ClearDent’s dental ledger helps you quickly and easily access patient information to process treatments, enter payments, submit claims, print statements, process insurance, and more — all from one convenient location.
To get to the ClearDent’s dental ledger, search for the patient name then click on the “Ledger” tab at the top.
We’re going to take you through three common scenarios with our dental ledger: managing patient billing, processing payments, and making adjustments. For even more information, we also have ClearDent support videos available for our customers.
1. Billing patients
Select “Add” then choose “Bill”, or you can select the “Bill” button directly
Here, you will also see the patient name, date, primary and secondary insurances, main provider, fee schedule, and billing grid. Add any relevant notes in the pop-up window
To add a procedure, select from the drop-down menu
Type in the procedure and enter tooth number and surface if applicable
Update any linked policies with how much insurance will cover for that procedure
After you’re done adding all the procedures to this transaction, click “Next”
A submit claim window will pop up if the patient has insurance; it will only apply to the primary insurance
You have the option to print claim, submit by EDI, or submit later
A summary of the insurance claim will then pop up for you to verify; hit “Ok” to finish
2. Reconciling payments
There are three common cases when it comes to reconciling payments: adding a payment, underpayment, and overpayment.
Adding a regular payment
Select “Add”
Choose either “Patient payment” or “Family patient payment”
Select “Pay by” method from the drop-down menu
Select “Auto calculate”
Hit “Allocate” at the bottom of the window, then “Ok”
You’ll have the option to print a receipt or statement of the payment
The dental ledger will now be updated and the line of payment will turn in green.
Adding an underpayment
You may have to deal with underpayments when a patient is paying an outstanding balance with insufficient funds.
Once you navigate to the ledger (the tab will be red to indicate that the patient owes money), the running total is located on the bottom right.
Select “Add” and choose “Patient payment”
Next, select their payment method
If they were paying the full amount, you would select “Auto calculate” but in this case, they’re paying a partial amount, so select “Manual enter” and input the amount the patient is paying
Hit allocate. ClearDent distributes the paid amount to the codes that are outstanding following the first in, first out rule. If you want to use the payment for a specific code first, select “Clear” to allocate the payment manually by clicking the amount under Pmt Allocated column
Once you hit “Ok”, you’ll have an option to print receipt or statement
The dental ledger will now be updated and items that are completely paid will be highlighted in green with black text.
Adding an overpayment
If the patient only has cash and you don’t have change, they can request for the extra amount to be left on their account as a credit.
Select “Add” and choose “Patient payment”
Next, select their payment method
Choose “Manual enter” and type in the amount the patient is paying
Once you hit “Allocate”, you will see an unallocated amount with the overpayment
When you hit “Ok”, you’ll be asked what you’d like to do with the remaining balance
Select a provider to save the credit under and click “Ok”. In most cases, you would save the credit under the owner of the clinic. The reason being that if the patient never returns to use the credit and you can’t reach them to issue a refund, the credit becomes part of the house account.
The dental ledger will now be updated, and the running balance at the bottom will reflect the credit.
3. Making adjustments
While there are many different adjustment types, we’ll go over how to do a write off, transfer from insurance to insurance, as well as transfer from insurance to patient.
Performing a write off
Select any line in the transaction. It doesn’t matter which one, this is just to tell the system that the adjustment you want to make has to do with this transaction
Click “Add adjustment”
Choose the “Write off” drop-down: write off
Select either “ Auto calculate” or “Manual Enter” and click “Adjust all”
Select the amount that is outstanding for the patient and click “Ok”
There will now be a new adjustment line in the ledger, indicating a write off in the amount you selected for the patient.
Transferring a charge from primary insurance to secondary insurance
Select the primary insurance in the “From insurance” drop-down, then select “Auto calculate” and click “Adjust all”
Grab the full amount and click “Ok”
Unlike most adjustments, a transfer between insurances will leave two adjustment lines. One to show the transfer from the primary insurance to the patient and the second to transfer from patient to the secondary insurance. This is standard to show that it is moving from one carrier to another.
Transferring a charge from insurance to patient
Typically this is done when you receive the insurance cheque, and it’s lower than what was originally expected. You’ll need to subtract the charge from the insurance side of the dental ledger and move it to the customer side.
When you enter the insurance cheque, you can transfer it to the patient side of the ledger but if, for whatever reason, you don’t transfer it then, you can follow the steps below to make an adjustment and transfer the amount to the patient after the fact.
Click “Add adjustment” and select “Transfer to the patient”
Select the carrier from the drop-down if there are multiple
Select either “ Auto calculate” or “Manual enter”
Include a note with any relevant information about why the adjustment was made. You can choose to have the note appear on the statement or receipt when you print them
Click “Adjust all”
Click “Ok”
The dental ledger will now be updated with an additional pink line, indicating that the patient has a balance that has now been transferred. The running balance of the patient at the bottom will reflect the new balance.
Looking for more guidance? Visit ClearDent’s new online Help Centre for on-demand training videos, detailed user guides, and FAQs. Whether you’re new or experienced, our Help Centre has everything you need to enhance your product knowledge and troubleshoot issues effortlessly. Click here to learn more →
No matter how well you plan your dental schedule, dental emergencies are inevitable. At some point or another, every dental clinic has to deal with last-minute requests for emergency appointments. To help keep your dental clinic running smoothly, you need to implement dental triage protocols for emergency situations.
There are two important things to consider when dealing with dental emergency triage: questions and scheduling.
1. Dental Emergency Triage Questions
While you should try your best to accommodate patients, it’s simply not possible to fit in every patient that calls in requesting a last-minute appointment. Gathering information by asking dental emergency triage questions when patients call is an important step when handling these situations.
You have to be able to weed out an urgent dental emergency from those that are not quite as critical by asking some key questions. Focus on gathering as much information as possible to pass along to the dentist.
As part of your dental triage protocols, ask the below questions when a patient calls with a dental emergency to best plan and allocate resources for their appointment.
Dental Triage: Questions To Ask
Ask if they are a new or existing patient. If they are a new patient, you’ll have to create a new file for them so you can record the notes. If they’re an existing patient, ask for their name so you can look up their file.
Ask these questions to get to the root of what the problem is as quickly as possible and to determine the severity of the pain:
Where is the issue? Which side? Which tooth?
Is the patient currently in pain? If so, how long have they been in pain and what’s the severity of the pain?
Is the pain getting better or worse?
Is there pain to hot or cold temperatures?
Is swelling occurring?
Is the patient currently taking any medication for the pain? If so, what type of medication and what dosage?
Has there been previous dental treatment in the area?
Additional Questions for Dentures, Fractures, Crowns
It’s often helpful to ask additional questions once you’ve identified the type of dental problem. Some examples of questions to ask depending on the type of problem:
Dentures: Find out what type of denture it is, how old the denture is, and whether the patient has a spare denture
Fractures: It is on a tooth that has a crown? If it’s a crown, does it feel loose? Find out how much the tooth fractured – is there tooth left? Ask them how the fracture happened
Crowns: Ask if it’s a permanent or temporary one as well as how old it is.
Why Are Dental Triage Protocols Important?
Setting up dental triage protocols to gather the necessary information at the onset will help you assess the situation and plan accordingly. For example, asking if the patient is in pain will help you determine whether to try to get the patient in as soon as possible or when there is a better opening in the schedule.
While you’re not diagnosing the patient, these dental emergency triage questions will help give you an indication of how much time you need to allocate for the appointment. A chipped tooth, a new crown, and a tooth extraction all require different appointment lengths and preparation.
Document the information you gather during the phone call in the patient’s file so that your team has complete access to all the information they need when the patient comes in.
2. Scheduling Emergency Appointments
Once you’ve gathered the information, you’ll need to prioritize and find time to schedule an appointment for the patient.
Many clinics allocate time in their dental schedule for high-production appointments, such as root canals. In a similar fashion, consider also allocating time slots in your calendar for patient’s dental emergencies. Understanding the best way to maximize your schedule and react to emergency situations will not only help you give the appropriate care to your patients that need emergency help but also help ensure it’s done at minimal disruption to your regular patients.
After-Hours Support
In addition to responding to dental emergencies during clinic hours, make sure you have dental triage protocols in place to respond after-hours too. Many dentists are a part of a group of dentists that rotate being on-call after hours.
What To Do When Patients Call After Hours
When patients call after hours, you can craft an answering message that gives them options for after-hours care. Some dentists include their personal numbers so patients have a way to contact them or provide a number to a provincial resource such as HealthLink BC which helps both patients and dentists in BC find appropriate healthcare resources near them.
Never turn a patient away
Dentists are legally and professionally obligated to respond in the event of a dental emergency. You should never turn away a patient in pain for any reason.
It results in a bad patient experience and, these days, when patients are unhappy, they have no reservation about sharing their negative experiences on social media, hurting your dental marketing efforts.
When you try your best to treat patients with dental emergencies, it goes a long way in terms of patient retention and loyalty.
Trainers spend their days navigating systems for different practices and advising them on how to best use their practice management software. Not an easy job. Every practice has its way of doing things for its own specific reasons, and it’s the trainer’s job to implement, teach, and sometimes create best practices that will fit with each specific set of needs. Because of this, when you ask a trainer for a great power tip, they often can’t give you a simple answer. Frustrating. However, our amazing senior trainers pinpointed a tip that they like to give to every single office: “Change your treatment plan status”
By that, she means that it’s not good enough to simply label your treatment plans as planned or pending. You can do your practice a world of good by adopting AFRX method.
A – Accepted: Schedule the patient immediately.
F – Future: The patient wants the treatment, but something is preventing them from being able to move forward immediately, so put a task in your to-do list to follow up with them on a specific date.
X – Rejected by patient: The patient doesn’t want the proposed treatment. If the treatment is important, gently follow up with them to encourage them to approve it before the issue gets worse.
R – Rejected by insurance: Follow up with the patient only if their insurance status changes.
Label your treatment plan status with these and you can save your treatment coordinator a huge amount of time since they will now automatically know which patients to follow up with first (accepted), and how to approach patients that fall into one of the other categories.
This small change can make a big difference, and those are the best changes to make! Try implementing this at your practice and let us know what you think!
Imagine a world where each patient’s insurance coverage appears before you like magic. Imagine having the correct invoice amount for every patient through automated EOB, every time. Imagine having everything ready for you in an instant!
You don’t have to imagine it… it can be yours! But first, a couple of definitions:
Explanation of Benefits (EOB) is the statement that is received from the insurance carrier with the correct amount of coverage for the patient
Coordination of Benefits (COB) is the ability to prioritize multiple insurance carriers for a patient calculate the amount of coverage from each carrier in sequence and find the total covered amount.
ClearDent has fully integrated EOB and COB into our software so that everything is completed for you in the background. ClearDent’s electronic claim feature will automatically implement the Explanation of Benefits so the correct percentage of coverage is reflected on each patient’s invoice without any need for manual recording, hence automated EOB. If the patient has coverage from multiple insurance carriers, ClearDent’s electronic Coordination of Benefits (COB) will automatically forward the EOB from the primary insurance to the secondary insurance for completely accurate coverage information, and then implement that information into the patient’s invoice. Everything happens automatically, instantly*, and correctly.
Why is this so important? By automating this process, your front desk and patients will enjoy big benefits. First, the time needed to prepare an invoice will be drastically reduced. Accordingly, this will allow you to process more patients and greatly reduce wait times. Second, the accuracy of the statement will be vastly improved. With no human interaction or estimation, the invoice will be filled in with correct information without any risk of typos, or missteps. You will never have to attempt to collect more money from an incorrectly billed patient again!
* Performance based on support of real-time adjudication by insurance carriers
All dental offices have a way of finding patients to fill available slots. ClearDent has a feature that facilitates this time-consuming process. And this is how it works: The Appointment Manager allows the receptionist to quickly fill slots in the day that have become available.
How does it work?
When a patient cancels their appointment, a pop up box appears and asks if the appointment should be added to the waiting list. If ‘yes’ is selected, the appointment is added to the pending waiting appointment list.
This particular list is a great resource to pull names from when you have a cancellation on the schedule. You can pull up the appointment manager waiting list and call the patients listed to fill the available open spot on the schedule. If the patient has more than one appointment pending you can select all appointments for that patient (by checking the box to the left) and select schedule. This will move all of the patient’s appointments into the drop box allowing you to book.
When a patient has additional appointments that need to be booked, you can also open up the appointment manager. “Add” their name to the wait list so that you do not lose track of the patient and remember to follow up in a few days to book their treatment.
Booked and Waiting & Short Notice List
Booked & Waiting allows you to book patients in the future, but by choosing the Booked & Waiting option when scheduling the appointment it adds this appointment to the Booked & Waiting list. Therefore, if you have an opening in the schedule, you can pull patients off the Booked and Waiting list to get them in sooner.
Short Notice list is also a very tool to use when you have a last minute cancellation and need someone to fill the spot quickly.
All the above functions can be sorted by specific provider as well.
ClearDent makes it easy!
Looking for more guidance? Visit ClearDent’s new online Help Centre for on-demand training videos, detailed user guides, and FAQs. Whether you’re new or experienced, our Help Centre has everything you need to enhance your product knowledge and troubleshoot issues effortlessly. Click here to learn more →
Technology is allowing industries of all types to increase efficiency. In the dental industry, the list of technological advancements that allow dentists to gain more information to diagnose issues and complete procedures more efficiently is very long. What isn’t as evident, however, is how greatly technological advancements can increase the capabilities of a dental practice’s front desk. Specifically, I’m referring to automation. More and more dental practice’s are automating their processes every year. So, what can be automated?
Automating Appointment Confirmations
The biggest offender of time wasting for front desk staff is the age old practice of manually calling each patient to confirm their appointment. ClearDent can automate this for you easily by setting up a system where patients will automatically receive an email, recorded phone message, or text message (based on their preference) where they can quickly confirm their appointment.
Automating Appointment Status
When a patient has received their appointment confirmation message, it is a very simple process to confirm their appointment. When they do this, ClearDent will automatically update the patient’s status in the system.
Recall Reminders
No more letting patient’s slip through the cracks. ClearDent will automatically reach out to patient’s who still need to book their next recall. Because of tight integration, ClearDent can see who needs to book, check their contact preferences, and send them a message to book.
New Patient Welcome Package
Make a good first impression with your new patients. Have ClearDent automatically send them a welcome package.
Happy Birthday Messages
Show your patients that you care, and further build a strong bond to increase retention. Have ClearDent send every patient a happy birthday message.
And, because this is the way of the future, ClearDent is working hard to take advantage of our dental software ecosystem to bring even more time and money saving automations to our customers. Check out our new and improved website for even more information.
