The Dentrix Office Manager Blog

Year end is right around the corner and that means the questions start rolling inabout what the process is this time of year. Is there a special report I should run? Is there anything I need to know about running Year End? The fact is there is nothing different to running Year End as there is to running Month End. Also, if you have upgraded to Dentrix G6.6, you can use the new Month End Task Scheduler to run the tasks automatically.

Over the past few weeks, I have exploited the Month End process to the point that you probably don’t want to hear about it any more … so let’s talk about a few other things to think about as the end of year approaches. This is a time for celebration and raising a glass to an amazing year. Find out what was amazing this year in your practice and, during your last team meeting or holiday party, give a toast to these amazing things.

Did you improve your patient retention this year? If you are watching this number on your Practice Advisor Report then you know what I am talking about. Have you been able to close down the back door so patients are not leaving your practice and you have less attrition? For more information about this number on the Practice Advisor Report, read back on “How wide open is your back door?"
Give thanks to your largest referral sources. Run a Referred By Doctor/Other and Referred By Patient report to find out who or what referred the most patients to your practice and give them a shout out with either a simple “Thank You” or a monetary gift of thanks.
Were you able to bring down your accounts receivable? If you are proud of the systems you have put in place for managing your accounts receivable, then brag about it. Let your team know if you started using the Collection Manager for managing patient balances which has made a significant different in your bottom line. Or if you added patient financing to your financial options and it has increased your payments on the day of service, then celebrate this as well. If this is one of your goals for 2018, stay tuned for a blog post coming in January.
Give your hygienists some love if they have increased their production per day or increased the percentage of patients pre-scheduling their next visit. Both of these numbers can be found on the Practice Advisor Report and deserve recognition.

Enjoy your holidays and have fun celebrating all your successes this year.

What an amazing year! I want to send a BIG THANK YOU to all my readers who have supported the blog, sharing with your friends and sending all your messages about how the information has helped your practice. Have a wonderful holiday and safe New Year with friends and family.

If you are looking for that perfect holiday or New Year's Eve gift for your team, Dentrix is running a special price on a 4 hour training bundle when upgrading to Dentrix G6. Reach out to your local Dentrix trainer and schedule today. If you do not know who your local trainer is please EMAIL ME directly and I can find out for you. CLICK HERE for more information on this special offer.

Top 10 Blog Posts of the Year . . . Enjoy them for the first time or great second read.

In a busy office, finding appointment time can be time-consuming and frustrating. Most scheduling coordinators I work with have created a system of using the day or week view, looking for open time. As you flip the red arrow moving forward and then forward again, the anxiety level starts to go up as your patient sits on the phone with you while you look for the first open time slot. CLICK HERE to read full article.
Today, I want to talk about some more scheduling shortcuts. When I am working one-on-one with team members, I often watch as they click, click, click, click and click again just to find out when the next appointment is or find out when the next family members’ appointments are. It’s exhausting for me to watch, let alone for the person doing all the clicking. Let’s look at a couple shortcuts. CLICK HERE to read full article.
Last week, I attended the AADOM (American Association of Dental Office Management) annual conference and I have learned about many new products and services that integrate with your Dentrix software. I will be writing about some of these in my upcoming posts and newsletter. On Saturday, I attended an insurance panel where my friend and fellow consultant, Teresa Duncan, was the moderator between the insurance industry and an audience of office managers. CLICK HERE to read full article.
Are you interested in starting the process of going paperless but you have an older scanner that might not work with Dentrix? Or maybe you have a scanner that used to work with Dentrix but, since you have upgraded, some of the features have stopped working? Well, I have a solution for you. CLICK HERE to read full article.
It’s a new year! Welcome to 2017! It’s time to think about new insurance benefits, fee schedule updates and making sure that all your reports are up to date. There is a lot going on at the beginning of the year that we need to plan for and make sure your practice is running like a well-oiled machine. CLICK HERE to read full article.
Every office is unique. You might be a specialty practice, a group practice or a solo practitioner. You may have a team of 5 or a team or 25, but you all have one thing in common … Post-it notes and messages everywhere. Almost every front office I walk into has colored Post-it notes all over the desk and almost every doctor has piles of charts on his or her desk. I hope you all have stock in the 3M company for all the colored sticky notes you use. Let’s figure out a way to clean this all up. CLICK HERE to read full article
If you have been reading my blog for a while, you have gained a lot of knowledge about treatment planning, case management and following up on unscheduled treatment. Keeping your schedule full is imperative to having a successful practiceand knowing what reports to manage to ensure patients don’t fall through the cracks is one of the core systems we manage in the practice. CLICK HERE to read full article.
As you start to use the patient chart more and more, it is important to understand the difference between the Progress Notes tab and the Clinical Notes tab at the bottom of the patient chart module. The reason I feel it is important is because they show different things and sometimes offices get confused with the language. I also want to show you how these two modules work together and how you can make your chart review each day a lot easier. CLICK HERE to read full article.
Why are you not running the month end process? Is it because you might need to edit something on the ledger or change a clinical note? These are not good reasons to hold out on running your month end process.Now I realize some of you might not agree with me. However, I think most accountants and attorneys would agree that this is not best practices. CLICK HERE to read full article.
How’s the cash flow in your practice? It could be better? Collections and cash flow is a multi-faceted system and it requires the involvement of the entire team. Here are my top five tips to help you increase your cash flow and lower your accounts receivable. CLICK HERE to read full article.

So what’s first on your January checklist for 2018? If you are looking at your year end report and thinking improving the cash flow in the office and bringing down the accounts receivable is a good place to start, then let’s tackle that first. Managing your accounts receivable is a team approach and having a system in place is critical to the success of your practice. You can treat patients all day and increase your production, but if you don’t have a system to collect the patient’s portion, you could find yourself struggling to make payroll in the middle of the month.

In this day and age, we must be able to prepare an accurate treatment plan estimate by using the most up-to-date insurance information we can obtain and be able to offer financial options for our patients, so they can afford treatment. You will build trust with your patients when you can be open and honest about the limitations of insurance benefits and help patients budget for the expense of dental care. Creating a system for this process is a combination of using outside third-party information, new verbal skills for your team and holding patients accountable for payment.

Locating the most up-to-date insurance benefit information has become one of the most time-consuming tasks in the dental office and a necessary one if you want to be able to offer information to your patients and give a more accurate estimate. We all know, however, this information is not 100% accurate and is always only an estimate. The way we collect this information in the dental office has gotten better over the years and now the team spends less time on the phone waiting for a customer service representative to provide the details of the dental benefits. The DentrixeCentral Insurance Manager has really been able to bridge the gap between the dental practice and the insurance companies. What I am seeing in the dental practices I work with is that the Dentrix Insurance Manager is the first line of defense and then the team may have to use the insurance company website for a couple of insurance companies that have chosen not to participate. The details received from the insurance companies through eCentral or the online insurance portal are totally sufficient for preparing a treatment plan estimate for the patient.

With the right verbal skills, the financial coordinator can present the treatment plan without having to send in a pre-estimate or call the insurance company for more details.

Here are some examples of one sentence add-ins that can make a huge impact in your presentations.

“Based on the information we received from your insurance plan, we are estimating your out of pocket will be ___________” (I always give the patient a print out of the eCentral insurance benefits and save a copy to the Document Center).

“This estimate is formulated from the information we receive directly from your insurance company and your estimated out of pocket will be _____.”

After you schedule the patient for the treatment, it is important to communicate the patient out of pocket for that appointment, so your entire team will know how much the patient owes that day. It is good to put the co-pay in a place that the entire team has access to and is very visible. My favorite place is in the appointment note because it will show up as a little musical note on the appointment book and also it will print on the patient Route Slip or patient Visit Form. With the new DentrixPay add-on you can even store the patients credit card for easier payment at check-out.

Finally, you will have patients who end up with a balance even when you prepare the best estimate and you need a system to follow up and manage these balances. My favorite report for managing account balances is the Collection Manager report. You can filter this report and generate a report that gives you exactly what you want to see. This report is fantastic because you can see the last statement date, the last payment date, the aging and many more details. What I love about this report is that you can work it directly from computer and not print it. You have all the tools you need on the toolbar to make notes in the Office Journal, send a collection letter from the Quick Letters and view the ledger.

If you want a tip sheet on the Collection Manager, please CLICK HERE to email me directly. In my next blog, I will tackle how to monitor your production goals in Dentrix so this year can be your most productive year yet.

How is your January 2018 TO-DO list coming along? In this day and age where many of your patients do not have dental benefits, you may be thinking this might be a good time to start an in-office dental plan where you can offer a membership type of program to help patients afford their much-needed preventative care. These types of membership plans are popping up in dentistry, chiropractic and vision offices. If you are thinking of creating an in-office membership plan for your non-covered dental patients on your own, make sure you abide by your state laws and have your practice attorney look over the plan before you roll it out.

Once you have all the details in place and you are ready to launch, there are some details in your Dentrix software that will need some setup. I would recommend creating a tip sheet for your office team on how the accounting and management of your in-office plan will work. The following recommendations are based on how other offices have set up their Dentrix software and are not considered legal advice. The goal is for you to create a system where you can manage your patient’s ledger effectively and be able to follow up with patients when their plans are about to expire.

Create a new Billing Type definition for your families who sign up for your membership plan. Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Definitions and either create a new definition or edit one that you are not using. One thing to remember here is that a billing type is assigned to the entire family and is not patient-specific. Therefore, if you have a patient in the family not on the membership plan, this could cause some confusion.
Since most of these in-office membership plans have a reduced fee schedule, my recommendation would be to create a separate fee schedule to attach to the patient so that the ledger will post the correct fee. This way, you will not have to use an adjustment. Go to the Office Manager > Reference > Fee Schedule Maintenance, then click on New, give your fee schedule a name and copy from your full office fee schedule. Then select your new fee schedule and click on View/Edit and you can reduce the fee schedule by a percentage that matches your plan details.
Contrary to the dental insurance fee schedules, this in-office membership fee schedule will be attached to the patient’s family file located in the demographics section directly below the primary provider ID.
Next, I would create a new continuing care type so that you can track when the patient is due for renewal. This new continuing care type would be set on a yearly interval and linked up to the new procedure code you will need to create in order to post the membership fee to the patient’s ledger. Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Continuing Care Setup and then create a new type.
Finally, you will create the procedure code for the in-office plan. Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Practice Setup > Procedure Code Setup and click on New. Fill in all the appropriate fields (description, ADA code, abbrev code), then make sure to attach the new continuing care type you just created, add a fee to the new fee schedule you created, make sure to check mark “do not bill to insurance” and, in the drop-down menu for treatment area, I would select “mouth” so it does not ask you for a tooth number.

Now you are ready to launch your new in-office membership dental plan for your non-insured patients and help those patients afford preventative care. This is a great value-added service for your patients and an awesome marketing tool.

Still thinking of a New Year’s Resolution? I have one for you . . . “Don’t let patients fall through the cracks!” You have everything at your fingertips so that this does not happen and I want to make sure you know how to use all the tools available to put together a solid system for managing your patients.

Whether you are using the Dentrix eCentral system or another third-party offering, most of you are using a third-party software for electronically communicating with your patients via text messages and emails. These third-party software vendors can put together an automated system, so you can communicate with your patients for confirming appointments and reaching out to patients who are not scheduled. We must remember that this automated system cannot reach 100% of your patients and you will need to have an in-office system to supplement it.

Don’t put your automated system in place and then forget about it. You want to be observing patients’ interactions with the emails and text messages to get a feel for how they are using it. Do you need to educate your patients on how to confirm their appointment or request an appointment? Also, make sure your automated system integrates well with your Dentrix software so you are receiving updated notifications. If patients are not interacting with the automated messages, then take the time to educate them and you will see much better results. With this being said, the Dentrix eCentral system is the most integrated system available with the highest-level features available.

Now, with your in-house system, it is important to keep tabs on those procrastinating patients who have not scheduled a follow up visit. Your patient retention depends on it. The offices that have high patient retention build in time to work the reports and follow up with patients.

There are three extremely important lists that are critical to your patient retention numbers. These reports require attention and it will be important for you to delegate these reports to the team members accountable for managing the recare and treatment.

Unscheduled List – These are patients who have already been on your schedule or they need an appointment now so usually they just need a phone call from you to call them back in. There are two ways to add someone to the Unscheduled List -- Using the Wait/Will Call button in the appointment or to Break the appointment. To read more about the Unscheduled List . . . CLICK HERE.
Continuing Care Report – When you are looking for patients who are past due for their regular hygiene visit, this is your next go-to list. This list can be customized to search for patients who are current or way past due. You can also search for Prophy, Perio, X-rays, exams, ortho or other specialized continuing care type that you have set up in your practice. I would create some custom report parameters so that you can easily create a customized list for what type of appointment you need to fill your schedule. For more information on the Continuing Care Report . . . . CLICKHERE.
Treatment Manager Report – This is probably my favorite report in Dentrix because it is a gold mine. The goal of this report is to find patients who have unscheduled treatment. This is your chart audit. You can use this report to fill the doctor’s schedule or the hygiene schedule. I would definitely work this report into your regular routine at least once a week. To read more about the Treatment Manager Report . . . . CLICK HERE.

Hey, I know it might seem old-fashioned to pick up the phone and call someone, but think of the benefits. No more patients falling through the cracks! You are in control and how full your appointment book is depends on you, your team and your systems.

I am always sad when the football season is coming to an end. It is my favorite sport and, even when I am traveling, I will seek out sports bars or watch the games on the free Southwest Airlines TV. Football reminds me of the dental office in a lot of ways because of the teamwork involved to pull off some of the plays, especially the hand-off. It’s the hand-off between the back and the front office that requires a lot of teamwork and practice.

The hand-off between the front and the back needs to be a well-choreographed dance in order for the patient to leave feeling well taken care of and leave the team with all the details in place. The patient hand-off does not just happen by chance. It is a system in the office that requires practice and a lot of communication. There are a few different ways to perform the hand-off depending on what works best in your office and how much technology you want to integrate into your office. What works best in your office is when the entire team is all on the same page and willing to participate 100%. This means everyone on the team must agree to the system, learn the system and practice the system until he or she feels comfortable with it. This way, you will minimize the possibility of a fumble.

The verbal hand-off will only work if you are handing off to a team member who is not on a phone call or helping another patient. If you are going to use the verbal hand-off in your practice and your front office team member is on the phone or helping another patient, you will need to wait until you have his or her full attention so you can transfer the important details for the checkout process. Many offices are using headsets or walkie-talkies for this and it works well if you create a good system of communication.

A paper hand-off can work extremely well by using the Dentrix Route Slip or the Visit Form. Even though I help dental practices transition from paper charts to electronic health records, using a paper communication tool can be a lifesaver in a busy office. Using a Route Slip or Visit Form will allow you to easily transfer the key information to your front desk team, even if they are finishing up a phone call. Then just shred them at the end of the day. No worries!

The electronic hand-off is a fairly new and up-and-coming system that is working well in the dental office. There are new ways to send information up to the front desk using your computer and instant message. The electronic communication systems do require more technology training and buy-in from your team. Many offices are using the Dentrix DentaLink instant messaging system to send up a message to their front office before the patient walks up to the front with all the details needed to check out the patient and schedule their next visit. This system is included in your Dentrix customer service plan and you can try it out to see if it might work for you. A new system that has come on board with Dentrix is a dashboard called Simplifeye. It lets you drag and drop your patient appointments into and out of the treatment rooms, send messages and helps track time spent in the practice. It also comes with your Dentrix customer support plan or you can upgrade to the premium plan that syncs to your iWatch and iPhone.

The hand-off is a communication system that cannot go untouched. This system is the last impression your patient will have with the practice until he or she returns for the next visit. It is a representation of your team, your practice and can be a make-or-break moment for an awesome review. Show your patients that you do not fumble on the hand-off and that you have a seamless transition from the back to the front.

Don’t you just love this time of year . . . tax season! Patients are calling in asking for a printout of their account to send along with their taxes and receipts to prove they spent money using their HSA account. It has been over a year since the last time you had to generate these printouts for your patients, so you might have forgot.

I want to try and make it easy for you. Instead of printing an account ledger, which can be extremely confusing to patients and usually does not give the government what they want, I am going to show you two alternative options. You can also use the second option for patients who are looking for statements to report to their HSA accounts.

The first option is if the patient does not need the year-end statement to have ADA codes. Open the Ledger > File > 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 print out.

Change the Statement Date to the end of the report year (12/31/2017) and the Beginning Balance Forward date to the beginning of the year (1/1/2017)
Select the Guarantor family only
Set the Minimum Balance to Bill to 0
Uncheck all options
Clear out the Statement Message
Uncheck Save as Default

Don’t forget April 17^th is tax deadline for filing your own taxes, UGH!

I remember when I was working in a practice and, at the time, we were still primarily using paper charts. However, we were dabbling in going paperless. Our protocol with treatment planning was to print out two copies of the treatment plan estimate — one for the patient and one for the chart. This worked well because we always seemed to write notes on the treatment plan estimate so it was nice to be able to look back on that print out in the chart to see what we had talked about with the patient.

Then, one day, a patient asked me for a copy of his original treatment plan at the completion of his dental work because he had lost his copy. I am not sure what happened to our protocol, but I could not find our original copy. There was nothing in the paper chart and I was stuck. Once all the treatment is completed, you can never retrieve that original estimate and be able to re-create it for the patient record. This was a good learning lesson for me and something I pass on to clients every day.

Now, I always print one copy of the treatment plan estimate for the patient and print one to the Document Center for safe keeping. This way, I know that it will always be available to look back on and print it again if the patient requests it. I also found out that there is a note box on the digital copy within the Document Center where I can make notes about the financial arrangement or any other special notes that I want to remember.

This is one of the most brilliant features of Dentrix is the ability to do a “virtual print” with any kind of document to the Document Center without having to scan. This saves time and storage on your server drive. This feature is simple to use and I can send you a tip sheet as a reference guide if you would like. Just email me directly at dayna@raedentalmanagement.comand I will send it to you.

When you are printing a document or a treatment plan estimate, select the printer called “Print to Dentrix Document Center” and your document will then be stored in the Unfiled Documents folder on the Document Center. Now you can attach that document directly into the patient’s Document Center for safe keeping.

When you are transitioning from a paper chart to a digital record, you want the patient tooth chart to accurately represent the patient’s mouth. This is the case for documenting existing restorations, missing teeth and areas of concern. These areas of concern, or as some people call “watches,” are especially important because you want to make sure you can easily read them, and they give a clear picture of what you are watching.

A “watch” in Dentrix terminology is considered a condition and will mark the tooth with a W, circle the tooth or could put a big box around it. Many of the doctors I work with ask me if there is a way to do a “surface watch” so they can see the exact surfaces they are watching. My response is “Yes, you can.” You can have two different types of watches — you could have a tooth or area watch and you can also have a surface watch. This way, it will paint differently on the tooth chart.

The condition codes are created in the Procedure Code setup and you can create new ones or edit the existing ones. Go to the Office Manager > Maintenance > Procedure code setup > scroll down to the Conditions category and find the Watch code and click on edit. In the lower middle of the window, there is a drop-down menu for Paint Type. This is where you can select how you want the condition to paint on the tooth chart. With the Watch Tooth condition, you can decide to put a W on the tooth chart or have it circle the tooth. It’s your choice.

What if you want to create a surface watch so it will show the surfaces of the tooth you are watching? That is easy! Select New Code and fill in the appropriate items in the setup and you will have two kinds of watches.

Here are the important things to fill in when you are creating new condition code . . .

Give it a description – Surface Watch
Give it an ADA code – This can be anything you want. All the conditions are numbers so you could use 15116, which is the next one in line with the Dentrix default list.
Give it an abbreviated description – SurfW or something like that
Under Treatment Flags, select Condition and Show in Chart
Procedure Category – Conditions
Treatment Area – Surface
Paint Type – Surface Restoration (solid, hatched or outline)

Now open your chart and refresh your chart. You can now add your new condition code to your Procedure Buttons and you will find it in the list of Conditions in the Procedure Code List.

Did you know you can now save a patient’s credit card for future use while posting a payment in the patient ledger. What???? You mean I can save a patient’s credit card on file when I post a credit card payment in the patient’s ledger? Yep, that’s what I just said. Do you want me to repeat it again? Okay, I will during my webinar on Wednesday, March 7th.

This is a total game-changer for the office when it comes to patient collections, cash flow and security. I am super excited to be sharing all the great news about the new Dentrix Pay integrated payment solution along with my friends at Vantiv, now WorldPay. You can register for the webinar by CLICKING HERE and if you are unable to attend the webinar you can watch the Dentrix Pay videos on the Dentrix Resource Center by CLICKING HERE.

Ever since I can remember, storing credit cards in the Dentrix software has been an issue. The office would store the credit card number in the Guarantor Notes or the Patient Note on the Family File without even thinking twice about it. This has never been a secure location for keeping credit card information for future use and still is not a secure location. It is good practice to use a credit card for any kind of in-office payment plan and it is the only way I would ever allow a patient to have an in-office payment agreement. You are just setting yourself up for a collection issue if you have to send the patient a billing statement or remind patients to mail in their payment. Having an auto withdrawal gives your office more security and peace of mind when offering in-office payment plans.

The new Dentrix Pay has other amazing features to go along with the saved credit card feature. Everything is integrated! Which means that when you process the credit card you can sign with your ePad, it will post the payment automatically to the ledger and you can also apply the payments to any Payment Agreements on file.

Check it all out in the Dentrix Resource Center or join me during the Dentrix Pay webinar on March 7^th.

I love it when I am working with a team one-on-one on optimizing their Dentrix software and implementing new systems and one of the team members shouts out, “OMG! That is the coolest thing ever. You just made my day.”

This happened recently while we were learning the four reports for keeping your schedule full. One of the four reports I talk about is the Continuing Care list and using it to follow up with patients who are overdue for their hygiene visit. Since nearly half our nation has periodontal disease*, it is extremely important to follow up with both classifications of patients: Perio and Prophy.

With the traditional Continuing Care list, you can only generate a list of <ALL> continuing care types or a list of one at a time. Even though this is a great report for tracking unscheduled patients, it limits what you can view on your report. My goal when I am working with an office is to always look for the most efficient and productive way to perform the tasks we do every day in the dental practice. The Dentrix developers probably never realized that, when they updated the Letters and Custom Lists feature, they had also improved the way we generate a list of unscheduled recare patients.

When you use the Letters and Custom Lists as a report generator, you can get much more specific on your parameters. It is also a much more interactive report. When the report is more interactive, you do not have to print it because all the tools you need are available right on the report. Let me show you what I mean.

Go to the Office Manager > Letters and Custom Lists > Continuing Care > select a letter option in the list you are not using and click Edit. Then let’s turn it into a report instead of a letter. Here are my recommendations . . .

Rename it to “Continuing Care overdue patients” (upper left corner)
Make sure only “Patients” is selected and under the Privacy select “Does not apply to this letter”
Select the due date range and the continuing care types you want to search for in the Continuing Care >> button. You will need to select your due dates each time you generate this list.
Then, in the Data Fields, select what information you want to see in your list. The report will look somewhat like a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet with columns of data and the Data Fields are the columns you are choosing to see.
When you are finished, click on OK.
Click on Open in List Manager.

Now you have a Continuing Care list that shows you all your Prophy and Perio patients on one list and you have all the icons at the top of the report to make notes, look at the ledger, see other family members, etc. This report will save you time and give you more information than the traditional Continuing Care report did. Also, you save more trees because you never have to print this report.

If you want my tip sheet on using this report, CLICK HEREand request it.

*https://www.perio.org/consumer/cdc-study.htm

This month is Oral Cancer Awareness month and I hope you are helping to bring awareness to your community. In my picture my daughter and I are blowing bubbles for those who can't to bring awareness to oral cancer. You can save lives by screening for oral cancer and helping your patients catch it early. Now is a great time to re-evaluate your protocol for oral cancer screening and your clinical documentation.

Are you using the Dentrix clinical note templates? This is a great way to add in a templated prompt, so your team will be asked about the results of the oral cancer screening. It is so easy and so important to provide good documentation for your patient’s record.

If you are using a template for your hygiene visit, you can add two questions into your clinical note template that will give your clinical team a consistent and complete account of the OCS. Go to the Patient Chart > Clinical Notes > click on the Template Setup to open your templates. Many of these templates might be from the Dentrix initial installation so you will be editing an existing template or creating a new one.

If you have an existing template, you want to add the OCS prompts then select your template and click on Edit Template. Now you can add in a new prompt that will ask you how you performed the oral cancer screening (visual exam, Velscope, other) and what the results were (negative, no findings, refer to oral surgeon, etc.). You can create prompts with check boxes or create a prompt with a text box that will give you space to write in specific findings.

If you are creating a new template specifically for the oral cancer screening, then click on New Template and start from scratch. When creating a new template, the left side of the window is where you will type in all the “static” text you want in all your notes and the right side of the set-up window is where you will add in your prompts. You can set up prompts as check boxes, text boxes, etc.

Having thorough clinical documentation is critical to the integrity of your patient record and will protect you during a lawsuit or complaint to the licensing board. It is extremely important that you have a well-documented patient chart. The clinical note template is one way to accomplish this.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Dayna loves her work. She has over 25 years of experience in the dental industry, and she’s passionate about building efficient, consistent, and secure practice management systems. Dayna knows that your entire day revolves around your practice management software—the better you learn to use it, the more productive and stress-free your office will be. In 2016, Dayna founded Novonee ™, The Premier Dentrix Community, to help cultivate Dentrix super-users all over the country. Learn more from Dayna at www.novonee.com and contact Dayna at dayna@novonee.com.

Many of you have been asking, “What is my true accounts receivable balance?” and how do I know what is collectible? The answer is that it depends on what your parameters are and what you consider collectible. Let me help you define the different numbers from a couple of different reports so you can make up your mind about which number you want to use. Also, you can filter your accounts receivable by using different billing types if you want to separate out a group of accounts that have been sent to collection or Medicaid patients.

The most accurate accounts receivable number available is located on the Practice Advisor Report because it looks at all balances (credit balances and money owed). The Practice Advisor also does not care about the month-end process for aging the accounts. It looks at the date of service on the ledger. You can also filter this report by billing type if you want to skip accounts like “sent to collection,” “Medicaid” or “Ortho.” For more information on this report, check out Knowledgebase article #49693 for an online tutorial available in the Dentrix Resource Center.

This number on the Practice Advisor Report should match the Aging Report if you select the same parameters. The Aging Report is also the way you can get a list of all your patient credit balances. I think the Aging Report is a good way to see what your total accounts receivable is. However, it is not the most effective way to “work” your A/R.

If you have been reading my blogs for a while, you know how much I love the Collection Manager Report for managing the accounts receivable because of all the interactive tools it has and you do not have to print it. The one thing to remember about this report is that it only shows you positive money. It does not include credit balances. So your Practice Advisor report might show an A/R of $22k and your Collection Manager might show $56k. What’s the difference here? You have about $34k in credit balances sitting on your books that need to be sorted out. For more information on credit balances, CLICK HERE. For more information on the Collection Manager Report, CLICK HERE.

The final way you can find your office’s accounts receivable is by looking at the snapshot of your practice numbers from the Practice Analysis. From the Office Manager > Analysis > Practice and you will see a snapshot of your practice numbers. This snapshot is affected by the month-end process because one of the things the month-end does is move the ending balance from the previous month to the beginning balance of the new month. Therefore, if your month-end is not up to date, this ending balance might not be accurate.

Now with the new Month End Task Scheduler with Dentrix G6.6, this should make things better because the month-end processes now run in the background. For more information on the new Month End Task Scheduler, CLICK HERE.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

In April of 2011, I received a phone call from the marketing department at Henry Schein Practice Solutions asking me if I would like to become the author of the new Dentrix Office Manager Blog. Me? Really? My initial response was, “I have never written anything in my life. Are you sure?” I knew how to run a successful dental practice and I was a huge advocate of the Dentrix software because I was using it in my own practice. Plus, I became a certified trainer in 2006. Could I really do this? Would people listen to what I had to say?

I took a huge step outside my comfort zone and said, “Yes.” Since I had never written anything in my life (that had been published), I asked a friend of mine who was helping me write my first presentation if she would also edit my blogs. So, in May of 2011, I published my first blog article and it was the start of something amazing. I wrote about real-life scenarios and talked about the things I was hearing about in other dental practices. People must have liked it because as of December of 2016, the audience had grown to more than 20,000 views per month. You actually liked me and what I had to say!

Writing The Dentrix Office Manager blog has been an honor and has brought me so much joy over the past seven years. Your comments and emails have proven that my content has given you a lot of great information, tips to use in your practice and an ongoing resource for Dentrix best practices. Thank you from the bottom of my heart for all your positive energy and kind words. As I transition out, my hope is that you will continue to gain plenty of helpful tips with the new author. Don’t worry, I am not going very far and will still be actively involved in many Dentrix and Henry Schein events.

As many of you may have heard, I started an online Dentrix community in 2016 called Novonee. With the launch of this new resource, it is now time to pass the torch on to the new blog author. It is my pleasure to introduce the new Dentrix Office Manager . . . Charlotte Skaggs. You will love her! She brings the experience of a Dentrix user, practice owner and dental industry expert. Charlotte and I have talked a few times and I am excited for her to take on this awesome responsibility.

Being a resource, an advocate and a voice for all the Dentrix users in the world is my mission and I hope to see you all at upcoming conferences, dental meetings or other events in the future. I will definitely be at next year’s Business of Dentistry conference. You can reach out to me anytime by phone at (425) 238-3699, by email at dayna@novonee.com or join my new community. We would love to have you!

Last year at this time, I wrote a blog about Hurricane Matthew as I sat in my hotel room in Jacksonville, Florida. What we are experiencing now with Hurricane Harvey and Irma helps me realize that this blog article will need to be an annual post this time of year.

I want to send my thoughts and prayers out to my friends and followers in the Texas and Florida areas.

As we watch the news, people are reminded of how to be prepared to save their lives, their pets and the evacuation process. If you are a small business owner, you also need to prepare on how to save your business or at least have minimal damage. The dental practice is a small business and the most important piece of your business to try and save is your patient data. It is up to you to protect your patient data, even in the eye of a hurricane.

Since what I wrote last year is still relevant, here are the important paragraphs from my post from October 3, 2016. If you would like to be re-directed and read it in it's entirety, CLICK HERE

Since Florida is on the verge of a Category 4 hurricane, I want to point out a few things that could potentially affect the confidentiality, integrity and accessibility of your patient’s protected health information.

Power outages are going to be a huge issue with this upcoming storm. If you are going to close the office and want to have access to some of your patients’ information for returning calls, phoning in medications or following up with your patients after some surgeries, I would recommend you using Dentrix Mobile. When you use Dentrix Mobile, you have the opportunity to remote in using a mobile device and having access to some of your patients’ critical information.
Make sure an authorized team member has access to the backup of all the patient data in case of flooding or destruction of the practice. The backup of the data might be on an external hard drive or in an online secure backup system. Dentrix has the option of using eBackup to store your patients’ information securely and safely. This would give your practice a good option to access patient data in case of an emergency.
Make sure you have your Business Associate Agreements in place with your outside contractors. What if you are working with a consultant, accountant, attorney or computer company who has access to your patients’ information and they are the ones who are affected by the storm which jeopardizes the confidentiality of your patients’ information?

You can never do too much to prepare for a disaster and you have an obligation to protect your patients’ health information. It is not something you want to take lightly. Seeing this storm and looking back on storms in the past makes me realize we should be prepared for anything.

Dayna Johnson, Certified Dentrix Trainer

From the Editors: This is the first post by the new Dentrix Office Manager blogger, Charlotte Skaggs. Charlotte is a former co-owner and manager of a successful dental practice and the founder of Vector Dental Consulting, LLC. She is a certified Dentrix trainer and has nearly 20 years of experience using Dentrix. We welcome Charlotte and look forward to learning from her. Follow Facebook.com/Dentrix to see Charlotte’s posts in your Facebook timeline or subscribe to The Dentrix Office Manager blog to receive her posts in your inbox.

I am so excited to introduce myself as the new blogger for The Dentrix Office Manager blog!

Dayna Johnson has given us so many great tips over the last seven years. I have some big shoes to fill, but I am excited to provide you with some advice based on my perspective.

I have worked with Dentrix for almost 20 years and I’m a Certified Dentrix Trainer. As an office manager in a general practice, I’m always looking for ways to be more efficient. When I find an easier or better way to do something, I love to share it with others. That’s what I want to bring to this blog. I plan to share tips with you that I have learned over the years about practice management and ways use your Dentrix software more efficiently.

Some of my favorite Dentrix training experiences are with offices that have been using Dentrix for many years. I love showing them features that can improve their daily workflow that they didn’t even know existed. I never get tired of hearing, “Wow! That’s so cool! I can’t believe we haven’t been using that feature.”

I want to share tips with experienced offices and with newer Dentrix users too. I’m such a huge fan of the software and everything it can do to help your practice. There are modules that help you to provide better patient care like the Dentrix Questionnaires, Medical Alerts, and Patient Chart modules. There are also modules to help you with the business side of dentistry, like all the great reports in the Dentrix Office Manager and new and improved ways to track production, collections and adjustments. I want to help you take advantage of the tools you already have at your fingertips!

Based on my experiences, I will also share practice management tips. I have personally worked late into the evening filling the schedule that just fell apart or calling on past due accounts to try to improve collections. I am excited to share what worked and what didn’t, so maybe I can save you some time and heartache.

When I’m not working in dentistry I enjoy spending time with my family. I like running and outdoor activities. I live in Florida so I’m very lucky to have the opportunity to be outdoors a lot.

I’m looking forward to getting to know you through the blog in the coming weeks and months. Please feel free to comment on my blog posts, and if there is a topic you would like me to cover, let me know.

Thank you for reading!

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Charlotte Skaggs is the founder of Vector Dental Consulting LLC, a practice management firm focused on taking offices to the next level. Charlotte co-owned and managed a successful dental practice with her husband for 17 years. She has a unique approach to consulting based on the perspective of a practice owner. Charlotte has been using Dentrix for almost 20 years and is a certified Dentrix trainer. Contact Charlotte at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

There are not enough hours in the day!

Do you find that you are so busy during the workday with patient care that sometimes you forget to do tasks like following up with an insurance company, checking if a patient made a scheduled payment, or doing a staff member’s performance review?

I had this problem and I found that the best solution was to become more organized. To-do lists and reminders help keep me on track throughout the day.

During the day, I always have Dentrix open, so it makes sense to have my to-do lists and reminders in Dentrix where they are easily accessible.

There are two places that I recommend for reminders.

The first is in the Dentrix Appointment Book. This reminder can be viewed by everyone in the office. This would be a great place to put a note like, “Today is Suzie, the hygienist’s, birthday.”

In the upper left corner of the Appointment Book, you will see “Note.” Click it to open the Appointment Book Day Note. It will be yellow if there is a note on that day and gray if there’s not.

The other place for reminders is the Dentrix Office Journal. The Office Journal is where we make notes regarding correspondence with patients. But did you know, as a staff member, you also have an Office Journal?

From the Dentrix Office Manager, open the Office Journal. If you are logged into the computer and you have passwords enabled in your office, your office journal will open. If you don’t have passwords enabled, the Office Journal will prompt you to choose a provider or staff member from a list.

Using your personal office journal, you can make reminders for yourself.

From your office journal, click edit, then click add.

Select “Reminder” and choose a date for your reminder. Give your journal entry a brief description and type more detailed information in the Note box.

Try making reminders for yourself. Open your personal office journal in the morning and keep it open so you can refer to it throughout the day.

You can even set your office journal to open automatically when you open Dentrix in the morning. From the Dentrix Office Manager, click Maintenance > Practice Set Up > Preferences. In the bottom left corner, check the Automatically Launch Office Journal box.

I find that being more organized really helps me manage my time better and ensures that all my tasks are completed at the end of the day. To-do lists and reminders can help keep you on track. If you have questions or would like to learn more, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Unfortunately, patient cancellations are a fact of life in every dental office.

I was in an office recently where the office manager complained she would get several messages from patients on a Sunday night, canceling appointments for Monday. The office schedule was typically very busy and booked out far in advance. The office wished they had a list of patients who would like to come in sooner to fill their schedule.

I recommend keeping a list of patients who may want to come in sooner for an appointment. It’s a huge time saver to have a list of patients ready and waiting to come in. There are many patients who may want to come in sooner. For example, a patient who is retired or works from home may have a schedule that allows them to be flexible for appointments. A patient with a toothache may be very eager to get started on that root canal as soon as possible. Or a patient who can only come in for a 4:00PM appointment may be willing to come at 4:00PM on any day. These are patients you can easily call and offer appointments to fill open appointment times.

Dentrix has appointment lists for these very types of patients. When the patient has an appointment scheduled but wants to come in sooner, you can assign these schedule types: Fixed, Open, or ASAP.

I suggest using Fixed for your patients who need a specific day and time and can’t be flexible and come in on short notice. Open would be used for patients with a flexible schedule who may be able to come in on short notice. ASAP would be used for patients who want to come in as soon as possible. (Dentrix defaults the schedule types to Fixed unless you customize this in the practice appointment setup.)

To assign a schedule type to a patient and have the patient show with a status of “open” or “ASAP,” open the Dentrix Appointment Book, double-click an open time, and select a patient to display the Appointment Information dialog box. Click the Schedule field and select ASAP or Open.

You can access the ASAP and Open lists from the Appointment Book, under the Appt List menu. In Dentrix G6.5 and newer versions, the ASAP and Open appointment lists have been combined into one interactive list that you filter to view the patients you want to see.

I particularly like this new feature because it makes the appointment lists more user friendly. You can select from ASAP, Appointments, Pinboard and Unscheduled Lists. Or you can create custom lists by clicking on Setup > Appointment List View.

The new Dentrix Appointment List is more interactive than previous versions because not only can you access the patient’s Office Journal directly from the list, but you can also access the patient’s other Dentrix modules, such as the Dentrix Family File, Patient Chart and Ledger. I find it helpful to have easy access to these modules when I’m calling a patient to schedule.

Once you have selected an Appointment List, or created a custom list, you can sort the appointments by clicking on the column header. You can use this tool to sort the appointments by name, by provider, by operatory and by appointment reason. I like to sort by appointment reason, especially when using the lists to fill an open appointment. I can start by calling the patients who need a high production procedure, like a crown, to maintain a productive schedule.

Try using these appointment lists to fill open appointments more easily. They give you a list to work from that is accessible from all computers. Also, team members can confidently contact these patients, knowing that the patients have expressed an interest in coming in sooner.

Please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.comif you have questions or would like to learn more.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

I was training in a practice recently where there is one doctor and two hygienists. The hygienists are responsible for reaching a daily production goal. Both the hygienists and the doctor want to be able to run accurate reports for production and collections so they can set attainable goals. Dentrix offers some features which help to post production and collections accurately by provider so you can run reports at the end of each month and evaluate each provider’s production.

In Dentrix G6 there is a great tool to help you split procedures completed during the same appointment between providers. This is something that you usually do in the case of a hygiene appointment. The prophy would be posted to the hygienist and the exam would be posted to the doctor.

In the Dentrix Appointment Book, when you click the Set Complete button, you can click one of the completed procedures from the list and change the provider. That procedure will then be posted to the Dentrix Ledger with the correct provider. I really like this feature. It is a reminder to check and make sure the provider of each procedure is correct.

I recommend checking your day sheet at the end of each day to ensure all procedures were posted to the correct provider. I always find it frustrating to find an exam posted to a hygiene provider at the end of the month. It’s a needle in a haystack to find and correct it. I find that reviewing daily is more efficient.

Dentrix G6 also has tools to help you ensure that collections are posted to the correct provider. When you are posting a patient payment in the Dentrix Ledger, there is a “Split By Provider” option. This will split the patient payment between the appropriate providers.

Also, when you are posting an insurance payment, be sure to use the “Itemize by Procedure” option. The insurance payment for each procedure will be posted to the appropriate provider. And, finally, don’t forget to check that adjustments are posted to the correct providers too!

Using these tools in Dentrix, you can make sure both production and collections are posted to the correct providers. Accurate tracking and reporting of production and collections by provider allow the practice owner to evaluate which providers are most productive. This could be beneficial if the practice owner is considering a bonus or incentive system. In some offices, a hygienist must maintain a daily average production goal to be eligible for an increase in pay.

If you have questions or would like more information on this topic, please e-mail me at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.

Charlotte Skaggs, Certified Dentrix Trainer

Year in Review

Enjoy your Holiday's

Top 10 Blog Posts of the Year!

Preparing for Successful Accounts Receivable

In-office Membership Plans . . . tips for success

Don't let patients fall through the cracks!

Don't fumble the Hand-Off

It's Tax Time! Here is Help on Printouts for Patients

Never lose your original treatment plan estimates

Creating a Surface Watch

What?? I can now post a credit card payment and save the card? YES. YOU. CAN.

Generate a Better List for your Unscheduled Hygiene

It's Oral Cancer Awareness Month . . . great time to update your clinical note templates

What is my A/R and what is collectible?

As I transition out of the Dentrix Office Manager blog my mission continues . . . To be a Resource, an Advocate and a Voice to all the Dentrix users in the World

It's that time of year again . . . being prepared for storm season

A Little Bit About Me...

Managing Your Valuable Time

Minimizing Open Appointments

Tracking Production Accurately