Do you participate with an insurance carrier that sets the fees you can charge covered patients? When it comes time to update those fees, find out if the carrier will provide you with a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet or a Comma Separated Value (CSV) file of that fee schedule information! If they do, you’ll be able to import those fees from a file instead of entering them manually! That will save you a lot of time and reduce the chance of making a data entry error.

Once you have that file downloaded, in Office Manager click Maintenance > Practice Setup > Fee Schedule Setup. The Fee Schedule Maintenance window opens. Select the insurance fee schedule and click View/Edit. Then click Import. Select the file that the insurance carrier provided.

Dentrix will attempt to automatically identify the columns that contain the procedure codes and the fees. Often though these files contain fees for several plans that the carrier offers, so Dentrix cannot always determine the right column to use. When that happens, a window will open asking for your help to identify the columns. Click Select Proc Column and then click the column header that contains the codes. Next, click Select Fee Column and click the column header containing the fees.

After importing the fees, you’ll be taken to the View/Edit screen where you preview the changes and make any manual adjustments if needed. To keep the new fee schedule, click Save and Close.

If fee schedules seem a little mysterious to you, we have published a primer just for you! Read Fee Schedules 101 – What They Are, Why They’re Important, and How to Edit Them in Dentrix Magazine.