I just opened 3 months ago and my accounts are absolutely a mess. I do not know how to fix them because we have this membership program that has turned out to be more complex than I thought.
Does anyone know of someone who knows Open Dental and can look at my accounts and help me fix them?
22 Responses
What exactly is a mess? We’re payments posted to wrong family members?
No it’s discounts and we are a new team so w don’t know much. A consultant told me that I can do a membership with people that have dental insurance and I am learning the hard way that this is absolutely not the case.
Jimani B. nope. No membership if they have insurance
Cherie H. S. even if they max out on their benefits?
Lonnie F. absolutely cannot offer membership plan to patients with dental insurance
For your membership plan, did you enter it as a Discount Plan in Open Dental?
https://www.opendental.com/manual/discountplans.html
Warren W. I relied on my front desk to look into it and set it up but I think I may have to do this myself .
Jimani B. you gotta be the leader with everything at the beginning. Figure out how you want it done WITH your staff, and make sure they’ve got it before you cut them loose. I do discount plans so I might be able to help. What’s going on?
Jake M. You are right… the problem is a consultant told us that we could have a people with dental insurance under our membership plan because we are fee for service. She was wrong as it turns out. Open Dental can’t accomodate both.
Jimani B. correct. You can’t have both, nor should you want to. Don’t give people who have insurance a discount if you’re FFS since their accounts are more work and headache for your staff.
So I’m still not sure what the problem is. Did you tell a bunch of patients you could or something and can’t figure out what to do?
Jake M. accounts are not correct… it’s not easy to explain.
Jake M. if you know of anyone who has a business helping people with Open Dental let me know. Until then I need to try to figure it out myself.
Can you post a screenshot and block out HIPAA info with an explanation of what’s going on?
Jimani B. call support.
Jimani B. yes I have learned the hard way too. When setting up your Open Dental or making any major changes to it, take the time yourself to watch the training videos, look at their online manual, and speak to their support team on the phone. You have to understand how to set it up the right way. Otherwise you will never know if your team is doing things correctly.
Jimani B. I am happy to help and am pretty knowledgeable with OD. Check out my page Paragon Dental Billing and Consulting
You can have one or the other not both – I am opened to helping if you have any specific questions and the open dental videos are very helpful
Daydette S. even if patients max out? They cant use membership plan to cover the rest ?
Lonnie F. What I do is drop the insurance and attached the membership plan if they Max out or manually calculate the membership plan discount
I am really good at accounts, and would be happy to take a look for you.
I am happy to donate a little time to zoom with you! Fixing things is what I do for a living!
Innovative Advisory Solutions I know that Stephanie Smith is very knowledgeable in Open Dental and solving issues in offices that are FFS! Check out her page!
So unfortunately you do have to offer membership plans across the board is my understanding. You cannot discriminate against someone who has insurance is how it was explained. When you have a membership plan it needs to be that unspoken thing not to do.
If you do happen to have this you can change the claim format to show your discount fees and in remarks put that the patient joined a membership plan and received a discount.
I am not a billing consultant, self taught ops manager for a doctor and could be wrong.
If someone takes a look at your accounts have them sign a BAA first. CYA
Also, start with setting up your discount plan correctly. I would have you walk me through what you currently do and then i would provide the guidance on what could make it better.
I have also seen it where you duplicate the insurance plan add MP after the name and attach the discounted fees so it show that way in the account. I am not a fan of this,
I like for patients to see the write offs.