First the credit for this goes to a friend of mine Jerry. Everyone knows what the PDF print out of OpenEMR looks like. This is the new PDF print out. This is done from OpenEMR from the Billing screen. It uses a PNG image of the form. Let us know what you think. Still a little (Very Little) work before we do a commit.
Had a little trouble with the attachmente the new adobe file is large 9.4 Meg but it is a lot clearer in detail that this one
Terry
Added a snip of the new form to show the clearity.
Also, are you printing out this form on a blank piece of paper or is this just to visualize it before it gets printed onto a already printed 1500 paper form.
Also, are you printing out this form on a blank piece of paper or is this just to visualize it before it gets printed onto a already printed 1500 paper form.
Some insurers are very laid back in that they will accept the output of gen_hcfa_1500.inc.php without the pink form.
Some insurers will accept paper claims with output plus pink form generated by the practice.
Our Medicare carrier will only accept claims on pre-printed forms with all the instructions on the back. In fact they are so fastidious, that any printing in the upper right corner gets an automatic rejection.
I would guess that the cost of pre-printing vs. inpromptu printing is about equal when ink, staff time & buying in bulk are factored in.
I created this for our clinic because we mainly deal with occupational health for numerous companies who are either self insured or their carriers will accept a black.white printed cms form. It is the same as the cms 1500 pdf only with the form overlaid. The pre-printed form is required by others due to the special ink for optical scanning i.e Medicare for sure.
I didn’t compress the scan image much and it can be compressed more, which I will do and give to Terry. From what I’m told, it turns out to be helpful for reviewing form before print to pre-printed.
Preview of output can be done in the .pdf viewer before printing to check for errors. Visual review takes less time & resources. Similar to reviewing text in a word processor prior to printing the document.
If a practice is more comfortable reviewing hard copies before printing to pink CMS 1500 form, then it’s their prerogative.
Our carriers here too would not accept anything but a preprinted form so for actual insurance claims this wouldn’t work. However I like it for several reasons:
When I was starting out, trying to figure out what went where and what meant what on the HCFA form, this feature would have been useful.
This also can make a very official looking bill or statement:
For auto insurance claims wanting a 1500 form,
for cash paying customers or
for alternative type of providers who do not bill insurance
for services “covered” by an HSA but the plan administrator says “denied as a qualifying expense”
When it comes to printing costs, it may be worth considering that patient/customer who needs a copy of this form, would appreciate it in digital format, because that is how it is going to be submitted. Kids these days don’t even know how to use a stamp.
Patients want us to submit the claims. Any talk of their submitting claims is met with a great deal of consternation on the part of patients. Can’t say I blame them.
The only time we give patients a CMS 1500 form is if we are out-of-network/non-participating, there is out-of-network coverage & e-claim is not possible.
The only reason patients would take the CMS 1500 form in the first place is because they are told the situation becomes self-pay if they refuse to help. No one wants to pay full freight. When we are out-of-network & non-participating, we accept assignment since many patients are on fixed incomes.
Given a choice of the Patient Statement vs. the CMS 1500, patients have yet to prefer the latter. Even the Patient Statement can be a challenge for patients to understand without a short explanatory paragraph about deductibles, non-covered charges & denied services.
How about a global control to allow a “No Charge” Visit. If the Patient encounter has no charges or everything on it is exempt from Insurance Billing DO NOT display it in the billing screen.
I think prior to 4.1.2 if no charge had been entered for an enounter, nothing would show up in the Billing Manager. Don’t know what brought about the change that an encounter will show up now even without a charge. It may be related to AMC reporting.
If it’s related to AMC reporting, we need to be careful not to mess it up. If you can get “No Charge” into Globals safely, it would be a good feature.
Terry, if you are in a very creative mood, what would be great is a “No Insurance” button in Demographics/Insurance to have claims bypass the Billing Manger. If there is any balance, it would go straight to Patient Statement.
The words Preprinted should not be used for this because preprinted means that I have to buy a preprinted blank form then print the information on the from.
The wording should convey that the form and data are printed together no preprinted blank form needed.