There are instances throughout the course of time where certain information within Cloud 9 gets duplicated in error. This is not referring to a patient chart, but an Insurance Company, an Employer Plan, or even Postal Codes. Using the Merge Utility to remove duplicates without losing any associated information is the correct way to go.
In Preparation
In order to begin this process, the user will need to have been assigned the permission of Run Utilities. This is done under Edit > Setup > Employees. How to add permissions is covered in this article Employee Permissions.
This is not the time to multitask.
Merging records is permanent and cannot be undone. For Example, If a Delta Dental Insurance Company is accidentally merged with a Cigna Insurance company, it can only be corrected manually by your office — and even then, the ripple effects may spread throughout the system in ways that cannot be fully reversed.
This cannot be overstated. Focus and concentration are essential.
Accessing the Utility
From the Cloud 9 Header Bar, select Edit > Run Utility > Merge Utility.
Utility Basic Layout
Once in the utility, here are some basics you should be familiar with.
From left to right, here are the fields you will need to be familiar with. First, the dropdown menu, which will contain all of the headings for what can be merged. We will look at that in depth later. The second button, called Show Deleted, will allow you to see previously deleted items, so that they also can be merged. The third button is the standard Refresh button. Each time you make a change to the screen, it should automatically refresh. But you can select this button to manually refresh whenever you would like to. The Merge button is the last one in this series. This will be the most used button in this process. It's use will become clear in the coming steps. The final button on the far right is the customary Close button to leave this section of the software.
Running the Merge Utility
The dropdown field on the far left of the utility, when selected, should appear similar to the one below.
This is the list of items that can be merged. For this Article, we will select Insurance Company Billing Centers. The screen will open up with information repeated in the upper and lower sections. These are the Merge From and Merge Into sections.
After scrolling down in each section, the below screen shows a section of the utility that includes the Assurant Employee Benefits Billing Center.
When merging data, care must be taken to not merge something incorrectly. Again, once it is merged, it cannot be unmerged. Spend the necessary time looking over the data to confirm what Billing Center you want to merge into. It must have the correct name, address, contact information, and Payor Code. If none of your options have all of those correct pieces, close out of the merge utility. Go to Edit > Setup > Billing Centers and add or edit an existing Billing Center that has all of the correct information. Then come back into the merge utility and locate your new Billing Center and merge the existing ones with incorrect information into your new one with correct information.
In the image above, two pieces of information have been underlined to bring them to your attention. The word Benefit is not Benefits. And the phone number is not in the correct format. If this were the only instance of this Billing Center, it may not even warrant a change. But since there are others to merge into, we will decide to NOT merge anything into this instance of the Billing Center.
First, go to the bottom section of the screen, the Merge Into section, and select (left mouse click) the line that you want to merge information into.
Second, using a left mouse click, select the line you want to merge from in the Merge From section of the page. You can select multiple lines by selecting the first one with a left mouse click, then hold down the ctrl key, and select additional lines. Release the ctrl key when you have selected all of the lines you want to merge. Do not select the line on the top (Merge From) which you have previously selected from the bottom (Merge Into) screen. If you do, you will see this warning notice.
Once all of the lines have been selected, your screen will look similar to the one below. Note that all of the lines I want to merge are highlighted in the top section, and the one into which I want to merge is highlighted in the bottom section.
When the screen looks correct in this manner, select the Merge button at the top. You will get a progress bar that, when finished, looks like this.
Select the Close button as shown on the screen above, and it will disappear. The Merge Utility screen beneath it will reappear, without the Insurance Billing Centers that you just merged.
Filtering the Utility for Ease of Use
You may have noticed the field to the far right, under the Close button. It appears in both the Merge From and the Merge To sections and looks like this.
Using this field to narrow down what you are looking at can be very helpful in staying focused on what needs to be merged. For example, using the specific Delta Dental you are looking for, instead of being shown all of the Delta Dentals at the same time.
Conclusion
The Merge Utility can be used for many different items, not just Insurance Billing Centers. The concepts identified in this article are the same, whichever item you choose to merge.
As always, if you have any further questions please do not hesitate to reach out to Cloud 9 Support by emailing us at cloud9support@planetdds.com, or chatting us online using the chat bubble on the lower right at https://cloud9support.planetdds.com/hc/en-us, or giving us a call during our business hours of 8:00 AM EST to 8:00 PM EST at the 1.800.394.6050 option 2.