How do I identify a patient who has outstanding debt?
To identify patients who owe money:
Navigate to the 'Patients' report.
In the top left corner under 'Custom Reports', select 'In debt' from the dropdown.
This will generate a report of all patients with outstanding debt. By default, this report will include columns which break down the debt by age.
You may wish to:
Apply filters to the report - for example, if you're only interested in older debt for collection, you could add a filter to only show debt over 90+ days old of more than £0.
Use the 'Displayed patient attributes' dropdown in the top right corner of the report to select which details you want to see in the report. You may wish to apply the 'Account balance', 'Total invoiced' and 'Total paid' columns.
Export or print your report by clicking 'Export' in the top right. If there are more than 200 patients when you try to export, you may experience an error - but it is possible to increase the limit. This can be done by any administrator in the practice.
💡 Top tip: Check out this guide for more details on using the filters in the 'Patients' report.
How do I collect outstanding money that a patient owes?
Once you've identified patients in debt, you need to chase them for outstanding payments, and ask them to pay either via a payment link, or through traditional payment methods. If they have a future appointment, speak to them when they are next in.
Patients who have no future appointments booked should be contacted regularly to ensure that you don't lose revenue and that make your accounts are up-to-date.
To identify patients who have outstanding debt and no future appointments booked:
Go to your 'In debt' saved segment in the 'Patients' report.
In addition, set the 'Appointment Data' filter to 'Next Appointment - Absolute - Is Unknown'.
💡 Top tip: We would recommend saving this segment so that you can refer back to it as often as you need. Name the saved segment something like 'In debt, no future appointment'.
How do I contact patients who owe money?
💡 Top tip: We would recommend communicating with each debtor via only one communication method, to avoid harassing them.
In order to send correspondence to patients with outstanding debt (including a payment link), you will need to break down your debt report into smaller saved segments according to contact method. We would recommend the following:
Go to your 'In debt' saved segment in the 'Patients' report - or your 'In debt, no future appointment' saved segment, if you have one.
Set the 'Email address' filter to 'Has any value'. Save this segment to identify all patients with outstanding debt who have an email address, so you can communicate with these patients via email.
Go back to your preferred outstanding debt saved segment as above. Set the 'Email address' filter to 'Is unknown', and set the 'Mobile number' filter to 'Has any value'. Save this segment to identify all patients with outstanding debt who have a mobile number but not an email address - so you can communicate with these patients via phone.
Go back to your preferred outstanding debt saved segment as above. Set the 'Email address' filter to 'Is unknown', and set the 'Mobile number' filter to 'Is unknown'. Save this segment to identify all patients who have no digital contact information - so you can communicate with these patients via letter.
With these three segments set up, you can then send correspondences according to the chosen contact method, ensuring that each patient will only be contacted via one method.
To send correspondence to a patient about their outstanding debt:
📝 Please note: You will need to have already set up your correspondence templates.
In the top right corner of the 'Patients' report, click the 'Messages' button.
In the new window that appears, enter a name for this correspondence at the top. A name is required, otherwise it will remain in draft. Choose a name which will be easy to distinguish for each communication method.
Under 'Step #1', click 'Open' on the right-hand side and select the segment you wish to contact - for example your segment of patients with outstanding debt who have an email address. Then click 'Done'.
Under 'Step #2', select the correspondence method - this should match the segment you have selected, so for those with an email address, select 'Email'. Then click 'Done'.
Under 'Step #3', select your chosen correspondence template. Then click 'Done'.
Under 'Step #4', review your correspondence and then click 'Send message now' to send it.
Repeat the steps above for each saved segment - for your segment for those with mobile numbers but not email addresses, choose 'SMS' and for those with neither email addresses nor mobile numbers, choose 'Letter'.
💡 Top tip: If you do not have Dentally Mail, you will need to export the letter segment and use mail merge or equivalent, outside of Dentally.