Patient-Centric Billing
Patient billing done right with excellent customer service for billing questions makes it easy for the patient and encourages them to utilize your laboratory for services. The TELCOR billing system is designed to meet these goals.
Patient-centric billing makes invoices easier for patients to understand, which encourages them to use your laboratory for services and reduces billing confusion.
TELCOR’s application is patient-centric, so patients who have multiple services per month will receive one statement, avoiding confusion. The services and ordering provider, as well as amounts paid and adjusted by their insurance and themselves, are presented to easily understand current amounts owed.
Pricing and Payment Flexibility
Your pricing can encourage use of your laboratory, as well. You can define unlimited fee schedules and for self-pay patients offer client based pricing in consideration of their non-insured status. Additionally, you can have the application automatically adjust to a patient expected amount for services when their insurance is with a non-contracted payer. Patients may elect to pay with cash, credit card or even PayPal. Yes, PayPal. The iLabBill option allows patients to view all services and pay by credit card or PayPal via a secure website.
When patients call about their bill, the flexible patient search and comprehensive Account Inquiry function makes it easy to view the entire patient billing history to expediently respond to the patient. If the problem is that the patient can’t pay the entire bill, the application supports payment plans. The billing system also provides significant functionality to manage the outstanding patient accounts receivable, process refunds and transfer amounts to bad debt and write-offs.
If you want to efficiently perform patient billing with the tools for your client services department and metrics for management, this Revenue Cycle Management solution will help you.
Patient Demographics
Patient demographics can automatically be created or updated with an HL7 Patient Account interface with the ability to also provide updates from the billing system back to the host system with an outbound HL7 Patient Demographic interface. The interface processing includes many rules to ensure correct patient updates, as well as demographic accuracy, including multi-tier matching criteria, middle initial and ZIP code processing, payer-specific validations (e.g., policy number format and more).
Using an HL7 Patient Account interface, you can automatically create or update patient demographics.
Demographics also can be manually entered or updated in a batch with the Express Account Entry function. This allows for the selection of many patients with missing demographic data and then displays a grid allowing direct entry of missing data for all patients from one screen. Demographic entry and update can also be supplemented with easy retrieval and view of images of the requisitions and other supplementary information (e.g., insurance cards). The Revenue Cycle Management solution is patient-centric and maintains an unlimited number of insurance instances that can be selected based upon the Active status and effective date range of the insurance. A patient-centric solution offers significant advantages to the patient and billing staff including:
- Eliminating confusion when multiple services performed per month
- Allowing a single set of demographics to be maintained and updated
- Allowing easy retrieval and review of the entire billing history for a patient
Patient Statements
The Revenue Cycle Management solution includes many rules and pricing that define how patient transactions are processed to ensure billing is clean and compliant. Self-pay patients can be billed at a fee schedule or you can offer client-based pricing in acknowledgement of their uninsured status. Additionally, if you first bill a payer you can define rules that will apply automatic adjustments prior to billing the patient. Patients are eligible for a statement when transactions are marked as patient responsibility, which can also occur automatically via the rules process. Statements are customized to each organization. The format, literals, messages, frequency and display of credit balances are all in your control. Messaging can be effectively used to define aging, requests for information or other notices. You can also define patient specific messages. Statements can be printed or, with an electronic patient statement interface, transferred to a mailing service for distribution. If using the iLabBill Web application, patients can also review the lists of services included on a statement.
Patient Remittance
TELCOR's Revenue Cycle Management software provides several options for patient remittance.
Patient payments can be directly entered and posted to one or more accounts, be entered by the patient via iLabBill with payment by credit card or PayPal with automatic posting of authorized payments, or be pre-processed at a financial institution and interfaced via a Lockbox interface. A Lockbox interface allows a file of payments received from the bank to be processed and reviewed and/or automatically posted based upon user rules definitions. Complete auditing of all payment methods occurs and management can track unapplied payments with the Remittance Workqueue. Additionally, the Daily Payment Log and Payment Statistics allow management to view payments at any moment in time.
Patient AR Management
The Revenue Cycle Management application allows you to efficiently manage patient accounts receivable. Statements can be customized to include messages specific to the age of the transactions and messages specific to an account attention level or a specific account can be defined. This process can be supplemented with custom Collection Notices for one or more accounts.
The Account Management function allows efficient review of all account AR by age and includes the last payment date. Account Management can be filtered to view account AR, payment plans or bad debt. If payment plans are needed, they can be customized to each patient’s payment abilities and tracked in the application with special statements generated monthly. Refunds can also be managed with an easy review of all accounts with a credit balance. Refunds go through a controlled process with progressive security. Additionally, a Request for Check File Transfer interface automates the notification of Accounts Payable of checks required for refunds.
Bad debt management is also included. Patient accounts can be automatically transferred to bad debt based upon complex rules. Patients with a special status can easily be excluded from bad debt transfer by assignment of an Attention Level that is excluded from the transfer process. Once transferred to bad debt, notifications can be sent to your collection agency through a customer configured Excel file. Excel files can also be used to notify the collection agency of any collected funds. Remittance from your collection agency, with or without agency expense can be entered via the Remittance Workqueue.
In Summary
Tracking and managing patient accounts is easy with the exception processing and Workqueues in the Revenue Cycle Management solution. The patient-centric orientation provides the ability to review all account history and make it easy for client services to assist patients who have questions about their statements, while the patient pricing and automatic adjustments for non-contracted payers help make the patient a repeat customer for your laboratory. Additionally, the added convenience of being able to review services performed and current balances and make payments online can also help promote patient satisfaction.