Do you receive denied insurance claims due to insufficient documentation or clarifying information? For example, carriers may deny crown buildups because they view them as unnecessary; however, if you add a brief narrative to the claim, stating the buildup’s necessity, the carrier will often approve and pay for it. Remember to include clarifying narratives with your claims to avoid costly claim denials and/or delays.
Watch the following video to learn how to enter a narrative for a claim. (Duration 0:50)
Additional Tips
- It’s usually best to enter a narrative before sending the claim to the carrier; otherwise, you may have to resubmit the claim with the new narrative.
- The Notes from Procedures button calls up all procedure codes that are attached to the claim. As part of your narrative, you can add these procedure code notes to your remarks, where you can edit them as needed.
- Procedures do not come with preinstalled notes; however, you can create procedure code notes, so you don’t have to create them every time you need them. To create procedure code notes, read Editing Procedure Code Notes in Dentrix Help.
- You can create a library of Claim Remarks, which you can use as often as you like. To create and/or edit these remarks, read Adding Insurance Claim Remarks in Dentrix Help. You can also create them while you’re entering a narrative. In the Insert Custom Claim Remark window, click New, enter a Description and note, and click OK.
- When entering Remarks for Unusual Services, you are limited to a predetermined number of characters that will print on the insurance claim; additionally, there’s also a character limit when sending a claim electronically. If you need to include an extended narrative beyond the character limit, attach a text or rich text file to the claim. To learn how to add attachments, review the Mastery Tracks topic, Adding Attachments to a Claim.
- To learn more about entering a narrative for a claim, read Entering Remarks for Unusual Services 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.) - Select any patient, assign them insurance (if they don’t have any), post a procedure, and create a primary insurance claim for the procedure.
- Enter a narrative for the claim, including procedure code notes, claim remarks, your narration, and a dateline. Edit the remark as needed and use spellcheck.