Insurance Payment question

[atd]

How do I enter a an insurance payment if a portion of the payment was made in error and needs to be refunded? Do I attach that part of the payment to a dummy account? I'm thinking of situations where they pay twice on the same procedure or where they payment should have gone to a different office, etc. Or where we made a billing mistake, need to refund insurance, correct the procedures billed and reprocess the claim. In our current system we enter the total check first and then allocate it to individual accounts - so any errors would have been left unallocated until they were dealt with. Since in Open Dental the process is reversed and you need everything entered in order to create the deposit I'm not sure how to handle this.

Thanks

[jordansparks]

Interesting comparison to the other software. Seems kind of dangerous from a database integrity standpoint to have the allocations not match the total payment. I'm trying to think what the consequenses of that might be and what would prevent us from doing that. But Friday afternoon is not a good time to try to think hard. Anyway, to your question.

The only way to attach it to a dummy account would be to create a dummy claim. And the only way to create a dummy claim is to first create a dummy procedure. You could do this. The preferred way, however, is to enter the surplus on the original claim. And when you write a refund check back to the insurance company, this would also go on the claim, but as a negative payment. That way, all transactions are recorded, and the patient can match up their eob's with their statement. It's more accurate than leaving it unallocated. If you get a payment intended for another office, then you would have to create a dummy patient with the name of the patient in question, then a dummy procedure, then a dummy claim. Keeps everything in its proper place and easy to find.