Importing PDF's

[Toothdr97]

We are signing up to receive electronic payments from insurance companies. Ohio has passed a law requiring offices that file electronically to also receive payments electronically. My little brain is having problems grasping how to balance the books, but I am gettin there. My question is, how can we import the EOB's directly from the website (Delta toolbox)? I have figured out we can save it to the desktop in a PDF form, then go the desktop and open it, resave it as a JPEG. There has got to be an easier way. I am trying to save a tree and not print it, scan it and then shred it. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

[atd]

You can import PDF's into Open Dental - it doesn't have to be a jpg. Not sure you'd be able to import directly from the Delta toolbox though.

We receive some EFT's but end up printing them out ourselves. I figure the insurance companies are just passing the paper and ink costs to us and pocketing the money
Our data entry person needs a printout to look at - I guess if she had two monitors she could do it without printing. But we like to keep a paper copy of all our deposit slips and EOBs in a file cabinet for reference.

Since most of our EOBs have multiple claims on them I can't think of an easy process for scanning or downloading all those documents and importing in the images folder without a lot of duplication and hassle. If the person posting payments enters the remarks into Open Dental you shouldn't need to see the EOB very often. I think the time it takes to pull an occasional EOB far outweighs the time it would take to scan/upload all the paperwork. But if someone has a better way, please do share - I love to hear how other offices do things.

[jclaydds]

In our office, we also think it would require too much effort to scan each EOB individually and import each one into each person's chart in the Open Dental Images Module. Nevertheless, we are trying to get rid of the filing cabinets full of paper including EOB's so we like the idea of scanning them. I simply made a folder called EOB's on my server's hard drive (that gets backed up daily). Under that folder, the EOB's are organized into subfolders by year, month and by date. All the EOB's that were received in our office today were processed (payments posted, denials noted, etc) and that entire stack of EOB's are scanned in using our trusty Fujitsu Scansnap s1500 in a minute or so into a single PDF file named today's date. We take a look at the PDF file to make sure everything looks like it scanned correctly and we may keep the EOB's a few days but then they are shredded. If we ever need to see a particular EOB, we simply go to the account in Open Dental and see when the payment/denial, etc was posted and we know which date to look at in the EOB folder for the scanned batch of EOB's for that date. It works great for us.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

[drtmz]

We pretty much to the same thing and it works.

Tom Zaccaria

[Toothdr97]

Thanks for the replys, right now when we get a "paper" check with EOB attached we post it to the pt, then scan it into the patients chart under insurance. This has worked for 4 years. My dilemma now is with EFT I have to now go to the insurance website and look to see the EOB's. I want to be able to copy them directly into open dental. My issue is when I copy it to my desktop it goes as a PDF, then I try to copy from desk top to open dental but the image does not show up. If I go into the desktop image and change it to a jpeg, it will copy. I just thought that maybe I was doing it wrong. There has to be a way to "upload" and image directly into open dental without taking all the extra steps. If not I am resigned to doing extra steps.
Any thoughts?

[jordansparks]

If you can't see the imported pdf in the Images module, then you might be using an older version. Our phone support staff can also help you with this issue. I don't understand the problem.

[Jorgebon]

Are you using the Alt-PrtScn key combination to copy the screen image from the insurance company website? If you do that, all you have to do is paste it into the images module for the patient and it is copied as a JPG.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[Rickliftig]

Good trick Jorge!

[atd]

I still think importing the PDF is better than doing a screenshot.
1) Download the file from the insurance company and save it somewhere.
2) Go to Open Dental and click the "Import" button (not the paste button) and navigate to the file you saved.
If that doesn't work then you probably need to upgrade to a newer version.

[Toothdr97]

Yeah, that is what I do so obviously I have an older version. I will talk to my IT guy (husband) and have him upgrade me. lol
I have 6.7.31 now

[Dr Bakman]

Some thoughts that might help..

PDF's can sometimes be opened by double clicking
I'm not sure if it works for anyone else but it works for us
(PDF's 1st have to open Adobe.. then has to find and open the file.)

Electronic EOB's..
Do we really have to capture each and every electronic EOB?
They are relatively easy to find online now ..and so rare when a patient has a question and you need them.

So genreally don't scan these unless it's a particularly difficult case or patient.
Then we only need rarely to search for an EOB online when we have a problem.

The 'Alt-PrtScn' actually works very well if you need to 'capture' the electronic EOB
However the file is large.. is there a way to save a smaller JPEG?

Lastly, if you don't already use dual monitors..
It's the best investment you can make for your front desk.
Very cheap these days maybe $200-$300.00.

Will increase productivity 20-40% and save A LOT of PAPER & TREES.
(It's easier on the eyes and brain if you get 2 of the same monitor).

Makes any job easier.

For example entering electronic EOB's..
1-View the eob on the left screen
2- Enter the data on the right screen
Couldn't be simpler... or more accurate.
No toggling back and forth or printing it out.. better speed and accuracy.
Reduces daily frustration 10-fold...
Your staff will Love you for this!

Open Dental was made for double monitors.
Can even have it open twice.. 1x on each monitor
for any reason, it's just great.

I'm sure many of you are already doing this.
(New to the forum and haven't read 'all' previous posts.)

Doc