A patient has just informed you that their primary insurance coverage has ended, and they will now be using their secondary insurance as the primary. Dentrix Ascend can easily accommodate this switch, but you do need to observe a couple of rules to preserve the integrity of your data.
To change secondary insurance to primary insurance:
- Go to the patient’s Insurance Information page (Patient > Insurance Information or the Insurance widget on the Patient Overview) and select the primary plan.
- End the primary insurance coverage by entering the date the primary insurance coverage ended in the Coverage End field. Click Save.
- Select the secondary insurance plan. End this coverage as well. Type the same Coverage End date as you did for the primary insurance. At this point, both insurances should be ended, and on the same date.
- Click Add Plan. Search for the new primary insurance plan (the former secondary). Set the Coverage Type to Primary. Set the Coverage Start date to the day after coverage ended on the former primary plan.
- Double check that the secondary insurance has become the primary (Patient > Insurance Information).
Additional Information
- End coverage for any dependent accounts prior to making changes to the subscriber account.
- If there are no claims attached to an insurance plan, then the plan can be removed rather than ended.
- When you end coverage for an insurance plan, the coverage end date may not be earlier than the date of any claims or pre-authorizations attached to that insurance plan.
- For more information, read Updating insurance information for patients.