It is possible to to condense your list of Insurance Companies in MacPractice in order to remove duplicate or redundant entries. There are a couple of methods we can employ to help manage your insurance company list. The first method is a manual method to transfer patients to another insurance company. The second involves a database utility.

Transferring Patients to another Insurance Company

If you have duplicate insurance companies, you can transfer one insurance company, and its associated patients, into a plan under another insurance company. If there is a company that was entered in error, it can also be removed completely.

PLEASE NOTE: You can only merge or remove an insurance company if there are no outstanding claims for that particular company. To check this, you can go to References > Insurance Companies. Click on the triangle next to the Insurance Companies node in the sidebar, and select the company.

Open the drawer, by clicking the button in the lower left corner of the MacPractice window. Select the Report tab, and choose Outstanding Claims in the drop down. Make sure there are no start or end dates entered, and click Apply.

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You will see a list of outstanding claims to this particular insurance company. If there are any patients listed, you will need to either wait until those claims are paid/closed, or temporarily close them by going to the patient's ledger, selecting the claim and going to Other > Set Claim Status/Paid Closed.
NOTE: If you do close any claims, you may want to make a note of them so they can be re-opened once you are finished merging insurance companies. To mark a claim open, select it on the ledger and go to Other > Set Claim Status Accepted (you can also set them to Sent or Rejected if needed).

Once you are ready to move the insurance company, and there are no longer outstanding claims associated to it, you can do the following:

1. Go to References > Insurance Companies

2. In the sidebar, highlight the company you wish to keep, which is the one you will merge the duplicates into.

3. Click on the Plans tab.

4. From the sidebar, drag the duplicate company to the Plan Name table.

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This should leave you with a single insurance company reference. 

To remove an insurance company that wasn't used and entered in error, you can do the following:

1. Go to References > Insurance Companies.

2. In the sidebar, highlight the company you wish to remove.

3. Click on the red minus button at the top of the sidebar.

4. Select to either delete or archive the record when prompted.

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Update Patient Insurance Database Utility

The other method you can employ is to utilize the Update Patient Insurance database utility to move patients with one insurance to another insurance. While the first method allows you some more fine control over how to manage your insurance companies, this utility will simply move all patients from one insurance company or plan to another plan, while leaving the insurance companies or plans intact.

You can locate the Update Patient Insurance utility in the Managers Ability, underneath the Database Utilities node. To learn more about this utility and how to use it, please click on this link.

Warning: Before running any Database Utility, you should always ensure the following:

1. You should always make sure you have a current backup.

2. You should make sure that no one is currently logged into MacPractice.

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