10% prepayment discount

[fishdrzig]

Just trying to pick some brains here. I recently stopped par with a certain IC. This meant that the assignment goes to the patient, so I have been offering a 10% prepayment discount to encourage people with this plan to stay and to get used to paying on the day of service for everything - no billing and they can save some money. So, for instance a pro and exam pro = $61 PE = $39, normal fee = $100. I normally send the claim with the standard fee and in the remarks section acknowledge a "10% prepayment discount" to the IC, so they are aware. The patient pays me $90, I eat $10 and all is well. I was recently reading an insurance book that stated it would probably be better to set the fee send on the EOB to be 10% less instead of the standard fee I charge. What are your thoughts on this?

[Pruce Dental]

I asked that same question to a United Concordia rep a few years ago. After doing some research the UCCI rep said that I had to report the 10% discounted fee and that submiting my regular fee with a 10% discount note was unacceptable. This was even after I explained to them that EVERY single procedure code on their schedule had at least a 30%-70% discount from my regular office fee and there was no way they would ever overpay my office if they missed the note about the discounted fee.

Along the lines of the original question, I have another question.

I am new to Open Dental (actually just playing with a trial conversion so far)...so forgive me it this is already explained elsewhere. Hopefully Jordan will not respond in two seconds with a link to the Open Dental manual and everyone will know that I was too dumb to ready the whole thing yet...j/k

ok..so my question...

I want to give a 10% senior citizen discount. I want the patient to see my regular fee on their walkout statement/bill with a separate itemized senior citizen discount. I don't just want to set up a separate fee schedule for senior citizens because I want them to see the complete fee and the senior discount. That way for example if my crown fee is $1000 and I just changed their fee to $900 they would forget about the discount by the time they got out of the office and think geez his fees are really expensive. I want my walkout statements/bills to show the $100 discount so they ( or their spouses etc.) do not forget about my generosity.

So my problem with the senior discount and my current PMS is that I must manually go into each transaction after a senior citizen leaves and change the fee to the discounted fee then submit the e-claim then go back and manually reset the fee to the standard office fee on their account. Occasionally my office will forget that someone was a senior citizen before sending the claim to the insuance company. Is there an easier way to do this in Open Dental? Is it possible in Open Dental to have your standard fee show on the account and have certain categories of patients like senior citizens have Open Dental internally select a different discount fee schedule when printing or transmiting an electronic claim to the insurance company?

[jordansparks]

We don't yet have a feature for showing discounts on TP's other than for the PPO discounts. We do have a column in the TP that we strategically called Discount, but we have never quite gotten around to making it work with senior discount, for example. In Open Dental, you would display the discount on the TP by adding notes after the TP was saved, but before it was printed. Each procedure can have a different note. And the workaround for sending the claim would be slightly different than you describe. If you feel you must send the claim with the lower amount, create the claim first, and then edit the numbers on the claim. You don't have to edit the numbers in the original procedure. So I don't think Open Dental handles this issue any more elegantly than your current PMS. Sorry.

[Pruce Dental]

So if I edit the fee on the claim for the reduced fee it will not affect the fee in the account module? So I will not have to manually go back and fix the account fees afterwards? Both are independant of the other. Is this correct? That sounds a little better than what we have to do now. Is there an easy way to set some sort of popup to remind staff right after creating the claim to remind them that they need to discount the fee before sending the claim?. If so, is there a way to set this popup for everyone over the senior citizen age?

If I just set up a new fee schedule for the senior citizens is there a way that that I tack an individual note onto the end of the procedure code that says something like "Senior Discount You saved XX for this service today" and manually attach a different note with the correct discount for each procedure code. This way at least it would show on their walkout statements.

I assume that I can go in and edit the discount on the treatment plan too if I want to show the senior discount there too? Is that assumption correct? If not, I guess I could always just type a custom note on the treatment plan reminding them that they will get a 10% discount off the listed prices. Actually sounds easier.

Thanks!

[jordansparks]

Yes, that is correct. The fees on the newly created claim are copied from the procedure fees, but are completely independent so that you can change them if you want. You can create a popup for these patients one at a time. The automation cannot yet create a popup based on age.

I just tried manually editing the discount column for someone with no insurance. It doesn't work yet. The main problem is that the software keeps hiding the discount column because it can tell that the person does not have PPO insurance.

Yes, a note at the bottom of the TP talking about the 10% discount is the easiest solution for now.