2. Quickstart: Easy Steps to Check In a Patient
What is your office's procedure for checking in patients? Do you review their address, check their insurance information, and ask them for their copay? Whatever your procedure, checkin has tools to help you. The procedure below covers all the screens in checkin: Demographics, Eligibility, Insurance, and Balance and Copay. In the sections below the sample procedure, you can learn about even more functions and tools in checkin.
Sample Patient Check-In Procedure
Run checkin
You can run checkin from your Partner windows.
You can also type checkin at a command prompt.
Select or Find a Patient
When you run checkin, you must select the patient you wish to check in. Use the arrow keys to pick from a list of patients who are scheduled to visit that day:
Press [F1 -- Checkin Patient] to check in the selected patient. To learn more about the patient selection screen in Partner, read Appointment Lists.
If the patient is not scheduled to visit, you can press [F2 -- Find Patient] to use a "magic word" or search by other means:
Or, after pressing Enter:
Would you like to learn more about finding patients, including how to find patients by chart number, birthday, or address? Read Finding Patients and Accounts.
Confirm Demographic Information
Next, confirm the patient's basic demographic information. Are the name and address entered correctly? Are bills being sent to the proper account? On the Demographics screen, you can quickly review and update this essential information.
The function keys at the bottom of the screen allow you to jump to other Partner programs. Read the section on Demographics for more information about tools on this screen.
Once you have finished checking and updating the patient's basic information, press [F1 -- Check Inscos] to continue.
Confirm Insurance Information
On the Insurance screen, you can confirm or update the patient's policy information. The Insurance screen shows you information about every insurance policy associated with the patient.
You can arrow up and down to review each of the insurance policies, and you can use the function keys at the bottom to edit, insert, move, delete, or expire any policy. See the Insurance section below for more information.
Once you have checked the patient's insurance card and confirmed it matches the screen, press [F1 -- Check Balance] to continue.
Check Copay, Outstanding Balance, and Insurance Eligibility
On the Balance and Copay screen, you can review the appointment's expected copay, an aging summary for outstanding balances, and any available insurance eligibility information for the patient.
Optional: Press [F6 -- TOS Payments] and Post Copay
If you collect copay payments during checkin, press F6 to visit the Personal Payment screen.
Enter the payment type, payment amount, and optionally a check number or provider.
Press [F1 -- Save Payment] to save your payment and continue, or press F12 to cancel and not enter a payment.
Press [F1 -- Finish Checkin]
If you need to review any previous checkin steps, or you want to go back to a previous screen, just press Page Up. You can also press F12 at any time during checkin to quit.
Press [F1 -- Finish Checkin] from the Balance and Copay screen to finish checking in the patient. checkin will update the appointment's status to "Checked In," and you can select the next patient in line.
Now that you know how to check in a patient in Partner, read the sections below to learn about other tools and functions you can perform during checkin.