tmccormi wrote on Monday, February 06, 2012:
I am looking for feedback from users, etc about the best methods for posting a refund amount to the patient. I can think of a few ways such as “enter and “Adjustment” column with “Pt. Refund” as reason” but I thought I’d see what others are doing…
-Tony
yehster wrote on Monday, February 06, 2012:
This sounds like another feature to add to the “Practice management” gap analysis.
jcahn2 wrote on Tuesday, February 07, 2012:
Ahoy Tony
IMHO the refund is NOT an adjustment to the charge for the procedure. Our typical refund is a copay which must be returned to the patient such as : “No copay due on physical exams”. Copay was collected at sign in, so you have been payed twice for the copay amount. For a $20 copay and adjusted charge from $150 to $135 by the insurance co.: proper double entry accounting, maybe a picture is worth a few words:
Did this clarify or muddify?
Jack
OEMR Board
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, February 07, 2012:
Thanks, though actually Jack, I understand double entry accounting just fine (I wrote an entire General Ledger system once for a small city in Texas). Try designing a Trail Balance report for gov’t fund accounting 
Since OpenEMR still lacks in some fundamental accounting results I was wonder how other people actually posted this kinds of refunds and how they recorded them… the actual method used in OpenEMR versus the GAAP
-Tony
tmccormi wrote on Tuesday, February 07, 2012:
It kills me that I can’t edit the dang posts.
I was wondering how other people actually posted these kinds of refunds
jcahn2 wrote on Tuesday, February 07, 2012:
Right. I didn’t mean to patronize, just a way to clarify what is needed in my own mind. At any rate, I wouldn’t change the Charge once entered (as some have proposed) for adjustments and refunds.
At some point we need to decide if the entire office practice ledger will be incorporated into OpenEMR or only the portion needed to do practice management.
sunsetsystems wrote on Tuesday, February 07, 2012:
Let me try again. Treat as a (negative) payment, not an adjustment. You’re just settling up with the patient. Easy.
This is not a real patient
We are trying to figure out the best way to post a refund to a patient’s chart.
I started by posting a payment of $45 to the patients chart.
This payment has been brought to my attention as an over payment by the patient I need to refund the payment that the patient made. So, on the payment screen I enter a $-45 to credit the patient with the over payment. Now the system shows both the payment and the credit of the same amount.
When I look on the patient ledger, the payment and the credit both show on the ledger as well. Now there is a record of the payment, and the refund of that payment
My question is about the methodology that is being used here. Is it best practice?
