3. Follow Up on Outstanding Bills — (persview, coll, cfs)
Unfortunately, not every family pays their bills on time. An address may be incorrect, a family may have questions about their balance, or they may be unable to pay. Following up on outstanding bills is a vital part of the billing process. The persview program will help you track and work down outstanding personal balances, and you can use the coll report to explain to a family why they owe money. Finally, the Special Accounts Editor (cfs) will help you track and manage accounts that are overdue, on budget plans, or have special statuses.
3.1. The Personal Money Tracking Assistant (persview)
3.1.1. Introduction: Working Personal Accounts with persview
The Personal Money Tracking Assistant, or persview, is a powerful Partner tool. It is designed to help your practice manage your personal accounts receivable. persview creates an interactive list of accounts with personal balances. The list can contain all outstanding accounts or just a portion, depending on the criteria you enter when you first run the program.
If you have a dedicated personal biller, they should use persview every day when working down unpaid balances. By specifying different criteria, a user can focus on a certain portion of your practice's personal A/R. For example, some offices split up overdue accounts by last name, while others work on the accounts based on the age or amount of the balance. Regardless of how your office works, persview can help you hone in on the accounts you need to contact.
The report's results can be printed or saved in your e-mail box, but the real power of persview comes from working with the list on your screen. By pressing different function keys, you can send out form letters, review account histories, generate bills, enter notes, post payments, post late fees, and even write off bad debt... all from the same interface.
3.1.2. Running persview and Selecting Criteria
You can find persview in the Personal Billing section of the Billing Functions window in Partner. You can also run it by typing persview at a command prompt.
When you first run persview, you are presented with a criteria screen:
Press [F1 -- Generate Report] to view a list of all accounts with personal balances. Skip to the next section, Working With Individual Accounts to learn how to use the report.
Before you press [F1], however, you can use the criteria options on the screen to limit which accounts will appear.
Criteria Options in persview
Aged How
You can choose how outstanding charges should be aged. Account totals appear in aging categories on the report, and they can be aged by transaction date (when the service occurred), by posting date (when the service was entered onto the system), or by payor date (the date the balance became the account's responsibility).
Aged as of...
Select a date to base the report on. Use the last "Nightly File" for a quick report, as the aging data is automatically prepared the previous night. Use the Existing File to quickly review the last report you manually aged. Or, ask persview to manually regenerate to a particular date. In most situations, you should stick with the Nightly File. If you have just finished entering dozens of payments, you may want to "Regenerate" the aging information for today.
Personal Balance Range
You may not want to work with an account unless they owe over ten dollars. If you only want to list accounts that have a certain balance, enter a dollar amount range in the fields provided.
Name Range
The Name Range question allows you to select a specific range of the alphabet. Enter the starting and ending letters of your alphabet range in place of the A and Z. Use this option if your office's billers divide their responsibilities by account last names.
Which Accounts to Include
By default, all of the categories shown are selected. If you wish to limit the accounts based on how long they have owed you money, you can remove or add X's in front of each category. The "Exclude by Account Flag" option can be useful if you don't wish to view certain account types.
How to Sort the List
You can sort the printed report or persview's interactive on-screen report in alphabetical order or by the total balance owed by the account. To indicate your selection, place an X in front of one of the two choices. You may find it useful to sort accounts by who owes you the most.
Destination
Finally, you must decide where to send the report output. To indicate your selection, just place an X in front of your choice.
If you specify the "Screen" as your destination, the results will appear on your computer screen in an interactive report. You will be able to scroll through the list and easily access information about the various accounts that are listed. It is also easy to generate a form letter or bill for some or all of the accounts. See below for more information.
If you send the output to your "Mailbox", you will receive an e-mail that you can review at a later time. You can also save the e-mail in a folder for archival purposes.
If you opt to print the report, it will be printed on your default Partner printer unless you enter the name of a different printer. Enter an asterisk (*) to view and select from a list of available printers.
While printing or sending the list as an e-mail may be useful, you will find the interactive list (Screen) the most powerful choice. The remaining sections in this chapter explain how to take full advantage of the "Screen" option.
After making your criteria selections, press [F1 -- Generate Report] to run the report. persview may take a few minutes to gather the information about accounts with personal balances.
3.1.3. Working with Individual Accounts
The first screen that appears when you send persview to the screen looks like this:
persview presents a list of accounts and their aged balances. The accounts are grouped in sets of three, making the list easier to read. In the example shown, the user sorted the list by "Total Personal Amount" owed. The most urgent account problems are at the top of the screen. Press Page Down and Page Up to scroll through the list and view all accounts.
The screen allows you to work with a specific account. Select an account by placing an X in the box in front of the account name. Once you have selected an account, you can do a variety of different operations by pressing different function keys. For example, press [F2 -- Edit Account] to run the Family Editor (fame) for the selected account. From fame you can check the account's insurance companies and run the coll report to review the reasons for the balance.
Actions From the Individual Account Screen
- [F1 -- Main Menu]
Press [F1] to return to the Main Menu, where you can enter a different set of criteria.
- [F2 -- Edit Account]
Press [F2] to access fame for the selected account. In fame you can review demographic information, run the collection report, view a complete account history, review insurance information, enter account notes, and more.
- [F3 -- Refund]
Press [F3] to run refund for the selected account. In refund you can quickly refund a credit, print a bill, and post late charges and other fees.
- [F4 -- Pam]
Press [F4] to post payments or adjustments in pam. This is useful when the selected account agrees to pay with a credit card over the phone. You can also write off debt by using an appropriate payment type.
- [F5 -- Daysheet History]
Press [F5] to scan through the daysheets and view all transactions related to the selected account. If you suspect a payment or charge has been deleted, the daysheet history can show you the amount and which user deleted it.
- [F6 -- Form Letters]
Press [F6] to print one or more form letters for the selected account.
- [F7 -- Print One Bill]
Press [F7] to print a bill for the selected account. When you press this function key, you will be asked to enter a date range for the bill.
- [F8 -- Work With All]
Press [F8] to switch to working with all accounts listed. See the section below for more information.
3.1.4. Working with All Accounts
When you press [F8 -- Work With All], persview shows you new function keys for performing batch functions on all listed accounts:
The new function keys will perform actions upon all the accounts in the list.
Actions for All Accounts
- [F1 -- Main Menu]
Press [F1] to return to the Main Menu, where you can enter a different set of criteria.
- [F6 -- Form Letters]
Press [F6] to select one or more form letters and print them for every account in the list. By using persview's criteria options and this function, you could generate a form letter for all accounts with specific overdue balances amounts or a specific account flag.
- [F7 -- Print Bills]
Press [F7] to print bills for all accounts on the list. You will be prompted for a date range.
- [F8 -- See Totals]
Press [F8] to view the Personal Totals screen, described below.
3.1.5. The Personal Totals Screen
Press [F8 -- See Totals] from the "Working With All" screen to view a summary for the accounts in the report:
When you press F8, persview tallies up the personal money owed to your practice by everyone on the list. It then presents the totals to you, broken down by the age of the balance.
As long as you run the reports with similar criteria (same alphabet range, same aging categories, same aging types, etc) the the totals on this persview screen should match those from the aging and insaging reports.
Press [F8 -- Work With One] to cycle back to the other persview screens.
3.1.6. Conclusion
persview is designed to make it easier for your staff to manage all accounts that have personal balances. It is the perfect home base for people following up on old bills. Use persview's customizable, interactive lists to work down your personal A/R.
3.2. The Collection Report (coll)
3.2.1. Understanding Balances Using the Collection Report (coll)
The coll report can help you understand and explain an individual account's current balance and recent payment history. If a family does not understand why they owe money, run coll. It can also help you determine whether or not an account has been making regular payments against their outstanding balance.
This program examines an account and then reports:
Account Aging
Outstanding Charges
Recent Personal Payments
Demographic Information
The report can be sent to the screen, printer, or to your email box.
3.2.2. Running coll and Selecting Criteria
You can run coll for a particular account by pressing F3 Collection Report while in the Family Editor (fame) for that account.
You can also access coll from a command prompt by typing coll and then pressing Enter.
If you start coll from a command prompt, you will be asked to select an account to report on, and then coll will display the criteria slection screen. If you start it from within fame, then it already knows which account to report on and therefore displays the criteria screen immediately.
On the criteria screen, you can make selections to change the report output. You can determine whether you want the output on your screen, in your e-mail box, printed out, or used interactively on the screen. You can also choose to include only certain sections of the report using the "Include on the Report" checkboxes shown. Finally, since the report can show you all recent personal payments, you can change the date range of payments the report will display.
Press [F1 -- Process Report] to create the report.
3.2.3. Reading the coll Report Output
The standard coll report contains the sections shown below.
ACCOUNT INFORMATION: PCC# 5350
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sean Amoroso Home Phone: 802-498-7773
4A Spruance Way Work Phone: 802-786-2185
Townsend, VT 05359 Temp Phone: 802-557-6608
Alt Phone: 802-995-8411
Status:
Date of most recent
Visit/Service: 11/18/00 Hold Bill Till:
Personal Bill Sent: Budget Amount: $ 0.00
Personal Payment: 11/09/00
Insurance Payment: 11/01/00
AGING SUMMARIES: CURRENT OD30 OD60 OD90 OD120 TOTAL
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BY PAYOR RESP DATE:
Personal 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 65.00 65.00
Medicaid 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 203.00 203.00
BY TRANS DATE:
Personal 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 65.00 65.00
Medicaid 0.00 0.00 0.00 0.00 203.00 203.00
OUTSTANDING CHARGES: DIAG PROV AMOUNT PERS DUE INS DUE
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
01/15/00 Amoroso, Harrison
OV Highly Compreh V20.2 Nurs 125.00 65.00 0.00
11/05/00 Amoroso, Michael
Urine Culture 599.0 DoLi 18.00 0.00 18.00
OV Expanded Focus 599.0 DoLi 60.00 0.00 60.00
11/11/00 Amoroso, Robinson
Physical 12-17 yrs V20.2 Trap 125.00 0.00 125.00
--------- ---------
TOTAL AMOUNT DUE 65.00 203.00
RECENT PERSONAL PAYMENTS: CK NUMBER AMOUNT
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
11/09/00 TOS Cash 20.00
07/27/00 TOS Cash 40.00
YEAR-TO-DATE SUMMARY:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
YTD Charges: $ 0.00
YTD Insurance Payments: $ 90.00
YTD Medicaid Payments: $ 794.15
YTD Personal Payments: $ 60.00
YTD Total Adjustments: $ 345.85 |
The complete coll report has four sections: Account Aging, Outstanding Charges, Recent Personal Payments and Demographic Information. You can include any or all of these sections. To include a section, make sure that it is marked with an 'X' on the criteria screen before you generate the report.
Account Info: The first section contains simple demographic information, including the account name, address and phone numbers, as well as some key dates (date of last visit, last bill sent, last personal payment made, and last insurance payment made.) If you use the "Hold Bill Till" and "Budget Amount" functions of the Family Editor (fame), you will see information about those settings in this section of the report.
The Account Info section of coll is customizable. If you need to format your coll report to suite the needs of your practice, contact PCC for help creating a custom header.
Aging Summaries: The coll report shows you two different ways of aging an account's outstanding personal charges. Balances are first aged by Payor Responsibility Date, and then by Transaction Date. Payor Responsibility is different in that it will age items based on when the amount became personal, instead of aging strictly from the date of service. Within each category, amounts are shown for balances that are overdue 30, 60, 90, and 120 days.
Outstanding Charges: The report contains a list of currently unpaid, personal charges. This section makes it especially easy to explain an account's balance to someone over the phone. It contains the patient's name, the diagnoses and procedures of the visit, and three columns to indicate how much was originally charged, how much is due to the personal account, and how much is still pending an insurance company.
Recent Payments. The report shows a summary of recent personal payments. Use this information to see whether or not an account has been making regular payments. Accounts that are working to pay off an old balance should be making regular payments.
Year-To-Date Summary. The last section contains a year-to-date summary for charges and payments.
3.3. The Special Accounts Editor (cfs)
3.3.1. Introduction
Use the Special Accounts Editor (cfs) to work with all accounts with certain status flags or other specific characteristics. For example, you may want to list all accounts that your office put on a budget plan, or all accounts that were flagged as "Cash Only" for writing a bad check. You can view and work with all of these types of accounts by using the cfs report.
cfs provides you with a list of patients with specific Account Status Flags or other account issues. You can then jump into different Partner programs directly from the list.
3.3.2. Running cfs and Selecting Criteria
You can run cfs from the "Patient/Account Reports" section of Partner. You can also type cfs from a command prompt.
There are two types of lists found in cfs:
Standard lists that appear on all systems. These include accounts that are Overdue, on a Budget Plan, who have Credits or have Bills Held by a flag.
Customized lists based on your office's Account Flags. These include all of the Account Status Flags in the Table Editor (ted). If you add a new account flag and assign it to specific accounts, you will be able to work with those accounts using a report option in cfs.
 | The lists stored in cfs are created overnight. Transactions posted through the day will not affect whether an account appears on a list or not. No matter what changes you make to an account, they will remain on a list until the lists are recreated in the evening. |
3.3.3. Viewing the Report and Working With Accounts
Enter the letter or number next to a list and press Enter to view it. All accounts on the selected list, along with their balance information and phone number, will appear:
The example above shows all of the Collection accounts. Collection accounts are accounts that have been assigned the "Collection" flag on the status line in the Family Editor (fame).
As you view the list and work with each of the families, you can perform the following functions:
Actions in cfs
- [F1 -- Start of List]
Press [F1] to jump to the top of the list.
- [F2 -- Jump to Letter]
Press [F2] and input a letter to jump to a spot somewhere in the alphabetical list of accounts.
- [F3 -- End of List]
Press [F3] to jump to the bottom of the list.
- [F4 -- Remove Flag]
Press [F4] to remove the status flag (such as the "Collections" flag) that causes the account to appear on this list. Remember that the account will remain on the list until cfs rebuilds its lists overnight.
- [F6 -- Form Letters]
Press [F6] to select and print a form letter for any account on the list.
- [F7 -- Oops Account]
Press [F7] to run the Correct Mistakes (oops) program for any account on the list. In oops, you can view billing history, change insurance pending status, and rebatch or print outstanding claims.
- [F8 -- View Account]
Press [F8] to run the Family Editor (fame) program for any account on the list. In fame, you can view a detailed family history, run the Collection report (coll) to review outstanding charges, add notes to the account, review insurance information, and more.