(Originally posted 7/16/2020. Updated 9/12/2024)
The Treatment Plan is vital for presenting your patients with recommended treatment, determining insurance estimates, and estimated patient responsibility. In this post, we’ll cover preauthorizations, saving and signing treatment plans, and more! So read on to learn all about the Treament Plan Module!
Treatment that you’ve planned from the Chart Module is available in the Treatment Plan Module.
Managing Preauthorizations
If you need to send a preauthorization to insurance for treatment, you can do so from the Treatment Plan Module. Just select procedures in the active treatment plan, and click the PreAuthorization button. You’ll create and send a preauthorization similar to a claim.
Once a predetermination is sent back by insurance, you can re-open the preauthorization from the Treatment Plan Module.
Just double-click the appropriate preauthorization to open it and click By Procedure to enter insurance estimates. The insurance estimates and patient portion for the treatment plan will reflect the amounts entered into the preauthorization.
TECH TIP: Some insurance preauthorizations may not reflect exceeding the annual max or other plan limitations, so consider these in your estimates. The preauthorization estimate overrides any automatically calculated benefits, regardless of available benefits, so if things change, make sure to update the estimate. Send and receive a new preauthorization, or manually remove the override.
Treatment Plan Notes
At the bottom of the Treatment Plan is the treatment plan note. This note appears when generating a Treatment Plan to be printed or signed and is completely customizable. The Default Note set in Preferences is used unless the note in the Treatment Plan Module is edited for a patient.
Additionally, you can double-click a Saved Treatment Plan to edit the note on the saved plan only (without affecting the default note).
Discounts
In addition to insurance estimates, you can also apply discounts to treatment. If a patient is assigned to a Discount Plan, discounts are automatically generated. If you want to manually discount treatment, there are two ways to do this for treatment planned procedures.
The first option is to select procedures in the Treatment Plan and use the Discount button to apply a percentage discount.
The second way to apply a discount is to enter an amount in the Discount field in the Financial tab of an individual procedure.
Present and Sign Treatment Plans
From printing to the eClipboard app and more, there are all kinds of ways to present treatment and have patients sign a treatment plan. First though, you’ll want to highlight procedures and click the Save TP button to create a Saved Treatment Plan. Active or Inactive Treatment Plans cannot be signed. A saved treatment plan acts like a snapshot of what was presented, as saved plans are not affected by fee updates or insurance plan changes.
TECH TIP: Want some stats on treatment you’ve presented? Check out the Treatment Plan Presentation Statistics Report.
eClipboard and ODTouch users can use a tablet to present treatment to a patient and patients can sign right from the app!
If using eClipboard, just select the Saved Treatment plan in Open Dental and click the eClipboard button. If a patient currently has an eClipboard session open, they’ll see the treatment plan pop up in their Check-in Checklist. Otherwise, a QR code will open in Open Dental that can be scanned by the eClipboard app to quickly open the Treatment Plan.
If using ODTouch, simply go to the Treatment Plans screen, tap a Saved Treatment Plan to view it, and tap Sign Plans to sign the treatment plan.
TECH TIP: Want to automatically save signed treatment plans in the Imaging Module? See Image Categories.
Want to learn more about treatment plans, check out our other blog post, Presenting and Managing Treatment Options. Have questions or need some help? Contact our Support.
Information in this post reflects features available in Open Dental Version 24.1. For the most up-to-date information, please visit our manual.