Author: Fiona Stopp

By Fiona Stopp

Attention Gentu users: Update your organisational account holders

Attention Gentu users: Update your organisational account holders!

An exciting discovery made while plowing through the tedious, difficult process that is outstanding account management in Gentu, was that you can now assign a default schedule to an organisational account holder. (insert grateful sigh here)

Take advantage of this feature by making the time to go to the Account Holder section of the Addressbook and update each of your organisations.  Be warned that this will not be an easy task as there is no way to filter the comprehensive list to identify businesses only.  Oh, and if you decide to work through the list page by page,  you will be returned to page 1 even though you have just edited an entry on page 3. (insert head slap here)  Searching for the health fund or workcover account holder by name results in less teeth grinding.

The benefits to updating the default fee schedule for the organisations include correct fee schedules assigned to items on invoices. Hallelujah!

Fiona and Nick from Practice Management Plus are available if you wish to chat. Our fabulous Veronica is taking a sabbatical from Practice Management Plus while working on a very exciting project.

 

 

Why should I provide a quote for surgery?
By Fiona Stopp

Why should I provide a quote for surgery?

Updated 5th November 2023

The answer is simple; improve compliance, reduce outstanding accounts, and reduce the stress on your staff when claims are rejected by the Health Fund.
The changes to government tier structure for health fund are a timely opportunity for specialist medical practices to review their informed financial consent and quoting processes.
Do you provide an estimate of fees for every procedure you perform?
What is your debt recovery process if you perform the procedure only to discover that the patient’s level of cover does not cover the items used in the procedure?
What is your debt recovery process if your staff quote incorrectly and the health fund pays nothing.

Did you know that the “basic”, “smart saver” options of some funds only pay up to the MBS fee? See the notes on the last page of the downloadable AHSA Participating Funds list https://www.ahsa.com.au/web/fundlist  
Generating a quote or estimate of fees from your software:

  • provides you with a copy of the information given to the patient prior to the surgery,
  • provides the patient the opportunity to check with their fund for the anticipated item numbers,
  • provides the patient the opportunity to reschedule the procedure if they are not covered,
  • provides the practice with the opportunity to request a signed acknowledgement of responsibility for the FULL fee in the event that they are not covered,
  • helps dispel the misinformation often provided to patients that the procedure “will not cost anything” or “it will only cost $200”
  • reduces the debt accrued when health fund cover is inadequate
  • streamlines the process with clear, transparent information
  • ensures compliance with the expectations around informed financial consent (https://ama.com.au/article/ama-informed-financial-consent)

At Practice Management Plus, we thrive on streamlining your workflow processes to improve compliance, profit, and workplace satisfaction in Australian Medical Specialist Practices.
Contact Fiona to discuss how we can help your practice.

Click here to view the Quote and Surgical Billing Decision Tool. Download a copy of the file from the link.

One single change…
By Fiona Stopp

One single change…

We love giving tips to help medical practices thrive with Genie software. So, what is the one single change we could make to our processes which would increase income, decrease expenses, improve efficiencies, and decrease rejections?

This is the most exciting question I have been asked in 16 years as a software trainer of Genie software and here is the answer.

Choose the correct CATEGORY in the Genie Address Book.

Now, I can feel your disbelief but read on.

The CATEGORY determines the duration of the referral.

When the CATEGORY is blank, Genie allocates a 12-month duration to the referral by default. This is the beginning of your problems.

If the referrer is a specialist, the referral expires in 3 months but your records show it as valid, so it may be another 9 months before you or your staff are alerted.

Consider the following scenarios

  • Your patient is bulk-billed: If “Referral expired” exception messages are dismissed without investigating further, you may see a patient for a year without getting paid.
  • Your patient pays the account in full: The patient will not receive the Medicare rebate. They may not contact you to alert you to the problem.

Will this discourage patients to use your services?

How will this impact your surgical billing?

Now consider this scenario:

  1. Every referring doctor in your address book has the correct Category
  2. Correct durations are allocated when referrals are added to the patient record
  3. The ‘Check Forward Referrals’ report is run each week to show each appointment in the selected date range that needs a new referral
  4. Use the ‘Show in Patient List’ option to send an SMS reminder to the patient to obtain a referral from their GP
  5. Invoices transmit with accurate details
  6. Rebates are paid correctly
    1. Bulk bill amounts pay to the Provider without error
    2. Fully paid patient claims rebates pay to the patient without error
  7. As a result, your staff have more time, and less stress
  8. The practice sees an increase of income, a decrease of expenses, an improvement of efficiencies, and a significant decrease in rejections and exceptions.

Have you enjoyed this simple tip? This is only one of the changes that Practice Management Plus can implement with Genie software at your practice. Contact us to learn how we can help you move from survive to thrive.