Patients are notoriously bad about letting you know when their insurance changes, probably because many believe that when their insurance plan changes or terminates, their dental office is automatically notified by the dental insurance, which you know to be far from true. You often don’t find out until their claims start getting rejected. Fortunately, when this happens, Dentrix Ascend makes it easy to end the old insurance and start the new from when coverage began.

To change a patient’s insurance plan:

  1. Remove any outstanding claims from the old insurance that are attached to procedures that need to be submitted to the new insurance plan. Search for the patient, and click to select the patient ledger. For each outstanding claim, select the insurance claim and delete.
  2. Click Patient > Insurance Information and select the expired insurance plan.
  3. Type the date this coverage ended in the Coverage End field, and click Save. If this patient has dependents, click OK to the Apply End Date? pop-up alert.
  4. Click Add Plan. Search for the new plan, and click to select. Or, if the plan is not there, click Add New Carrier or Plan.
  5. Enter the plan specifics. Select the coverage options, enter the Subscriber ID number, and set the Coverage Type as needed.
  6. Backdate the Coverage Start date to when coverage started for the new plan. Leave the Coverage End field without a value (MM/DD/YYYY) and click Save.

Additional Information

  • Be sure to check the subscriber and other dependents for claims before trying to change the plan.
  • Make sure the expired Coverage End date is at least one day before the Start Date of the new Insurance plan.
  • If you need help to remember when the old plan expired, toggle Show Expired Plansto On to see the coverage period of plans where coverage has ended.
  • For more information on attaching insurance to patients, read Attaching Insurance to Patients.