Batch Insurance

[Jorgebon]

We've been using the "Batch Insurance" feature for entering payments for a few days now. The idea is very good but it still needs some work. The main complaint is that you have to close the window to get to a patient's account or chart module. This gets to be frustrating when you have a check for twenty or thirty claims. Many times what the insurance pays is not what we expected, and we need to see the chart or the see the account module to see why they paid as they did and maybe post an adjustment to the account. One example is that we have a state law that makes insurance pay interest on claims not paid in a certain time. Those few cents are entered to the account as an adjustment, and to do that we have to close the batch insurance window. The same goes for when insurance doesn't pay for something like a prophy because of time limits. We need to go to the chart and see when was the previous prophy and see if we have a commlog entry that says we called the insco to ask for elegibility for that prophy. Doing these things after you finish the whole check is not practical since you might miss something and then a patient's account would not be adjusted properly.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[jclaydds]

Jorge,

I know this doesn't solve your issues with batch insurance but I bet you realize that the same person can have multiple copies of Open Dental open on the same computer. When we are into something in Open Dental that doesn't allow you to bounce back and forth between what you are doing and the information we need to see, we simply open up a 2nd copy of Open Dental and bounce back and forth using using Windows. We use the 2nd copy to look at accounts, charts, --- whatever information we need to look at.

Hope this helps.

Jeff

[Jorgebon]

That's a great idea. we will definitely do that until there's a better option.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD

[jordansparks]

You are using the right click to jump directly to the Account, right? So that part is fast. The slow part is opening the window back up again? There are two different ways to open it back up again. Either click-click-doubleclick, OR doubleclick-doubleclick. If the window was already still open as you are suggesting, you'd have to click to get back to it, then click to refresh. So yes, there is a slight difference since your way would save about 1 click, but I think it's mostly psychological.

[Jorgebon]

I was thinking that if it worked like the recalls window it would be much better. The window would stay in the background and easily accesible.
Jorge Bonilla, DMD