Dentrix Ideas

I have this problen and Dentrix are always very felpul the claim form you need to add it and add an " f" at the end so your UCR appears in you claim but the PPO fee will shoe in the ledger. I know you need to go to manager section but from there it gets fussy and I do not remeber the section where you need to add this claim form. Please call Dentrix to help you with this part. sorry I'm very confusing

The feature that Dentrix currently has as a workaround (insurance claim reflects the provider fees but PPO UCR is the fee that is actually posted in ledger) would be great if it were a perfect world. I do not feel comfortable posting fees in a patient's ledger, just to find out insurance did not apply a PPO credit to non-covered service OR we find out two months after the fact that the patient's HR department backdated their termination and they were not insured at the time. That puts us in the extremely hard position of informing the patient that the receipt we gave on their day of treatment, was not correct! I can just imagine all the adjustments on the patient ledger (if this happens after the month is closed). To do it the "workaround" way would be an absolute nightmare and we would probably lose a lot of patients. Dentrix has all the information it needs to calculate the patient estimate (PPO fee schedules, providers fee schedule, annual maximum, plan coverage percentages and deductibles) yet they won't give us this capability. It would save SO much time on treatment planning and collecting! We spend thousands of dollars on software and updates (as well as annual support) but still we have to bust out a calculator in front of a patient! How embarrassing. I made a spreadsheet that automatically calculates each code and it does save some time but we still have to add up the grand total of all codes.

Practice works used to allow us to put in a UCR schedule for a specific insurance and any plan with that insurance pulled the payment table estimate from that with the various per plan on their %. When a procedure was completed in the ledger the system automatically figured the write off and calculated an accurate insurance payment. This would be nice for treatment planing also because the only way to calculate correct patient payments is to add the write off to the insurance payment which then makes the insurance maximum being reached inaccurate! A nice way to keep this up to date is to have a UCR update box on the payment box were you can type in the UCR the payment was based on.

I need to know the steps to finding total charges, allowed amounts, write offs, and how to come up with the percentages that the patient's have to pay.

Trevor, If I am not mistaken the link you provided tells us to do exactly what Troy is already doing. This is not a feasible option. We can not continue to waste employee time by having them check each patient manually for the correct patient portion and manually input a write off amount. Our office has spent several hours on the phone with tech support (each of them teling us different ways to "work around" the issue) only to be told that it isn't an option. This needs to be fixed and NOW!

We have chosen to use our fee schedule rather than the insurance allowed amount so that our ledger and the amount submitted to insurance reflect our fees. This however gives us no way to estimate the patient portion in the treatment planner. We need to be able to estimate their portion based on a percentage of the insurance allowed amount. There also needs to be a way to automatically write off the difference between the insurance allowed amount and our fees. Currently our receptionist is having to manually do these things. She does not have time to continue this. We used another program several years ago that did these things. Why can't Dentrix be as efficient?

This is part of what I am needing the system to do. "Add the ability to setup and automatically write-off adjustments for insurance plans when claims are created or paid. Have an insurance write-off table for procedures that functions similar to the insurance payment tables in DENTRIX. Walkout statements should show UCR amount and write-off amount or insurance amount." It looks like this suggestion was posted by Dentrix over 2 years ago. What do we need to do to get it completed? http://myvoice.dentrix.com/forums/130655-enhancement-requests/suggestions/265538-automate-write-offs-for-managed-care-other-insuran

Trevor, I will elaborate. At the most recent Utah Dental Convention I voiced my frustrations to one of the Dentrix representatives and we came up with bright idea of having the ability of always posting the office fee, not the insurance fee, in the ledger. He suggested having a box inserted into the "Primary Dental Insurance Information" to select which fee schedule will be placed into the ledger all the time. I think this would solve all of the problems I see with Dentrix. First we could use the insurance fee schedules in conjuction with the coverage table and payment table to figure the patient's portion so that we can collect at the time of service. Then send out my fees on the claim and when we receive payment from insurance it matches what is on the ledger. There would be no more headache figuring out the EOBs! I would suggest that Dentrix has somewhere in the setup to select the option of placing the office fee schedule in the ledger all the time. That way you wouldn't have to always select it for each insurance. That would be great if this is possible. I would appreciate that you reply to me and give me your opinion of this possibility so that I know that my voice is being heard. If you don't I know that this forum is a waste of time. This is such a big deal to me that I am tempted to look at another dental software company because I have being screaming for the last 6 years about the same thing. I know that I am one fish in the pond but I still would like voice to be heard. Sincerely, Troy

While you are merging similar ideas you should merge this one too: "office fees on ledger". How serious is Dentrix considering this suggestion topic?

I have asked for this for YEARS! We want to ALWAYS bill our full fee to insurance, but if we use the insurance payment table function, that is what gets billed to insurance and what the patient sees. We feel it is very important for the patient to be aware of what our full fee is and what we write off because of being in-network with their insurance.

Please add the ability to the payment table where we can put in the write off amount for any insurance company we contract with and what the insurance paid. Eaglesoft does it, so I know it can be done and with all the nice aspects Dentrix has, I would think this would be an option. Please reconsider as I know this has been a suggestion for over 3 years after reviewing the topics. Thank you!

When entering a batch insurance payment, it would be great if you didn't have to pick the write off type for every entry.

YES!!!! I worked with Softdent for years and it can do this. It makes life so much easier. Write-offs are posted at time of service and not when payment is received. It makes treatment planning so much easier as well as showing our actual production for the day, not an inflated amount. Please make this change!!!!

Have a set up in Dentrix that allows for the system to revert back to the office fee's once the patient's benefits have been maxed for larger tx. plans.

I would like one of my fee schedules to be able to also put in contracted difference from insurance company so that my collection due from patient is correct, !!

In the appointment info screen it shows production amount that is planned for that day. It would be great if some way it could show what actually is allowed from a plan such as Delta, BCBS, or Altus so that amount shown is accurate. Where we always update fees when payments entered.

Dentrix needs to be more PPO friendly when it comes to an insurance/ patient portion standpoint. A solution would be to create a blue book with the PPO allowed fees, but still post our full amount to the ledger. Have your system estimate the patient portion off of the blue book amount listed. This is a feature of Softdent that I miss the most. It was so accurate when it came to insurance estimations with our PPO companies. Because, sometimes patients have two insurances that are PPO, and it is different fees. So trying to decide after both claims what should be in the ledger is a hassle. Please feel free to call me and let me go over this in detail with someone

Is there a way to create a multiple custom codes to use in house but apply the same ADA Code to these custom codes without creating a new fee schedule for discounted fees. For example: Gingival irrigation per quad D4921 is $15 per quad, but when we treatment plan with Perio Maintenance we want the total cost to be $25 for the D4921 instead of $60(FM). We want to be able to do this without having to do adjustments to the fees every time. I know other programs allow us to set up an in house 'dummy code' that allows you to attach an ADA code multiple times with different prices.

Would like Dentrix to have a report for individual provider production totals before ppo discounts. When Dentrix is set up to automatically charge ppo fees, support says there is no way to find out what the full fee production would be.

Instead of the insurance payment and adjustment being posted prior to the claim, post the related payments and adjustments immediately after the claim. This way the ledger reads correctly in order of charges billed and credits applied AFTER the claim is marked received. (the current postings read backwards in relation to charges and payments by insurance)