May 08, 2019

You know the situation. There are patients out there needing care who have put it off because of their financial situation. To resolve this problem, there are several options for patient payment and financing which you may choose to implement in your practice. It is outside the scope of this article to discuss the pros and cons of which might be the best for you; this article focuses solely on how to implement an in-house payment plan.

How to:

1. Open the guarantor’s Ledger.

2. Click the Payment (-) button dropdown, and then select Create payment plan. This opens the Create Payment Plan dialog box.

3. By default, all procedures with a balance are included in the payment plan. You can click to uncheck any procedures you do not want to include in the plan.

4. There are six options you are required to configure:

Start date – The date you have agreed that the plan begins. The first payment will be due at the end of the interval you select (e.g., if you select an interval of one month, the first payment will be due one month from the start date).

Interest rate – Any interest rate amount your office applies. You can leave the amount at zero if you want.

Interval – Select whether the payments are to be made monthly, biweekly (every two weeks), or quarterly (every three months).

Payment amount / # of payments – These fields automatically update depending where you enter a value. If you put in a payment amount, Dentrix Ascend will calculate how many payments it will take to pay off the balance. (Dentrix Ascend may adjust the amount you enter to make it fit a whole number of payments.) Or, if you put in a number of payments, Dentrix Ascend will calculate how much each payment will be.

Provider – By default, the provider of the first procedure listed is selected, but you can select a different provider to associate the payment plan with.

5. Once the payment arrangement is all planned out, click Save, and then click Print to provide the guarantor a copy of the agreement.

6. Click Cancel to close the dialog box. While the payment plan is in effect, you will see a payment plan button on the guarantor’s and the patient’s Ledger, and the procedures included in the payment plan will have an icon next to them.

Additional Information

• When you are working out a payment plan with the guarantor, you can use the # of payments plus and minus buttons to see the effect on the payment amount by lengthening or shortening the payback period.
• Once you create a payment plan, you cannot edit it; but you can delete and re-add it with your changes.
• A guarantor cannot have more than one payment plan associated with his or her record.
• Billing statements sent to this guarantor will include both the payment amount plus the remaining balance for any procedures, such as new procedures that are not associated with the payment plan.
• For more information, see Creating payment plans in the Resource Center.