Managing family relationships overview

Using the Family File, you can combine, separate, and delete patient and family records. The following topics provide more information on managing and editing family relationships:

·        Changing a head of household

·        Editing family relationships

·        Deleting patient records

·        Deleting family records

·        Managing unique family relationships

·        Setting up dual insurance

·        Terms used

Important: When you move a patient to another family, all of the patient’s transactions (procedures, insurance claims and payments, and guarantor payments and adjustments) are transferred to the new account. All other guarantor payments and adjustments remain with the former family account.

When procedures and insurance payments are transferred, the original family receives a credit balance, and the new family receives a debit balance. To remedy the account balances, the Family Edit feature might create an offsetting adjustment, called a special adjustment, for each family. Each special adjustment entry is recorded with the current date and a note of explanation.

Special adjustments are automatically placed in history. With the special adjustments in place, the account balances remain as they were before the Family Edit. If you want the patient’s new family to be responsible for a portion of the patient’s balance, you can post offsetting adjustments to take the amount off the original account and add it to the patient’s new account.