Patients’ family situations can change for many reasons, including marriage, divorce, aging parents moving in, or adult children moving out. Keeping track of these changes helps to ensure that you have the correct guarantors assigned to each family and that you have accurate contact information about your patients. You can use the Family Edit feature to make changes to family relationships and move patients to different accounts.
Watch this video to learn how to move a family member to a new account. (Duration 2:01)
Additional Tips
- You cannot select the Head of Household to move to a new family. If you need to move that person to a new account, first remove them as Head of Household. For more detail on changing the Head of Household in a family, review the Mastery Tracks topic, Changing the Head of House for a Family.
- The first person to move to a new family will automatically be designated as the Head of Household (and guarantor). If needed, you can change the Head of Household after the family edit is complete.
- You cannot move any family member with an open insurance claim, or who is an insurance subscriber for another family member who has an open insurance claim. To complete the edit, you can either wait until the claim is paid or delete the claim and then recreate it on the patient’s new account.
- When Keep Balance on Existing Family is selected, offsetting adjustments are posted in the Ledger for both families after you move a patient(s) to a new family account. To change how the offsetting adjustments are posted to the Ledger, click the Settings icon, select the Credit and/or Charge Adjustment Types, as needed, and click OK.
- Adjustments that are automatically created by family edits include detailed notes explaining the movement.
- Adjustments that are automatically created by family edits are linked together across both family accounts. If someone attempts to delete one of the adjustments, both adjustments will be deleted together to keep your practices account receivable totals from being changed.
- You can delete all of the adjustments by double-clicking an adjustment in either family’s Ledger. In the Change or Delete Credit/Charge Adjustment window, click the Delete button. Review the offsetting adjustment split between the families and click Delete. The adjustments are removed from both family’s Ledger.
- If needed, you can merge the patient(s) back into their original family. To do so, review the Mastery Tracks topic, Combining Two Patient Records.
- To learn more about moving a family member to a new account, read Editing Family Relationships and Managing Unique Family Relationships 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.) - Use the following parameters (with any names you like) to create a family in the Family File:
- A husband with primary insurance
- A wife
- An adult child
- Move the adult child to their own account.