Please note: changes to 4.0 have been made (specifically the billing section) since this documentation was written. Please keep that in mind when reviewing the Users Guide. Updates to the documentation will be made when the new additions to the program are complete.
It would be great if the User Manual gives more insight into Payments, Checkouts and Procedures. Even the ‘Messages’ can be detailed and also briefed on how it differs from ‘Notes’.
Payments and Orders/Procedures sections are planned once we actually figure out how that all works. Does anyone know how Messages differs from Notes? I thought Messages replaced notes and added extra sources like ‘lab results and reminders’ but I’m not real clear on that. There is some info on the wiki, but it’s preliminary design proposals, not final use docs.
-Tony
Tony
I could explain to your documenter how the payments system works if we set up a conf call. With the introduction of the payments system many of the old options have been rendered obsolete. Those obsolete areas like check out and EOBs need to be removed from the tip so that people don’t get confused.
I posted the preliminary documentation your team wrote on the wiki for review and inclusion. However we can’t remove the OLD EOB link from the Billing (which should be called EOP) until the statement process part of it is ported to a standalone model. Currently there is no other way (that I know of) to produce patient statements. Also the links from the Collection Report that go to it are modified to go to your payment posting module at the patient/claim level in some similar fashion to how that works now.
Toni
I agree with both the points. I guess we should work on that sooner than later. Let me revert to you about that.
Also, there needs a change in the fee sheet to post payments to the ar table than to the billing table. We have changed our fee sheet accordingly.
Tony I could explain to your documenter how the payments system works if we set up a conf call. With the introduction of the payments system many of the old options have been rendered obsolete. Those obsolete areas like check out and EOBs need to be removed from the tip so that people don’t get confused.
Sam, I strongly encourage you to write something up and post it here or in the wiki, no matter if it’s rough. It may take a little more time than a conference call, but it promotes accuracy, transparency and appropriate follow-up.
Are you sure the checkout is completely covered by your new code? This is a point-of-sale feature and a big part of it is to produce a receipt.
Rod,
We have already given the rough documentation before : please see Toni’s post. We have also given a video file. The point of a conference session is to clarify anything missing.
We are working on the check out portion with a receipt capability. The current Check out is a little vague to me. questions: If it is intended as a POS why is it linked to an encounter? If it was meant to receive cash patients alone then it works fine, and we can include the sale of items and the CPTs. But what happens when a patient is billed for the equipment but the CPTs are billed to the insurance? The flaw now is that we cannot check out on a partial basis. This also has to be linked to the inventory module. I am not able to locate documentation on the inventory part so far. Maybe I missed it. Am I right in the above assumptions?
Just encouraging use of the forum for questions and answers, much as you are doing with your questions of me here.
Checkout deals with an encounter because the intended work flow is to provide the related services and products within the context of a visit (it is not just for products). Yes currently it deals strictly with cash sales, insurance is not in the picture and your efforts to deal with that would be very much welcomed.
Inventory is updated in the fee sheet, not the checkout module, so I’m not sure you need to do anything about that.
I am not sure it is the right thing to do: to sell products in the context of a visit alone. For a small practice that could be convenient because most of the time the provider is the one entering the fee sheet and selling the products. For a larger practice the products are disbursed by a staff manning the counter, and we don’t want them to go into the fee sheet and mess up the same. Some times the patient comes back at a later date to buy the product. I believe there must be a separate GUI for product sales within the inventory module itself.
Sam it is definltely necessary in some environments to sell products via the Fee Sheet, which implies within a visit. However there is nothing wrong with also doing it independently of visits and you absolutely have my blessing to create an interface for that purpose.
Rod,
That is what I meant: there should be the option for both. I located the documentation for the inventory within the ippf_guides and we are trying to understand that module now. We will update on the GUI soon.