral program.” What I love about the eCentral program is how much control I have over the customization and it’s integrated with my Dentrix software. Now eCentral has enhanced its product by adding three amazing features.

I know, for me, reviews are extremely important when I am choosing a restaurant or nail salon because I want to know other people’s experiences. The same goes for the dental office and that is why eCentral is now offering reviews as part of the new patient post-appointment survey. Patients submitting a favorable review will be prompted to post their review to Facebook, Google+, and Yelp. Then, in the patient review dashboard, you can see which reviews were automatically posted to your website and add or remove reviews based on a more detailed examination of the content. The dashboard also provides an overview of your practice rating and other useful statistics.

One of the questions I would get from practices is, “How can we just send mom one message for all the kids’ appointments?” In the past, I would have to regretfully say it wasn’t an option, but now, thanks to all your requests, the development team has made it a reality. This will definitely eliminate a lot of the confusion with multiple reminders for multiple family members and the entire family can be confirmed with just one reply. Whoo-hoo!

People are using their mobile phones more and more as their only source of communication so Dentrix eCentral has optimized the e-mail reminder to be more mobile-friendly. It is easier to read and interact with the reminder with a mobile device.

I am extremely excited to announce to you these new feature enhancements. Since I am no longer working in a practice, I will have to live vicariously through you to enjoy these new features. Enjoy!

For more information on the eCentral suite of services, CLICKHERE

 

Let's do some goal setting for 2015

What’s on your agenda for December?  Decorating the office for the upcoming holidays, getting the thank you cards out to your referring doctors, or how about planning for 2015?  My vote is to do some goal setting for 2015 and let your Dentrix software help you.  Set up a meeting with your doctor, accountant or financial advisor for the practice and set your office goals for production, collection and new patients, then enter these goals in Dentrix so you can easily track your numbers.

There are a couple of places in Dentrix to help you manage your goals for the practice.  First, let’s set up your production goals so you can watch them on the appointment book and schedule appropriately.  Go to the Office Manager > Analysis > Practice > Setup > Goals, this is where you can enter your provider production goals for each month.  If your doctor has given you the daily goal, just multiply this by the total number of days worked to get the monthly goal.  Click on the >> next to the provider and select the first provider to enter goals for, then click on Read Selected Goals and it will list any goals you have already entered. If this is for a new year, it will be empty.  Then click Add and select 1 for January, 2 for February, and so on.

Next, go to the appointment book and click on View > edit or new > add in the providers you have entered goals for in the upper left area and click on View Amount. This will show you how much scheduled production you have on your books for that day.  Back on the appointment book, click on the monthly calendar in the upper left and click on Scheduled Production. Here you can see your scheduled production, monthly goal you just entered, and the variance.  This is simple way to track your monthly production goal.

Another place these production goals show up is the Daily Huddle Report.  This report is amazing!  Here are other blog posts on the Daily Huddle Report:

Your Daily Motivation

5 Minute Morning Huddle

Once you have your goals for production, collection and new patients, you can enter these as benchmarks for the Practice Advisor Report.  This report will give you a more comprehensive analysis of your numbers and give you some guidelines if you need to improve your office stats.  To enter your goals into the Practice Advisor Report, go to the Office Manager > Analysis > Practice Advisor > Practice Advisor Setup > Benchmarks Setup >. To enter your benchmarks, give a range for each category with your office goal being somewhere in the middle.  For example, if your total office production goal is $100k, then your benchmark would be $90k - $110k.  

Continue entering in the benchmarks for your practice and then use the Practice Advisor Report as a monthly monitoring tool.  For more information on this report, click the links below for other blog posts.

Your own personal practice management consultant . . .

The 5 stats every office should monitor