We love sharing Open Dental use tips with you! In this Tips & Tricks post, we will be answering these questions:

• How can I easily receive $0 claim payments?
• Where can I use right-click options?
• Why is a procedure billing out so high?
• What if my providers have different rates?

How can I easily receive $0 claim payments?

If you have insurance carriers who do not pay your practice directly, but instead make payments to the patient (i.e., the practice does not receive assignment of benefits), you can enable the preference, Auto receive claims with no assignment of benefits. Once enabled, claims sent to carriers whose insurance plan has a subscriber with the Assignment of Benefits box unchecked, are automatically marked received with a $0 payment.

If a claim is outstanding, you can easily receive $0 claim payments from the Outstanding Insurance Claims Report. You can select a single claim (or even multiple to quickly receive multiple $0 claims) and click the Zero Claims button to quickly receive the selected claims with $0 payment and write-offs.

Where can I use right-click options?

Did you know that in different windows, there are right-click options to quickly open patient accounts, relevant tasks, and more? Below are a few key places you can use right-click options and some of the available options.

• Outstanding Insurance Claims Report, Procedures Overpaid Report, and Procedures Not Billed to Insurance Report
  • Go to Account: Opens the Account Module for the selected patient.
• Recall List
  • See Family: Opens the Family Module for the selected patient.
  • See Account: Opens the Account Module for the selected patient.
• Confirmation List, Unscheduled List, ASAP List, and Planned Appointment Tracker
  • Select Patient: Makes the patient in the list the currently selected patient, so you can easily view the patient’s information without needing to search for their account.
  • See Chart: Opens Chart Module for the selected patient.
  • Send to Pinboard: Copies the selected appointment to the Pinboard. Helpful if needing to reschedule.

Right-click options exist throughout Open Dental; this is just a small sample. View our right-click magic blog post for even more right-click options.

Why is a procedure billing out so high?

If you’ve charted a procedure and noticed a fee that is multiples higher than the procedure fee, chances are a Base Unit has been entered. Base Units are relatively uncommon, but may be entered on procedures like Nitrous when sending medical claims. The procedure fee is multiplied by the Base Unit, so a procedure fee of $350 with 3 Base Units becomes a billed fee of $1050.

Base Units can be automatically applied to specific procedure codes by setting them in Edit Procedure Code or can be applied to individual procedure codes from the Medical tab in the Procedure Info window.

If you notice that the fee being billed doesn’t match the procedure amount, this usually means Base Units are being applied. If this is unintentional, go to the Medical tab and set the Unit Quantity to 1.

After that, check the procedure from the Edit Procedure Code window to make sure Base Units aren’t being applied by default.

What do I do if my providers charge different rates?

If you have providers that charge different rates (e.g., specialists), you can disable global fees on a fee schedule in order to enter fee overrides for the provider. If you have Clinics enabled, just make sure you have Headquarters selected from Main Menu.

In your Fee Schedules list, double-click an existing fee schedule or create a new fee schedule and uncheck Use Global Fees. Now from Lists, Procedure Codes, you’ll be able to select a provider (or Clinic) when the fee schedule is selected and fees entered will be applied to only the provider selected. See our manual for additional details.

Our support team is here to help you. Just reach out any time you need help!