Use the Insurance Plans Combine tool to clean up duplicate insurance plans in the Insurance Plans list.

In Insurance Plans, at the bottom, is a Combine button.

Only combine plans as a cleanup measure. Multiple entries of an insurance plan in the list will not harm data. However, if you have duplicate plans that were inadvertently created when entering plan changes, combining can be useful.

Warning: Before combining, always make sure the plans are really duplicates. Combining is a permanent, irreversible change that will affect historical data on claims. Ask yourself:

• Should the plans be combined? Verify that employer, group #, group name, plan details, plan notes, and benefit percentages are all the same.
• Is there a good reason one plan is different? We recommend documenting reasons in the plan notes.
• Which plan has the most recent, accurate information (and will be kept)? Only one plan's details and benefit percentages will be kept. Make sure you are confident when choosing the plan to keep.
• Which plans will be combined into the kept plan?

If users determine that multiple instances of the same plan have been created by mistake, and want to clean up the list, follow these steps to combine them.

1. Review each plan's details and benefits to determine which insurance plan will be kept and which plans will be combined into the plan to be kept.
2. Highlight the plans to combine.
3. Click Combine.
   
4. Highlight the one insurance plan that will be kept. Only this plan's details and benefits will be kept.
5. Click OK to combine. A warning will prompt the user to confirm.
   
6. Click OK to confirm. All other plans will no longer appear in the list.

Troubleshooting

When combining plans I get the following prompt:

You are combining Category Percentage plan using Blue Book into a Category Percentage plan that is not using Blue Book and has a fee schedule assigned. Clicking Yes will delete all Blue Book data for the plan.

When combining insurance plans, I get the message: Merging is already in progress from workstation [computer name]. Please wait for them to complete and try again.

A merge is already in progress and must complete before another merge can be started. Once the merge is complete, a new merge can be started.

If a merge is not in progress on the computer listed, this indicates that a merge was interrupted before it could be completed (e.g., Open Dental closed unexpectedly). Re-do the merge on the listed computer to reset the merge in progress flag.