Carestream Dental, Atlanta, has released the Zuelke Financial Module, a user-friendly, add-on module for CS OrthoTrac practice-management software that addresses orthodontic practices’ financial decision-making issues.

“Over the years, I noticed that many doctors and staff were underutilizing the capabilities of their practice-management software,” Paul Zuelke, designer of the module, said. “Interesting and often highly useful reports were not being used effectively.”

Zuelke designed the module to ensure users are fully utilizing their practice-management software by enhancing the way they view and understand practice statistics and patient and insurance accounts. These built-in safeguards ensure module report accuracy, enabling doctors to make the right decisions for their practices.

In addition, the module increases a practice’s ability to track and handle patient and insurance accounts through a sophisticated delinquency tracking system that alerts doctors and their financial coordinators when a delinquent account needs to be contacted or when a responsible party has failed to make good.

Zuelke Financial Module reports provide orthodontists with information regarding true rate of case acceptance, patients and credit ratings by referral source, average down payment, and the percentage of new starts that pay in full. The module includes separate reports for new patients, recalls and referrals by type, and a 1-page summary of the exams, recalls, and starts for the month.

The new Practice Investigator (PI) report instantly identifies simple issues, such as a new-start case fee that never got posted or a fee that got posted on a patient that never started. The PI is also designed to identify major problems such as serious posting errors, hidden patient and/or insurance delinquency, significant insurance problems, and transaction patterns that indicate the potential for embezzlement.