Track Treatment Cases by Status

Last week, I talked about updating treatment case statuses in the Dentrix Treatment Planner. This week, let's talk about how to track cases according to their case status.

My recommendation is to run the Practice Treatment Case Report on a monthly basis to keep track of your cases. It's important to be informed about what's happening with cases in your office so you can constantly evaluate office procedures.

When evaluating the Practice Treatment Case Report, ask yourself the following questions:

If cases are being rejected, why are they being rejected?

Is the office financial procedure inflexible? Are appointment times difficult for patients to schedule? Asking these types of questions can help you to make informed decisions about offering third party or in-office financing and offering earlier or later appointment times for patients with busy work schedules. If cases are rejected by patients, I suggest making a note when rejecting the case in order to keep track of why the case was rejected. You can view the note in the Case Status history.

Are insurance pre-authorizations being sent back to your office in a timely manner?

If you are sending pre-authorizations to insurance carriers, are they being sent back? If not, why? Is your office sending the required documentation with those pre-authorizations such as a narratives, X-rays or probe depths?

Are your follow-up attempts with patients working?

For your cases with a follow-up status, how are you contacting patients, and most importantly, is it working? For many patients, calling and leaving a voicemail during the day may not be a good way to reach them. Consider e-mail or another form of contact.

To generate the Practice Treatment Case Report, In the Treatment Planner, select the printer icon in the Treatment Plan Case Setup panel. Then select Practice Treatment Case Report.

You have many options in generating this report including limiting results by provider, billing type, and case status. You can choose to select a date range for the treatment planned procedures. There are several report options based upon what you would like to see on your reports. In the Report Options section, I recommend printing a condensed report because the report may be quite long. Also, I recommend excluding completed procedures from cases because for the examples I gave, I would not want to include completed procedures.

Tracking case statuses in your office can help to improve case acceptance and help you to evaluate office policies and procedures regarding patient financing and appointment times.

You can contact me with any questions at vectordentalconsulting@gmail.com.


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.

from  The Dentrix Office Manager Blog https://ift.tt/2nAr5zK