Membership Plan Overview

Many practices may elect to enroll their uninsured patients in a membership or discount plan which assists with cost of routine visits and typically includes some sort of discount on restorative care. Flex makes it easy to provide the details of the plan as well as obtain the patient's signature. From there, Flex also handles adding the plan to the patient's profile in Open Dental. 

Prior to moving to Flex to create your sign up documents, the discount plan needs to be set up in Open Dental. To learn about setup, visit this article from Open Dental! 

SETTING UP A MEMBERSHIP PLAN IN FLEX:
Once you've got your membership plan created in the PMS, you're ready to create your forms in Flex! To access Membership/Discount Plans make sure you're signed in as an Admin and head to the Flex settings (gear icon on the upper left from the home page). From the forms tab, you'll see Membership/Discount plans as the second link to along the left. 

You can enable up to four different membership forms associate with separate plans in Open Dental. For example, you may have a prophy and a periodontal membership, or perhaps an individual plan as well as a family plan. 

Once you toggle on a membership plan, you can set the following:

1. Title
2. Length (i.e. how frequently should the plan renew?)
3. The corresponding membership plan in Open Dental

To edit the form the patient will sign, click the "Edit First (or alternate) Membership Form" button shown in gray above. 

There is a templated example you will see which matches the screenshot above. You can edit any part of the form as desired, including the header, the benefits of the plan as well as any disclaimers or additional detail you would like to provide. Make sure to click save in the lower right of the form editor as well as in the general Membership/Discount Plans settings page.

ENROLLING A PATIENT

Once you have configured your membership plan to your specifications, you can begin enrolling patients in your plan! After enabling a membership plan, you will see the + icon (screenshot below) which is where you will click to obtain a patient's signature. 

If you have multiple discount plans configured (i.e. an individual plan and a family plan) you will see a dropdown with options on which plan you would like to enroll the patient to. 

Once you've made a discount plan selection, the form will populate. At this point, you can either hand over a tablet to the patient or use a patient facing desktop. The form cannot currently be sent via text/email and is exclusively completed in office. 

OPEN DENTAL INTEGRATION:

Once the patient signs the form and clicks submit, Flex will automatically attach the corresponding discount plan to the patient's Open Dental profile. The Date effective will be the date the form was signed and the "Date term" will relate to the plan length you specified when you were setting up the plan in Flex which, in this example, was 12 months. 

Once the patient has the membership plan attached to their profile, they will automatically receive the discounted fees associated with the fee schedule you previously created from this Open Dental article. 

You will also see a PDF of the signed membership enrollment form automatically imported to the Open Dental images module! 

PAYMENT FOR THE MEMBERSHIP PLAN:

Many practices will create either an annual or monthly payment structure for the membership plans. Flex can help in this area too by utilizing the recurring payment plans! To learn more about Recurring Payment setup, visit this article in the help center! You can set up either an annual or monthly fee, depending on your preferences, and Flex will automatically charge the stored card on file. 

Of course, if you have any questions, leave a comment below!