As well as your usual end-of-day admin tasks, there are number of housekeeping jobs you should complete complete regularly (daily or weekly) to ensure your finances, admin and practice inbox is up to date.
Reconcile insurance payments
When you receive payments from insurance, you can reconcile those payments using the claims management tool.
From here you can filter payments, identify the ones associated with the insurance payment you have received, and record the payment to reconcile them (individually or in bulk).
Identify aged insurance pending payments
To check claims that are outstanding:
Go to the claims management tool.
Apply the following filters:
Use the 'Treatment date' filter to apply the required date range - for example, view claims which are older than 30 days.
Set the 'Claim status' filter to 'Pending'.
The list will update to only include pending payments which meet these criteria.
Review all claims to identify any required actions:
Follow up with the insurer
Discard the claim (if insurance will not be paying)
💡 Top tip: Ensure you delete the pending payment if the insurer has rejected the claim, to ensure that the remaining balance is added to the outstanding patient balance.
Collect outstanding patient balance
Once an insurer has confirmed how much they will be paying towards an outstanding balance (either by paying it or by confirming a pending payment), this will be taken from the outstanding total in the patient's 'Account' tab, and the remainder is the balance the patient should pay.
You should contact patients regularly to collect the outstanding net balance due. It is important to prioritise collecting aging patient balance (a balance which has been owed by a patient for a long time) to give more recent patients a reasonable time to pay, and ensure the older debt is not forgotten.
Identify outstanding aged patient balance
Go to the 'Invoice' report in Dentally.
Apply the following filters:
Use the 'From' and 'To' fields to apply the required date range - for example, view invoices which are older than 90 days.
Set the 'Account' field to 'Any' and the 'State' field to 'Unpaid (Patient)' - it is important to use this state, rather than just 'Unpaid', which would not factor in the insurance contribution. (To view aged insurance contributions on their own, set it to 'Unpaid (Insurance)' instead).
The list will update to only include invoices which meet these criteria.
If you identify a patient you wish to contact about their aging balance, click the square icon next to the patient's name in the 'Patient' column - their patient record will open in a new window.
From here you can then:
Find the relevant invoice in their 'Account' tab - if you open the invoice, you can click the envelope ✉️ icon in the top right to prepare and send an email with the invoice attached. This will mark the invoice as sent, and show in the patient's 'Correspondence' tab.
Find their contact details on the 'Details' tab, to manually contact them about their payment - if you do so, you can then go to the invoice in the 'Account' tab and click 'Mark as sent' to show they have been contacted manually.
In both instances, an arrow will appear next to the balance in the 'Invoices' report, indicating that the invoice has been sent to the patient.
💡 Top tip: To write off aged balances (you might wish to do this weekly), add a discount to the invoice.
Charge/close completed treatments
Completed treatments should be charged and closed to ensure your team can keep track of which treatment plans are outstanding and need appointments booked.
Make sure your practitioners are regularly reviewing treatment plans for their patients, charging any outstanding balances, and closing completed treatment plans (ie plans where all procedures are checked off and charged, and where the patient does not require to further work under that plan).
Each practitioner should use the 'Treatment Plans' report to do this, on a weekly basis:
Open the 'Treatment Plans' report.
Set the 'Started on or after' and 'Started on or after' filters to today's date.
Set the 'Practitioner' field to their own name.
Set the 'Complete' field to 'Not complete'.
From here they can look at each treatment to review - whether it was charged, why it was not completed and whether it should now be closed (if it is finished or if the patient rejected it).
Completing the treatment plan will archive and move it to their history - this way, the reception team knows which treatments they can book in and which are not needed/the patient has rejected.
Manage your practice inbox
It is important to stay on top of your practice email inbox. On a regular (daily or weekly basis) you should make time to go through your inbox and:
Assign any unassigned correspondences so the relevant team member can action them
Respond to enquiries so patients are not left waiting
Archive any emails where action is not needed
It's important to keep on top of this step - patients may be reaching out to reschedule or cancel appointments so monitoring your inbox regularly will ensure patient communications aren't missed, and their experience isn't negatively impacted.