Turn an Account Over to Collections
With a solid practice financial policy, and good use of PCC’s personal billing tools, you should have very few accounts that require a collection agency. When you need to use one, however, you can update the account record to indicate it is in collection and adjust charges so they will be handled correctly.
PCC has two recommended procedures for turning an account over to a collection agency in Partner. Your office can consider these options and create your own collection policy.
What Charges Should be Turned Over to Collection?: You can review accounts with high personal balances using persview, and srs can produce a list of accounts with charges that have been billed over and over again. Contact PCC support for help learning these reports.
Option A: Turn An Account Over to Collections and Adjust Off Their Charges
When you turn charges over to a collection agency, you can post an adjustment against those charges. The charges will no longer generate a personal bill when you process bills, and the amount due will be removed from your accounts receivable.
The steps below require a bad debt adjustment in the Payment Types table in the Table Editor (ted). You could name the payment type “Bad Debt Adjustment (Collections)” or “Sent to Collection”.
Follow these steps to turn an account over to collection and adjust off the charges:
Print Charge Information for the Collection Agency
Use the Collection Report (coll) or the Account History (tater) to produce a summary of outstanding charges for the collection agency.
Run pam for the Overdue Account
Open the Payments tool for the account you are turning over to collection.
Post the Bad Debt Adjustment and Link it to the Overdue Charges
Enter the bad debt adjustment information, including the date you are turning the account over to collection, the bad debt adjustment name, and the total amount of the charges you are sending to collection:
Press F4 – Special Payments and link the bad debt adjustment to the procedures listed that you wish to turn over to collection. To learn more about pam and the Special Payments key, read Post Personal Payments and Adjustments.
Record Your Actions in Account Notes
Run fame for the account and add details to the Notes page. Record which charges were sent to collection. You should also add a “Sent to Collection” status flag to the account.
When you receive a payment from the collection agency, you can post it in one of two ways:
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Delete the adjustment you posted above and post the payment using a payment type that indicates the payment was from a collection agency.
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Post a “Collection Income” adjustment in the
refundprogram and then post a Collection Payment against that adjustment usingpam.
Whichever method you use, be sure and carefully note your actions on the notes page of the Family Editor.
Option B: Pend the Charges to a Collection Agency
You can pend charges to a collection agency just as you would pend them to an insurance company. The family will no longer receive personal bills from your practice, and the collection agency will bill the account directly. The charges you turn over to the collection agency will remain as balances on the patient’s account, and they will remain part of your practice’s total accounts receivable.
For this procedure to work, you will need two items in your Partner tables:
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An insurance group named “Collections”
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An insurance company called “1. Collections.” While you can name the insurance company anything, giving it a number at the beginning of its name will make it easier to find and apply charges towards.
Follow these steps when an account is turned over to collection:
Print Charge Information for the Collection Agency
Use the Collection (coll) report or the Account History (tater) to produce a summary of outstanding charges for the collection agency.
Run oops
Run Correct Mistakes (oops) from your Practice Management window.
Locate the Procedures to Turn Over to Collections
Use Page Up and Page Down to browse the account history and find the procedures that should be passed to collection.
Press F4 – Insurance Status and Enter the Procedure Numbers
Enter the number adjacent to each procedure you are sending to collections.
Press
F5 – Make All Insurance
On the Changing Insurance Information screen, press F5 and choose “Some Other Insurance.”
Choose “1. Collections”
The collections insurance will appear at the top of the list. Press Enter to select it.
Press
F1 – Save Changes
After saving your changes, press F12 to quit oops.
Record Your Actions in fame
Add a note to the Notes screen of the Family Editor (fame), add a “Collection” status flag to the account, and send the account a collections notification form letter.
Run insaging Periodically: Run Insurance Accounts Receivable Summary (insaging) to review the outstanding balances in collections. The amounts should appear in the Collections insurance group.
Run inscoar Periodically: Run Insurance Accounts Receivable Detail (inscoar) for the Collections insurance group to review each individual account’s collection amounts.
When you receive a payment from the collection agency, you can post it in the pip program, selecting an appropriate payment type. You should also update your note on the notes page of fame.