Splitting Patient Payments by Family Member

by | Aug 22, 2019 | Revenue Cycle Management

Did you know you can split payments by provider and by family member? If you use these split payment options, you can post a single payment that will be distributed among the providers with balances for each family member and posted in each family member’s Ledger as appropriate.

For example, if you have a family come in for cleanings, and they pay you with a single check, you can use the Split By Family Members option to quickly apply payments to each patient in the family from a single screen in Dentrix, without having to open each person’s Ledger.

Here’s how:

  1. In the Ledger, select a patient and click the Enter Payment button.
  2. Enter the amount and type of payment in the appropriate fields.
  3. To allocate the entire payment to one specific provider, in the Provider field, click the Split by Provider drop-down list and select a single provider.
  4. In the Patient drop-down list, select Split by Family Member to split the payment among the family members with outstanding balances, or select the individual patient whose account you want to apply this payment to.
  5. To split the payment between two or more providers, or to split by family members, in the Split Method drop-down list, select the desired option to split the payment:
    • Percentage Payments – Divides the payment among the providers according to the provider’s percentage of the total amount owed.
    • Guarantor Estimate – Applies the payment to providers who have balances as guarantor estimates and ignores provider balances that Dentrix estimates insurance will pay the remainder of.
    • FIFO (First In First Out) – applies the payment toward the oldest completed procedures first.
    • Equal Payments – Splits payment amounts equally among all providers with debit balances.
  6. Enter any notes about this payment in the Note field, and click OK to post the payment and return to the Ledger.

Additional Tips

  • To make sure a specific provider’s balance is paid, you can select that line item and click Give Payment Priority to selected items. That item will be paid off first and the remaining items will be paid according to the split payment method you selected.
  • Check Apply to Pmt Agreement if the payment should be applied to the family’s payment agreement.

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