Let’s build some templates! Hopefully my article last week and my interview with Teresa a couple of weeks ago has convinced you to make some tweaks in your Dentrix clinical documentation.
There are some key parts to a clinical note template I always teach my offices and I am going to give those to you today. Your clinical note template must contain some important information for insurance companies to pay your claims, your scheduling team to know what is next and your auditors to see what was done today to collect the right amount of money.
The other thing I teach all my teams is to make sure all your templates list out information in the same order. If you have more than one hygienist and they all have a different recare template, make sure the details list out in the same order even if the template format is different.
- Your template should always contain what you did today and should match what you are billing out. This is important because you are sending the insurance company a copy of your clinical note to get your claim paid.
- You should always include the reason you are taking radiographs. Make sure you are prescribing x-rays and why you need them for the next visit.
- Finally, write down what is next, so your schedulers have a central place to find what to schedule. In case the patient doesn’t schedule right away, this is an easy place to locate the next visit’s information and how much time the provider will need.
It’s hard to put all the instructions into a 300-word blog post so, if you need more visuals and a video to follow along, make sure to join our membership so you can tap into our online clinical courses to help your team understand the software better. I give out lots of template samples and tip sheets to for additional resources.
Here is a reply of our podcast from last week:
