Open Dental Forum

Hi,

I've noticed a few accounts that had balances before sometime beginning of August, but somehow the balances became zero. I only noticed it because they were marked as pre-collections status, and I was going to send them to collections.

Ex. a patient had two anterio composites done. each composite was $117 after PPO writeoffs. Normally, his insurance is set to pay at 100% according to the breakdown. The two composites were denied payment by the insurance company because of frequency limitations, so when the claim came back the payments were entered as $0 with no additional writeoffs. Pt. paid $117 for one of the composites, now has a $117 balance. This was as indicated on a statement printed on 7/29/08.
Recently, when I go into this pt.'s account, the claim for the two composites show a $57 writeoff under each composite that we did not enter, then there's a random $3 adjustment, bringing the balance to zero.

Why would the system make such a change? Was it the result of some update or setting? I even ran database maintenance and the error still persists. There are a few other accounts like this, but this example was the most obvious.

I am running version 5.9.9, BTW

I doubt that the software has the ability to do something like that on it's own. Have you asked your employees about it? Maybe one of them made the entries thinking that the patient had paid or that the debt had been written off. We are running that same version at our office and haven't noticed anything like that. I would check the audit feature to see if someone mistakenly made those entries.
Jorge Bonilla DMD

The only adjustment that OD would make somewhat automatically would be for monthly finance charges. The $3 had to be entered manually. That much I know for sure.

I did speak to my office manager about it, and checked the audit. I don't think anyone went in and changed anything. The $57 writeoff for each composite seems arbitary, and when I checked the audit trail for the misc. $3 adj, the transaction was listed as AppointmentCreate and had ($3) in the note. strange. Like I said, these patients had balances over 90 days and were going to collections, then sometime in the last few updates their balances reverted to zero.

I just can't think of any "automatic" process at all that would involve:
1. a writeoff
2. an adjustment
3. an appointment note
Especially a process that would take the balance down to zero. OD doesn't care about balances.

I guess it shall remain a mystery.

I had something like this once, it was a fraud situation. Cash pmts made, writeoff made, unsophisticated ex employee.

I can see how that can be the situation. In my case, though, I was alerted to this anomaly because the pt. sent in a check for her overdue balance, and when my front desk opened the envelope, then went to post the payment, she informed me that the balance was zero, and I knew this particular pt's balance should not have been zero, and since she had not made a payment prior to this check, cash or otherwise, I can't think of a good reason why a staff would write off the balance.