October 23, 2019

When it comes to collecting payment, there are many ways to run your business. Maybe your goal is to get 100% up front before you perform a procedure. Maybe you never collect on the same day, always waiting for the insurance payment to come back first, and billing the difference. Maybe you invite the patient to pay their estimated portion today, or some part of it.

There must not be many organizations collecting it all up front, because dental industry best-practice goals for collections include getting 50% of your daily collections over-the-counter. Does that number seem high to you? It can be tough to achieve if you haven’t had the kind of conversations which communicate your expectations to the patient. But actually doing it? Your Dentrix Ascend software can make it a natural part of your workflow.

How to:

1. Use the routing panel. Check people in, and keep track of them as they move through their visit. Eventually each patient’s appointment card will move to the Checkout status, which is where the magic happens.

2. Post or complete the procedures completed today (the button name changes depending on whether the procedure was treatment-planned prior to this appointment). Dentrix Ascend checks to see whether the patient should owe a payment for these procedures, and if so, the Collect Payment task appears.

3. Click the Patient Walkout button in the routing panel to open the ledger Patient Walkout window.

4. Today’s procedures are already selected. Click Create Claims, switch to the Send Claims tab, and click Send Selected Claims. Then, switch to the Payment tab.

5. You can see the amount to collect for this visit in the Patient Portion section of the walkout window. Whatever amount the patient ends up paying today, enter that amount and method, and click Save Payment. Then, close the window.

6. You are back at the routing panel, where you can continue the checkout workflow! A green checkmark next to the Collect Payment task indicates it was successfully finished.

Additional Information

• When collecting payment in the office, what you say is important. For example, “How would you like to pay for that today?” is a much stronger invitation than “Do you want to make a payment?”
• Want to know how your office is doing on collecting at time of service? Review the Workflow Compliance Report (from the Home menu) for this and other vital statistics.
• For more information, watch Using the Routing Panel for Patient Checkout in the Resource Center.