Understanding QuickBill Email Statuses

 When you email a billing statement to a patient (or guarantor), do you know if they received it, read it, or even opened it? With QuickBill's Electronic Statement Submission History report, you can track the history of your emailed statements to discover just what's happened to them. 

You have two options. First, you can view the report for all patients, giving you the ability to look at entire statement batches at a time and check on multiple payments at once. To access this report for all patients, from the Office Manager, click the Electronic Billing Submission History button.

Second, if you want to check up on payments from individual patients, you can access this report by family from the Family File, by clicking the Electronic Billing Submission History button.

To make the report easier to read, you can view and sort the report using the following identifying information: Submission Date, Guarantor Name, Total Billed Amount, and Mail and/or Email Status. Click each column header to sort the information as needed.

The Email Status column is perhaps the most useful, letting you see the status of each email so you can know what has happened to your emailed statement leading up to its delivery to the guarantor. For example, a status of Failed could mean that you have an incorrect email address for the recipient and should confirm it with the patient the next time they are in the office. 

Once the email has actually been sent to the patient by QuickBill, there are additional statuses to keep you informed about what the guarantor did with your emailed statement. For example, if you can see the status of Email Opened but don’t see a corresponding payment made on a patient’s Ledger, you may need to contact the patient further to ensure payment is made.

For a list of possible statuses, read the information and view the video for Electronic Statement Submission History.

Additional Information

• To receive electronic payments, a WorldPay merchant account is required.
• Email messages sent to the guarantors are not actual billing statements. They simply inform guarantors that billing statements are ready for them to view, and they can click a link within the email message to open their statements electronically.
• Once the statements are opened, they can review, download, and even post payments to them, which speeds up the entire billing and payment process tremendously!
• For more information about QuickBill, read the Dentrix article, 5 Reasons You Should Be Sending Electronic Billing Statements.
• To read tutorials and watch videos about QuickBill Email, visit QuickBill Email Quick Start.

Understanding Offsetting Adjustments

After you upgraded to Dentrix G7.4, you probably noticed that many of the reports now have an additional column and show totals for "Offsetting Adjustments"—but you may not know what that means or why that matters.

What are Offsetting Adjustments?

Offsetting adjustments are adjustments types that are created automatically by the Allocate Credit Balances, Family Edit, or Inactivate Provider features of Dentrix. When these features do their work, they add adjustments to the Ledger that change balances between family members and providers. 

For example, imagine that you inactivated DDS1 and replaced the provider with DDS2, and you selected to move the outstanding balances to the replacement provider. A patient’s Ledger where DDS1 was owed $100 would have two adjustments added to it automatically—a credit adjustment for $100 attributed to DDS1, and a charge adjustment for $100 attributed to DDS2. The two adjustments added together "offset" or cancel each other, so the account balance and the practice’s AR and aging reports do not change.

Why report them differently?

If these adjustments appeared as part of the mix of credit and charge adjustments on the reports, it could appear as if DDS1 had collected $100 and that DDS2 had produced $100. But they didn’t really. Those adjustments were just an accounting method to transfer the balance from one to another. Looking at those as part of the regular adjustment totals would make them appear larger than they really are.

So Dentrix G7.4 has modified many of the reports to show Offsetting Adjustments as being different than other adjustments.

In the transaction detail, you'll see a "Y" (meaning "yes") in the OS (Offsetting Adjustments) column.

The grand totals and provider totals each give a total of the offsetting adjustments. The grand total for offsetting adjustments will always add up to 0.00, while you will expect to see credits or charges among the individual provider totals.

For additional related information, read the following:

• Credit Where Credit is Due – Finding Provider Credits and Balances Issues
• Keeping Up with Family Changes in Dentrix
• Inactivating Providers in Dentrix G7.4
• Are Provider Credits Making Your Accounts Off Balance?

Copying the Payment Table

Do you have insurance plans entered into Dentrix where the differences between them are superficial — like group numbers — but the payment table information is the same? 

With Dentrix G7.4, you can now copy entire payment tables from one insurance plan to another plan, making it easier to update similar coverages! Just change the individual payment information that is unique to the plan you are updating.

Here’s how:

1. In the Office Manager, click Maintenance > Reference > Insurance Maintenance.
2. Select the carrier into which you want to copy another plan's payment table. Then, click the Benefits/Coverage button.
3. Click the Payment Table tab.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Click the Select Insurance Plan to Copy From button.
5. Select the carrier that you want to copy the payment table from and click OK.
6. Review the payment table and edit as needed.
7. To undo your changes, click Undo.
8. When finished, click Save.

Repeat this process for any other plans with similar payment table information.

Additional Information

• Updating benefit and coverage information will affect all patients covered by the updated insurance plan.
• You can copy a payment table from one plan to another and then edit the entries that need to be changed without recreating the entire plan.
• You can access the Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box from a patient's Family File. In the Family File, double-click the patient's Insurance Information box and click the Benefits/Coverage button. Then click the Payment Table tab.
• Read the Dentrix Magazine article titled, An Easier Way to Manage Patient Insurance Details.
• Read Copying Payment Tables from Insurance Plans (from the Office Manager) and Copying Payment Tables from Insurance Plans (from the Family File) in Dentrix Help.

Save Time Entering Insurance Coverage Information

At times you may need to enter a new insurance plan into Dentrix. It’s a time-consuming process because you want to make sure you enter all the details about the plan correctly. One of the most important tasks is also the most time consuming—entering the plan’s coverage table details.

With the introduction of the Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box in Dentrix G7.4, you can speed up the process of entering an insurance plan’s coverage table. Often times, you may have an existing insurance plan already within Dentrix that has a coverage table similar to the new one you need to enter.

You can use that other plan as a starting place and then only make changes to the specific areas that are unique to the new plan’s coverage you are entering. Let’s assume that you have already entered the new insurance plan information in Dentrix and are now ready to customize the coverage table.

Here’s how:

1. From the Office Manager, click Maintenance > Reference > Insurance Maintenance.
2. From the list of insurance carriers, select the one to enter a coverage table for, and then click Benefits/Cov.
3. In the Dental Insurance Benefits and Coverage dialog box, click the Coverage Table tab on the left.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Do one of the following:
• To use one of the five default coverage tables as a starting point, from the Select a Standard Coverage Table list, select the plan to base your coverage on. Click Yes to the message telling you that the current coverage table will be replaced.
• To copy a coverage table from an existing plan to use as a starting point, click the search button next to Select Insurance Plan to Copy From, select the insurance plan to copy, and click OK. Click Yes to the message telling you that the current coverage table will be replaced.
5. Within the coverage table, double-click any cell that needs to be updated to reflect the coverage of the new plan. For example, if the Restorative category of the new plan is covered at 80%, but the copied plan shows 70%, double-click the corresponding Cov% cell, enter the new amount, and click outside of the cell.
6. Continue to make changes to the copied plan as needed, and when finished, click Save.
7. Click Close to return to the Insurance Maintenance screen.

By using a similar insurance plan as a starting point and making the necessary changes to reflect the new plan’s coverage, you can save yourself the work of entering all plan details from scratch.

For more information, see the following topics in Dentrix Help:

• Editing the default insurance coverage tables
• Creating coverage tables
• Editing coverage table categories
• Copying coverage table categories

Learn more about new insurance features in our new Dentrix Virtual Workshop, titled Setting Up and Assigning Insurance Plans.  Click HERE for dates, workshop descriptions, and to register.

Adding an Addendum to Clinical Notes

Clinical notes are a vital part of your patients’ records. You want to make certain that the notes accurately record the condition of your patients and the treatment you give them. For added security, Dentrix locks a clinical note from being changed after it is signed or after end-of-the-month procedures are completed. However, these records may need to be updated from time to time.

If you ever need to clarify, correct, or add more details to a clinical note that has been locked (either automatically at month-end or by signing it), you cannot just edit the note. However, you can add an addendum.

Here's how:

1. In the Patient Chart, select the patient whose clinical note you need to make an addendum to.
2. In the Clinical Notes Panel, click the Clinical Notes tab, select the appropriate clinical note and click the New Addendum button.
   
   
   
   
3. If needed, use the provider drop-down list to select the appropriate provider for the addendum.
4. Enter the new, corrected information for the addendum and click OK.
5. Click OK to the warning message asking if you want to add the addendum.

The addendum is immediately added to the beginning of the original clinical note with today's date and is automatically "signed" by the provider you selected, immediately locking the note from further editing.

When amending the original clinical note, keep the following in mind:

• Make sure the date is correct on the addendum. The date should reflect when the change is made, not necessarily the date of the original note.
• If you are not the author of the original clinical note, confirm the content of the addendum with the original author.
• Note the justification for the modification to the original clinical note within the addendum.
• You have access to your clinical note templates from with the New Addendum dialog box to use as needed.

Additional Information

• Read Adding an Addendum to a Clinical Note topic in Dentrix Help, and view a video within that help topic to demonstrate the steps.
• Read our previous tip titled, Protect Your Clinical Notes from Tampering.

Access Dentrix from a Consistent Location No Matter Which Computer You Use

Chances are your practice has several computers—at the front desk, in the operatories, in the administrator’s office—and they are all probably running Dentrix. Have you ever had to use a different computer than normal and couldn’t easily find the Dentrix icons you were looking for to launch the module you needed?

Here’s a quick tip you can use so that you can always find the Dentrix modules you need, in the same place, on every office computer.

For each computer, log in to Dentrix, open the Office Manager, and click Maintenance > Practice Setup > Preferences. From the General Options tab, under Startup Options, click System Startup Settings. Select the option for Dentrix Quick Launch, and click OK.

This will add the Quick Launch icon to your Windows notification area (bottom right corner of your computer screen, near the date/time).

When you need to access Dentrix, right-click this icon to open a list of the main Dentrix modules, and select the one you need to open.

Set the same Startup Options preferences on each computer in the office, and you’ll be able to access Dentrix from a consistent location no matter which computer you use.

Bonus Tip: If you don’t see the Quick Launch icon, click the ^ button to open a list of icons available within your notification area.

Documenting When You Leave a Message

If you called a patient to schedule their appointment, but no one answered and you ended up leaving a voicemail message, where should you document this in Dentrix?

While you may not have spoken to the patient directly, it's important to keep a record that an attempt was made.

You can record this type of communication in the patient's Office Journal, just like you would document the phone conversation, had it happened.

Here's how:

1. In Dentrix, select a patient and click the Office Journal button.
2. When the Office Journal opens, click the Add Journal Entry button.
   
   
   
   
   
3. From the Type list, select Phone Call.
4. The Date and Time fields automatically record the current date/time, but can be changed if you are documenting the phone call after the fact.
5. Change the Prov/Staff to reflect who in the office made the contact.
6. Add a Description, such as "Left Message" or "Collection Call"--something that will make sense to the person who reviews the contact in the future.
7. In the Note field, record the details of what happened during the call.
8. Click OK to save the journal entry.

Be as specific as possible when you are documenting your contact (or attempt to contact) a patient. Did you leave a voicemail? Did you leave a message with another family member? Did you ask them to call the office back? It may be a good practice to also include the phone number you were calling when you left the message. Any information you can provide can be helpful if you ever have to review the Office Journal in the future and need to know about the contact or attempt.

For additional information about how to review patient contact you recorded in the Office Journal, read THIS TIP.