In this episode I will be diving into the latest Dentrix updates that were released in September and October of 2023. There are some really great feature enhancements that you can integrate into your best practice’s so take a listen.
Transcribed by Riverside so ignore all the typo’s, grammar and repeat words.
Hey, my friends, welcome to Novonee on the Go. And in fact, this is going to be the last episode of Novonee on the Go with that title because I will be changing the name. Now, same great content that have been accustomed to but starting next week, we will have a name change that I am super excited about. And I think you will be too.
I think it will be more encompassing of what we talk about, and it will just be a little higher-level brand, same great content that you’ve always come to listen to, but we will have a name change. So today is the last episode of Novonee on the go. So, I hope you enjoy it.
I’m just gonna bring you up to speed on the last two months of Dentrix updates because they’ve been busy. Those developers over at Henry Schein One in the Dentrix development team, they’ve been busy little bees over there just putting together lots of updates. So I wanted to bring you all up to speed on what all the new changes are. So that’s what we’re going to talk about today. And so I’ll give you some idea of you know, how these features will benefit your daily workflow, how you can integrate them into your processes and your systems. The best way to use some of these new features, some of them are little, but some of them have lots of, you know, they might be little, but they’re powerful, you know.
Let’s start with what came out in September. You know, we had 23.6 and 23.7. They had a few changes in a couple of different places in Dentrix. And so some of you may be using these features already. If you want to know what version of Dentrix you are on currently right now, you can go to any Dentrix module, just click on the Help tab at the top of any Dentrix module.
Click on Help and then go to About Dentrix. It’ll open up a window and then you’ll see in the upper right corner, you’ll see your installed version and it will be 23 point something. If you’ve been up to date with the updates this year, it’ll be 23 point something.
I’m currently on 23.9 and I’ll get all the way up to 23.9 with telling you what all the new features are with that. But starting with 23.6, we had anybody out there doing payment agreements, okay? Now, I’ve talked a little bit about payment agreements in my courses, in my online courses I have a module or a lesson on payment agreements, how to make sure you’re managing payment agreements. I have done revenue cycle management webinars for Henry Schein One. I talk a lot about making sure that you are collecting what you’re producing. And a lot of practices that I go and work with, you know, a lot of times I’ll sit down with the financial coordinator and I ask, “do you take any payment plans?”
And the answer is always no, we don’t do any payment plans. And then what’s really funny is we start going through the accounts receivable report or the collection manager, and we’ll start going through some individual patient accounts, and it never fails, never fails. The financial coordinator, the office manager will tell me, oh, that patient is making payments. The doctor said it was okay if that patient made payments. It was just that one exception. And then we’ll go down a few more down and oh, that patient’s doing payments. And so it’s so funny that offices say, we don’t do payment plans. But then when you actually start looking at your accounts receivable or your collection manager report, you will find that you do have more patients on payment plans than you realize you do. And I’m not against payment plans, okay? There are some reasons, there are some situations where payment plans are okay. So you may offer a payment agreement to a patient, maybe they’re in an extended treatment plan, maybe they’re doing ortho, maybe it is a special situation.
I’m not saying that you should never do payment plans. I’m just saying you must have a plan for it. It has to be in Dentrix so you can manage it and you have to have a credit card on file. So those three things are like mandatory for me because that way you have a system for making sure that the payments are getting made on time and that everyone in your office knows that patient is on a payment plan because they can see the agreement either on a route slip or they can see it on the ledger. So there was some changes in 23.6 to the payment agreement process. There’s now a task in the month-end task scheduler.
If you go into your month end task scheduler section, this is where you set up all your month end processes, there is a new task that you can set up and it will automatically process the payment agreements. If you have been using payment agreements with Dentrix, you know, you can have a credit card on file. So you’re using Dentrix Pay, you have a credit card on file so that it gives you a little notification in the bottom right corner of your computer, and it says you have three new payment agreements to post today. So you have to click on it, and then you have to click a button to make them post to the ledger. Well, now there’s a process in the task scheduler that will automatically post the payments. So you don’t have to click a button anymore, it just runs automatically during the task scheduler. So that’s a new feature in 23.6.
Okay. Now, Dentrix, over the last year or so, Dentrix has been completely rewriting the insurance module. So you’ve probably been noticing over the past year or so, there has been changes to the allowed amounts, to the way Dentrix estimates treatment plans, the way Dentrix estimates on the ledger. And so those improvements have been happening over the past year or so.
I think we’re kind of getting to the tail end of the insurance module being rewritten. They’re still working on the exceptions table. I do know that. So we are re-recording, we’re rewriting or re-recording our Insurance 101 course so that it encapsulates all of the recent updates with the insurance module that Dentrix has put together.
In 23.6 there is another feature enhancement that you’ll notice. You’ll see it on the ledger. So if you go open your ledger and what you’ll see in the lower right corner of your ledger where it has, usually it says today’s charges, $200, estimated dental insurance portion, $100, estimated patient portion, $100. Well, that’s always been there, now in 23.6, you’re going to see estimated in-network adjustment. And it’s going to show you what the estimated adjustment is. And then the estimated in-network allowed amount. And those two lines are brand new on the ledger. And so what Dentrix is doing is if you are in-network, and you are posting full fee to the ledger, but you’re using your fee schedule in the Dentrix insurance module, there’s that new allowed amount column, that new allowed amount table. If you’re using the allowed amount for your in-network fees, now Dentrix will have two new lines on the ledger that will show your in-network estimated adjustment and the estimated in-network allowed amount. That’s brand new in 23.6. So take advantage of that. If you are in-network and you’re using the allowed amount table now. Okay, perfect. Awesome. And then it will also reflect that on the patient billing statement as well as an estimated adjustment estimated allowed in network allowed amount.
Then there’s some changes with AI. I’m not going to go into that in a lot of detail. If you are using the Dentrix Detect AI, then you will see a couple little changes in the smart image.
Okay, probably one of my favorite features that came about a couple versions ago, but in 23.6, they just improved it even more. It Is the search procedure code field. And so in a couple different places throughout Dentrix, they added a search bar so that you could search procedure codes by name instead of just trying to search for it in the list, which was amazing. And so that’s been around for, I don’t know, that came about several versions ago, but now they added the ability to search in a couple more places in Dentrix within the procedure code window on the ledger and on the patient chart. So there’s a couple more places in Dentrix where you can now search by name for a procedure code. You know, so if you have a procedure code for products like Sonicare Toothbrush or you have a procedure code for a crown seat, and you just don’t know what the code is, then this can also really help if you have new team members that are working in your practice, that maybe they didn’t come from dentistry, so maybe they don’t know dental codes, or they don’t know even the category of service, like what goes in oral surgery, I have no idea. The search by name can be really powerful for not only finding codes because you know your clinical team they don’t know codes they know how to search they know the name of the code they know the name of the procedure so that’s a really big improvement is to be able to search by name so they added that search by name in several more places in Dentrix.
Let’s see there is a new custom benefit maximum indicator in 23.6. So now it will display up to two user created categories for maximums. So if you want ortho, then that will also show on the family file that you have an ortho max is $3,000, but their general dental max is only 1500. Now in the family file, it will display up to two different maximums. And so that is new as of 23.6. So new little feature there.
A new feature with 23.7 is that if you are using the batch insurance payment window, you can now send electronic statements from there. So that’s new.
There’s some new settings with the signature manager. So the signature manager, that has also been a module that has been developed slowly over the last year or so as well as this new signature manager. It looks for missing clinical notes. And there’s some new settings with 23.7. There’s some new provider settings with your signature manager. So that is part of 23.7.
All right, moving on to the October releases, 23.8 and 23.9 came out in October. In fact, I just downloaded 23.9 last week. And so, I mean, not huge, it’s not a huge update. So it only has three things included in it.
Dayna – guest (15:04.738)
If you’re using Dentrix Pay, you can now do a partial refund. So if you are just issuing a partial refund, not a full refund from their full payment, it will now split that partial refund amongst the correct patient or the correct provider. So that’s nice that it recognizes who to allocate that refund to.
Another feature in 23.8 is that if your update fails, because I don’t know when they added the auto updates. I know there’s a lot of chatter about auto updates and it is a good thing that you allow your system to auto update. You just wanna make sure that it is set and scheduled during a time that’s convenient for the office. It’s also important that your system updates when somebody can monitor it, like your IT company, or, and also make sure that you do updates when Dedric’s support is available, so that, you know, just in case anything happens with the update, it’s always a possibility that the update doesn’t finish. And, you know, we have updates on our mobile phones,
every four to six weeks. I know I’m getting notifications of a software update on my mobile phone pretty consistently. The same thing happens with your computer software. And so there is a new update manager recovery after a failure. So if your auto update does fail, then there will be steps to retry rather than stopping it entirely. So that’s it. You may wanna let your IT company know that feature is available in 23.8. That just came about.
And then finally, for all of you hygienists, I recently did a podcast, maybe just a couple of weeks ago about Perio, all the hot keys in Perio. And I probably should have waited a couple more weeks because this feature just came out with some perio exam improvements. This is in 23.9. There is now a new button where you can click to chart interproximal bleeding. So it will chart two bleeding points at the same time. It’s still not a like a bleeding all button like you all want. I know everybody wants a bleeding all button.
This one is a two-site bleeding point. And so you probably could still use your, like your arrow key and use this interproximal bleeding and suppuration site. So if they have a lot of pus or they have a lot of bleeding, this button will be really, really helpful for you. And then the other improvement to the perio exam is it will now show you the new exam date. So as soon as you open the Perio chart, it thinks you wanna do a new Perio exam today. Now with 23.9, it’s gonna show new, and then it’s also gonna show you the most recent previous exam date. So you won’t have to go digging for the last date. It’s gonna be right at the top on the top line for you. So that I think is really huge.
Well, that’s it. Those are the latest Dentrix updates in the last couple of months, 23.6 through 23.9.
So that means there have been nine Dentrix updates this year. 23.9 means it’s year 23, and there have been nine updates. Now, I would expect we would probably get maybe one or two more updates this year. So I think probably at the tail end of December, I’ll probably do another podcast just to bring you 100% up to speed on the rest of the updates for this year. All right, I hope that you enjoyed this podcast today. Remember, this is the end of Novonee on the go. Next week, I will reveal the brand-new name of the podcast. I’m so excited. But please share our podcast with your friends, colleagues, study club members. If you felt like this podcast episode was really relevant and informative. Please rate it, review it, and share it, and I really appreciate it. I look forward to watching your journey of becoming a Dentrix super user.
