Canadian Claims

[jordansparks]

We have finished the programming for CDAnet. We are now going through the review process with Continovation. We have no idea how long that will take.

[Mifa]

That's very good news! I hope it will go well with ITrans. Good luck!

[MedDen]

Great news! Thank you for the whole team for not letting us down!

[sprange]

Nice! Now that my schedule is getting busy, my staff would definitely be pleased to have e-claims. Thanks for continuing to work on this project!

[jordansparks]

We spent the last week making some revisions to the forms that they wanted to see.

[jordansparks]

We are now doing some more work on the starting Canadian database, loading in carriers and so on.

[sprange]

Any idea if our existing databases will require significant changes to work, or will it be necessary to 'start from scratch using your new Canadian database?

[jordansparks]

No, we would never require anyone to start from scratch with a new database. In fact, the only issue that's come up in that regard has been what to do about entering in the carriers. I think there's only about 20 of them. I think we're supposed to mostly manage the list instead of the user having to do it. So the question that we have is what to do with existing databases that entered half of them in on their own, for example.

Today and tomorrow, we're working on ROTs.

[sprange]

So worst case scenario, as the patients come in we add a new insurance carrier/plan (from the new list), and drop the ones we had entered manually. That doesn't sound too problematic, unless I'm overlooking something...

[jordansparks]

Not even that bad. Worst case scenario is that you might have to manually edit any of your existing carrier info for such things as which network, which version of CDAnet, and so on. But I'm pretty sure it won't come to that.

[spsdds]

Hi Jordan,
I havew just returned from the Ontario Dental Convention Spring Meeting. CDA Itrans was there. Here is the email I received from them.
Dr. Shanahan,

Thanks very much for relaying your concern to me. Open Dental is well into the certification process, but they are not there yet. We aren't able to predict when they will be ITRANS certified as it depends on the resources they are able to put towards the project. We will let them know their customers are asking about the ITRANS-ready version, but the people with the most leverage in these situations are the customers, and I'm sure you've been making your wishes known. Keep up the pressure, and I can assure you that the technical team here at CSI is ready to work on this and won't be holding up the project.

Best regards,

Geoff Valentine

[jordansparks]

CSI has been quite responsive, yes. This week, we are making refinements to the ROT functionality. The next phase seems to be a new batch of test scenarios. After that, we will need a few beta sites to test. We will probably call each of our Canadian customers to ask if they want to be a beta site. But if you are eager, you could tell us here.

[sprange]

I'm up for being a beta test site!

[Mifa]

I've found out today that OD is now listed as a certified software for Canadian e-claims by CDA and I've seen that the canadian eclaims page in the manual has been updated as well. Thank you so much for this, that's wonderful news for us up North!!!!!!

I will be downloading 11.x very soon and start testing it. We are still using 6.7 in production and I have a few questions regarding our upgrade path:

1. Can I migrate straight to 11.x from 6.7 or is there an intermediate version in between we need to upgrade to first, in order to avoid problems with our existing data?

2. We currently have MySQL 5.0, in order to use 11.x we will need to upgrade to 5.5 first, but only after we install 11.x and import our data, correct?

Thanks.

[jordansparks]

1. You should be able to do a straight migration.
2. I think you have the correct understanding, but I don't know what you mean by "import our data". There is no import process. Maybe you meant convert to 11.x.

[Mifa]

Yes I meant convert. Thanks for your reply.

[sprange]

Eclaims have been working well at this end of Canada. My front office is now -very- happy. We're also now using sheets/automation/autonotes a lot more and it's amazing how much time we save. I think Open Dental has what it takes now to be a real contender in Canada.