Many patients have a secondary insurance plan, which helps to pay for their treatment when their primary insurance may not cover their treatment’s total costs. Patients with secondary insurance can be subscribers for their plan, or they can be a dependent on another family member who is the subscriber. How do you assign the coverage in each situation? This lesson will cover both scenarios.
Watch this video to learn how to assign secondary insurance to a patient. (Duration 1:45)
Additional Tips
- When a patient has secondary insurance, the subscriber may or may not be the same person for both the primary and secondary plans.
- The insurance subscriber and the head of household (guarantor) do not have to be the same person. Also, an insurance subscriber does not have to be a patient in the practice.
- If an insurance subscriber is not a patient, you must create a Family File record for them and set their status to Non-Patient. You can then assign insurance to the non-patient (as the subscriber) and then assign the same insurance to a dependent patient.
- When a patient record is created in the Family File, insurance coverage (either primary or secondary) is assigned to that patient. Any additional family members added to the patient’s account will automatically be assigned to the subscriber’s insurance plan — as dependents.
- To have the Signature on File options preselected for you, refer to the Mastery Tracks lesson topic, Setting Default Signature on File Options.
- To learn more about assigning secondary insurance to a patient, read Assigning Secondary Insurance to Subscribers with Dual Coverage and Assigning Secondary Insurance to Non-Subscribers in Dentrix Help.
Check Your Knowledge
If you have access to Dentrix, check your knowledge with this exercise.
- Switch to the Dentrix demo database.
(Skip this step if you are using the Dentrix Learning Edition software.) - Assign Gary Gleason’s primary insurance as Alice Gleason’s secondary insurance.