Open Dental Forum

Greetings,

We just started doing implants. My staff now updates the fee schedule for the percentages, for example usually its 50% insurance pay. So if you click on family, and then look to the right, it lists out all the percentages for each major group of procedures. Here, it will list implants as 50%. Now, when Im treatment planning and do the implant and crown, it comes up as full fee, and then insurance as zero when Im looking at the chart. . What we then have to do is click on the implant and then "insurance estimates and payments", then manually type in 50% there under the implant to get it to charge it right.

What are we doing wrong? Why isn't it reading it from the family page like it does everything else and update accordingly?

Steve

Steve,

Sounds like some funny business might be going on. If you have Open Dental support I think this might best be troubleshooted by calling our support line. There are many places we could quickly check for you and show you where and why this might be happening.

Probably,the insurance is maxing out due to the other procedures in the treatment plan.

In treatment planning, when you click on the implant procedure, now you need to change the priority to "1"
this will put the implant procedure at the top and will give you the insurance estimate before the patient insurance max out

Also check this:
Open the Lists/ Procedure codes menu. Double click on the implant procedure description. See if there is a check mark on "Do not usually bill to ins".

Its not either of the two solutions proposed above.

Mine does and always has done the same thing. No estimation for implants at all. Not even if there in all the proper fee schedule places. I believe it is possibly because there is no estimation block for it in benefit information??? There are several categories resto, endo, perio, oral surg, crowns, prosto and so on....No specified implant procedures??? I'm guessing that's why. This day and age you would think it would be listed, we do a lot of it

It could be because there is no insurance category setup for implants. Open Dental considers implants to be under the General insurance category. You can add your own Implants category.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/inscatssetup.html
Then on each insurance plan that cover implants, you would add an Other Benefit for that category.
http://www.opendental.com/manual/benefitinfo.html