Major billing issues with 5.0.2 - Please help

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

Situation
Hi OpenEMR Community,

We have big problems here in our office since upgrading to 5.0.2. We have been using OpenEMR for over 7 years now and have been using the billing aspect of OpenEMR the entire time.

Since upgrading to 5.0.2 we have multiple problems with the billing module.

          Multiple inconsistencies

          Secondary insurance payment will not post

          Statements will not create

Random payments will not post or they post but don’t show up on daily report.

We are unable to:

          Post secondary payments.

          Print paper claims

          Do our daily balancing.

IS ANYONE ELSE HAVING PROBLEMS WITH THIS? Do we need to revert back to 5.0.1? Do we need to reinstall? Can anyone help us?

Getting desperate considering patches do not improve the situation.

Help!

Jeff Guillory
NP Health Clinic PLLC
Lumberton, TX

OpenEMR Version
I’m using OpenEMR version 5.0.2(3)

Browser:
I’m using: Chrome and Firefox

Operating System
I’m using: Ubuntu 16.04

[stephenwaite]

hi @nursejeff, do you use the billing view of the past encounters and documents to post 2ndary ins payments?

printing of claim forms and statements is working fine on the demos but you may have something in your error log that will help troubleshoot your issue

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

Thank you @stephenwaite for answering. Please tell me how I can get info from my error log to you. Which error log is it, and how do I copy and past it onto the forum?

Sorry again about my amateur skills.

Jeff

[stephenwaite]

after you try to print paste the output of

tail /var/log/apache2/error.log

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

[Mon Jun 08 07:35:04.467245 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 7485] AH00163: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu) OpenSSL/1.0.2g configured – resuming normal operations
[Mon Jun 08 07:35:04.467254 2020] [core:notice] [pid 7485] AH00094: Command line: ‘/usr/sbin/apache2’
[Mon Jun 08 21:17:18.764027 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 7485] AH00169: caught SIGTERM, shutting down
[Mon Jun 08 21:18:08.856973 2020] [so:warn] [pid 1575] AH01574: module php7_module is already loaded, skipping
[Mon Jun 08 21:18:08.884019 2020] [mpm_prefork:notice] [pid 1576] AH00163: Apache/2.4.18 (Ubuntu) OpenSSL/1.0.2g configured – resuming normal operations
[Mon Jun 08 21:18:08.884035 2020] [core:notice] [pid 1576] AH00094: Command line: ‘/usr/sbin/apache2’

[stephenwaite]

nothing there to indicate a problem with printing, are you using Tabs mode?

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

I am using Frame, but everyone else including my billers are using Tabs.

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

This is curious. My OpenEMR will not convert to Tabs.

My setting is Tabs but as you can see, I’m in Frames.

What is wrong with my system? Yes, I logged out and logged back in.

Jeff

[stephenwaite]

click on the cog in the upper right to change your user setting which are probably overriding the globals

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

Ok, fixed the tabs issue, sorry, I got distracted.

Any other thoughts on our billing issue. Would my setting of Frames mess up the billing system?

Jeff

[stephenwaite]

nice, no, are they using the above images to post or do they use batch payments?

[PeggyG (Peggy Guillory)]

We typically post insurance payments from Batch Payments. When we click on the "Show Primary complete it does gives us the outstanding 2ndary claim line however it also gives us every paid closed claim line also as in 2nd screen shot.

, when we input payment and click on post it goes to this next screen.

then if we "search payment to see if it is posted correctly it shows as unapplied.

at that time it also does not reflect payment in our daily balance.

[stephenwaite]

there’s definitely a bug in batch payments

Error in Edit Batch Payments in 5.0.2(1)

Sherwin or anyone, This bug still exists in Fees:Batch payments:Edit payments? I was hoping it would be resolved in 5.0.2(3) but it still occurs. Does anyone else use the batch payments feature? Whenever a modifier is used along with the cpt code and you want to edit a payment of a batch payment not yet fully distributed, the edit payments screen will crash. This only happens if a modifier is used with the cpt code, which is all the time now thanks to COVID! I have reinstalled openemr 5.0.2(1) …

[PeggyG (Peggy Guillory)]

Stephen, this also randomly happens with posting a large medicare eob even if one claim does not have a modifier.

We are also having an issue of posting a copay or patient payment at the time of service. It will post on the ledger but not to the correct date of service and then does not reflect on the “financial report” to balalnce at the end of the day.

[stephenwaite]

ok, will play around with batch posting, never use it personally because am always trying to get 835s, like with medicare, should be posting electronically whenever possible for ease of use

like if you use office ally for electronic claim submission you could sign up for ERA from them

Medicare-TX-PartB-EDI-ENR-Instructions-20191127.pdf

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

There was a company that used to post on the OpenEmr community forum, that developed their own billing software modules for OpenEMR. The last I remember they were promoting this module along with off site servers for use. That was a couple of years ago.

Can anyone point me in their direction?

Messed up billing messes up an entire practice. Can someone, who is using OpenEMR 5.0.2 report to me, that they are having no problems with the billing since upgrading. Am I the only one?

One option is for me to downgrade back to 5.0.1(7). The billing did not have these current bugs.

Jeff Guillory
Lumberton, TX

[stephenwaite]

hi @nursejeff, we’re working on the batch payments and will have something upcoming and definitely in time for patch 4
@PeggyG, do you use ERA for any posting? like posted above it’s pretty easy to get an 835 for your most common payments, what clearinghouse do you use?

[sjpadgett (Jerry P)]

Is anyone or everyone running PHP7.4 after upgrade?

[nursejeff (Jeff Guillory)]

@StephenWaite , We have not used ERA in the past, my head biller has always had problems in the past with ERA posting(not open emr). Looks like we need to give it a try anyway. Old habits die hard. I am using @nursejeff login due to being at home and not having my password. Peggy G

[sjpadgett (Jerry P)]

First thing that needs to be cleared up for any issues in v5.0.2 is error logging. v5.0.2 was a transitional release to support PHP 7+. There can still be recorded errors that will effect workflow such as deprecated warnings that are sometimes hard to spot.
We recommend(I insist) the following:
https://www.open-emr.org/wiki/index.php/FAQ#What_are_the_correct_PHP_settings_.28can_be_found_in_the_php.ini_file.29.3F