Fees

We understand that practitioners want to focus on patient care but we should start by talking about patient fees. These need to be set at a realistic level to secure the long-term future of your practice but they also need to be consistent and clear for everyone.

Setting fees

It’s generally up to you to decide what to charge for your services but here are some factors you’ll need to take into account:

• Overheads – How much you need to run your business and meet your personal obligations eg pay staff, indemnity costs, your mortgage
• Qualifications, experience and reputation – Those who’ve built up their practice over many years and with a good success rate could justify charging a higher fee than someone new to private practice. High fees might also attract some patients because they view them as reassuringly expensive while others may shop around
• Time and resources – This’ll vary according to the procedure and the level of service you provide (what’s included)
• Location – Consider what’s realistic and affordable for your target market. Fees are likely to be higher in a wealthy region such as London and the South East
• The insurer’s fee schedule – If you’ve signed a contract to treat patients as fee assured, you’ll have a contractual obligation to stick to the relevant insurer’s fee schedule
• Inflation – Keep your fees under review to take account of the cost of living

Communicating your fees

First and foremost, you have an ethical and legal obligation to be clear about your fees.

The GMC says

You must be open and honest in any financial arrangements, and must not exploit patients’ vulnerability or lack of medical knowledge when charging fees for treatments and services. 

If you charge fees you must: 

• tell patients, if possible before starting any investigation or treatment, including how much they need to pay for each investigation or treatment and when 
• explain if you don’t know the total cost of each option (including any additional fees) and make sure the patient knows how to find out 
• comply with the legal requirement to provide information about your fees to the Private Healthcare Information Network 

The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) imposed greater transparency on fees through its Private Healthcare Market Investigation Order which legally requires you to provide patients with comprehensive written quotes prior to consultations, diagnostic tests, or treatment and, for GMC-regulated practitioners, to submit your standard self-pay charges for consultations and procedures to PHIN. PHIN has published help and advice articles for patients on this subject and it’s worth reading these so you can reassure patients and answer their questions.     

It’s also in your interest to keep prices clear as misunderstandings can lead to disputes and complaints of unfairness, such as when an insured patient is hit with an unexpected shortfall invoice.

Here are a few pointers:

• Publish your guideline prices for consultations, diagnostic procedures and treatments on your website (this should be in line with the prices you have sent to PHIN, if applicable). Be clear what’s covered by the fee, what is charged for separately eg inpatient care, prescriptions. Explain that all patients will receive a personalised quote after their consultation
• Set out your terms and conditions (T&Cs) where you can, such as on your website and in your confirmation letters. Include insured patients’ responsibility for paying shortfalls if their policy doesn’t cover the full cost of their treatment (see our next blog on onboarding patients for more on T&Cs)
• State whether you’re fee-assured and what this means. Explain that insured patients will need to contact their insurer before their appointment to check they have the right cover and obtain the necessary authorisation number 
• If you offer finance terms to self-pay patients you must comply with the law which includes being authorised and regulated by the FCA. If you want to do this through a partner, ensure they are authorised and regulated with the FCA and take advice on what information you must include to meet your legal and ethical obligations. However, you don’t need FCA authorisation to allow a patient to pay an invoice in instalments
• Ensure your reception staff and invoicing team are fully aware of your pricing and can answer patient queries clearly and consistently
• Make the invoicing process straightforward by setting up a schedule of charges for each treatment and procedure you do (and where this differs by insurer, practitioner, location)

How we can help

Our Pricing Matrix enables you to record your fees for treatments and services, including differentiating for insurers and other payors and treatment locations which makes invoicing quicker, easier and accurate. Once you’ve entered the basic data on an invoice, click the calculator icon to automatically insert the correct fee for that procedure and payor type.

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To get started, select Guideline Pricing under the Accounting tab in ePractice and follow these step-by-step instructions or sign up for a free online tutorial with the Healthcode Academy We offer a 30-minute module – Electronic billing & collection | Module 1 – that takes you through everything, including the Pricing Matrix but if you just want to focus on creating your Pricing Matrix we offer a 15- minute bite-size option​ (select module 1C).

If you want to learn more about how we can help you manage this and other aspects of the patient journey contact our Business Development team. If you’re already an ePractice user and want to explore the system, check out our guides or book a free 1-2-1 tutorial with one of our friendly experts at the Healthcode Academy. 

About Desné

Desné worked in the private healthcare sector at various sites in London for over 30 years. She has extensive experience and skills relating to all areas of practice administration, having been a practice manager from the early 90s to 2019 when she joined Healthcode.  

Next time – Onboarding new patients  

The post The business of the patient journey | Pricing appeared first on Healthcode.

These patients are certain to be impressed by the quality of care and advanced treatments available, but a reliable and efficient online booking process is one part of the journey that’s been missing.

We’re putting that right, inspired by the technology that transformed the travel sector.

Believe it or not, booking a holiday used to be a stressful business. Agents, phone calls and long waits to confirm your reservation. The game-changer proved to be a Global Distribution System (GDS), a central hub which enabled different service providers to exchange information about services and availability in real time. This brought order to the chaos and dramatically improved the booking experience for everyone who could go online and make their own travel arrangements.

We wanted the same for private healthcare, while ensuring everyone could be confident in the high levels of data security that we build into all our products. ICE – our integrated channel exchange – is the GDS uniting the sector to deliver real-time online appointment booking. Put simply, ICE allows anyone offering healthcare services to share them with anyone who wants to search for them. It works like this:

Access: Everyone who wants to use ICE can do so through our flexible Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) based on the internationally recognised FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) messaging standards. This enables different booking sites to connect to multiple diaries through just a single interface.

Book: Information about services and appointment availability is shared in real time with the booking websites so users can use their preferred site to search for an available slot, using a range of search criteria such as specialty, location, time and service type. Bookings can be made 24/7.

Sync: Once the appointment is booked, the diary owner’s software synchronises the information removing the possibility of double-bookings.

Why sign up?

ICE brings compelling benefits whether you’re a practitioner, practice or clinic, hospital or insurer.  At a time when more people are considering private healthcare, it makes sense to have a central booking solution that’s smooth, convenient, efficient and secure. ICE makes this a reality – fantastic for patients who want access to great care and excellent news for the long-term prospects of our sector.

It was our technology, data and expertise that enabled us to start this booking revolution. Is it time for you to join us? 

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To find out how ICE, our online appointment booking solution, can transform your booking process, contact our Business Development team.

The post Appointment booking flows more smoothly over ICE appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s reply: Use the Advanced Bill draft invoice feature in ePractice to create and update your service charges as you go. This’ll ensure the final version is accurate and complete when you’re ready to send it.

Quick guide to creating a draft invoice

• Select the patient from your patient list, click Create Bill and then click Advanced Bill.
• Complete the invoice with what you’ve carried out on the patient so far.  
• When you reach the final stage, click Save as Draft. The status of three blank boxes against the invoice on the patient’s Account tab means it hasn’t been sent yet.
• It’ll also be listed on the Tasks and Reminders section on your Status page, so you can easily return to it and update. Click Save as draft each time to save your changes.
• When you’re ready to send, click Save and send to submit to the insurer using  the Clearing Service or send to the patient via patientzone.

Discover More

Find out how to create invoices and use other ePractice features, sign up for our free online tutorials with the Healthcode Academy. The Academy’s team of Service Delivery Associates will guide you through our series of short personalised training sessions, using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

To learn more about invoicing using Advanced Bill see our guide in Help and Support. We also offer a 15-minute bite-size session with the Healthcode Academy  – click here to book.

To find out more about the invoicing features in ePractice contact the Business Development team.

The post Have you tried… creating a draft invoice? appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s reply: If you’re an ePractice Pro user, you can create a warning note within the patient’s profile to help you and your team stay on top of things. A yellow warning triangle will appear next to their name and on their profile prompting you to read it before doing anything else.

This feature also allows you to upload documents, such as the letter the patient sent you, your reminder letter or a clinical note.

Quick guide to adding a warning note

• Choose the patient from your patient list and then select the notes tab on their profile page
• Select Admin from the drop-down menu and then type your note in the box (maximum 2000 characters)
• Click the warning box – you can also click the pop-up box option if you want the warning to automatically display when the patient’s profile is opened
• Documents are uploaded by clicking Browse and selecting from your saved files; there’s no restriction on the file type or number of files you can add and you can increase the maximum file size to 2.5MB by contacting Customer Services on custserv@healthcode.co.uk
• Click Save Note
• Select and Delete Note when you no longer need it

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To find out more about the the warning note feature in ePractice contact our Business Development team.

The post Have you tried… creating a warning note in ePractice? appeared first on Healthcode.

While few practitioners have experience of running a business, the most successful are those who draw on the time management skills they learned early in their professional career. By identifying ways to work smarter and making the most of the latest practice management technology, they’ve been able to ‘steal back’ time to focus on patients and develop their practice.

Every practice has time-consuming tasks that could be managed more effectively, often by making better use of technology. Here are five of the most common admin ‘bottlenecks’ to address:

• Correspondence – Medical secretaries can spend their time typing, printing and dispatching letters to keep patients and their GPs informed about appointments, investigations and treatments. Streamline the process by using letter templates for common subjects which can be completed with the relevant patient details. Our ePractice Lite and Pro software also allows you to select and batch print multiple documents at a time.
• Patient insurance cover – Practices regularly need to call hospitals or insurers to confirm a patient’s insurance details, but this can be a time-consuming – and sometimes a frustrating – exercise. Our online membership enquiry feature enables you to instantly check patients’ policy numbers and address details against the insurers’ database.
• Invoicing – Electronic invoicing and clearing can save you money by eliminating printing, postage and manpower costs. Creating and submitting invoices to insurers – via our encrypted, secure service – takes a fraction of the time, improves accuracy and ensures the invoice is validated against the relevant insurer criteria – so it’s ready for processing and payment. This secure platform eliminates the risk of data breaches possible when sending invoices by post or email, plus you have the additional reassurance of knowing the invoice has been received by the insurer.
• Payment tracking – When payments arrive, every practice needs a system to record exactly what invoices are being paid and identify shortfalls. This can be time-consuming with a manual system and in some cases, practices have been obliged to write-off outstanding debts because payments have not been reconciled against the correct invoice. Our payment tracking tools will help you save time and money.
• Financial reports – Without access to accurate information it’s impossible to steer your business effectively. However, manual bookkeeping and accounting systems require expertise and time to prepare even basic reports such as an aged debtor analysis. Your practice management system should provide a range of real-time financial reports, so you can measure your performance, analyse your strengths and weaknesses and make informed decisions.

Discover more

Find out how ePractice Lite and Pro can help streamline your processes and avoid a bottleneck of admin tasks with the Healthcode Academy’s team of Service Delivery Associates. They’ll guide you using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

Discover what else you can do in ePractice by checking out our comprehensive  Help and Support articles.

To find out more about this or any other feature of ePractice Lite or Pro contact our Business Development team.

The post Working smarter with technology appeared first on Healthcode.

By validating each invoice in line with the criteria set by each insurer, we ensure they’re ready for processing and payment on receipt. More efficient all round. But sometimes invoices fail the process and need submitting again. When this happens during your invoicing run, it’s important to know exactly what’s gone wrong, how to correct it and hopefully prevent it recurring.

Our Premium level Financial Management Solutions for hospitals include the clever Failed Bills Management Tools to help you identify and fix issues in failed invoices, from one-off inaccuracies to persistent coding errors. By increasing accuracy and efficiency, you’ll quickly see improvements in your invoicing success rate. In fact, when we reviewed monthly failed invoice volumes over a twelve-month period, we found those on the Premium package had 42% fewer recurring failed invoices compared with those using the Standard package.

Our Premium package includes:

• Failed Bills Management Workflow which shows, at a glance, how many invoices have failed, categorised by reason. You don’t have to spend time opening and reviewing each invoice.  
• The ability to apply bulk fixes when an issue has affected multiple invoices and reprocess these at the same time.
• Filters to aid quick analysis. For example, you can focus on invoices to a particular insurer or zero in on failed charge lines within an invoice.
• Colour coded invoice categories – create and assign a colour to different invoice categories for better visibility and manage work flow.
• Failure Analysis Reports are available to increase visibility and manageability of the error handling process. This will help you to correct any issue within your patient administration system and resubmit the invoice.

Want to know more?

To find out how our tools can help you submit fully validated invoices to the insurers efficiently and improve your cash flow, contact our Business Development team.

The post Our invoicing tools point the way to success appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s reply: No, you don’t as invoice auto-population enables practitioners (who are recognised as controlling specialists) to generate an invoice with the correct patient and episode fields completed, including the patient’s GP, insurer, membership number and the diagnosis and procedure codes used by the hospital. Anaesthetists and radiologists can also use this feature for episodes where they provided care and are linked to the controlling specialist.
All you need to do is add your own fee which you can do with one click if you use our pricing matrix feature. 
This feature is only available to ePractice Lite or Pro users.

Quick guide

• Check your status page for a list of all the patients where invoices have been sent by the hospital showing you as “controlling specialist” (surgeons only).
• Anaesthetists and radiologists will need to enter the patient’s last name, date of birth, treatment date and hospital in the search box.
• Select the patient you want to invoice.
• Check details from the hospital invoice, including patient, GP, primary diagnosis and procedure.
• Complete the fields for service dates and fee.
• Click Service type and select an option from the dropdown menu.
• Complete invoice by clicking save and send.

Discover More

If you’re interested in finding out more about ePractice Lite or Pro why not book a demo with our Business Development team.

Learn more about invoice auto-population and other time-saving ePractice features by signing up for our free online tutorials with the Healthcode Academy. The Academy’s Service Delivery Associates will guide you through our series of short, personalised training sessions, using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

We offer a one-hour billing module – Electronic billing & collection | Module 2 – that takes you through everything to do with invoicing. For those who just want to focus on invoice auto-population, we offer a bite-size option – you’ll need module 2A.

The post Have you tried…invoice auto population? appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s reply: The Pricing Matrix enables you to record your fees for treatments and services, including differentiating for different payors and treatment locations. Once your medical secretary has entered the necessary details on an invoice, they can find the correct fee with just one click.

Quick guide

• Select Guideline Pricing under the Accounting tab in ePractice.
• Click Manage Payors to see your selected payors which already lists self-pay patients.
• Use the Payor Type drop-down menu to select from other payor types eg embassies, solicitors, insurers. Click on ‘insurer’ to bring up a list of insurers. Then select those who recognise you and click + to add them to your selected payors list.
• Click Manage Services and enter the code or description to search the list. Keep searching and adding services and then click save to return to the pricing matrix where they will all be listed.
• Click on each service and add/edit to enter a fee by type of payor and treatment site. Then click save and repeat.
• Once your Pricing Matrix is complete, click the calculator icon when raising an invoice to automatically insert the correct fee for that procedure and payor type.

Discover More

Learn more about the Pricing Matrix and other time-saving ePractice features by signing up for our free online tutorials with the Healthcode Academy. The Academy’s Service Delivery Associates will guide you through our series of short personalised training sessions, using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

We offer a 30-minute billing module – Electronic billing & collection | Module 1 – that takes you through everything, including the Pricing Matrix. For those who just want to focus on creating your Pricing Matrix we offer a 15- minute bite-size option​ – you’ll need module 1C.

The post Have you tried… Setting up your Pricing Matrix? appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s reply: Instead of paper invoices, you can use Healthcode’s secure online payments via patientzone service to charge patients for self-funded care and insurer shortfalls. It is a cost-effective way to implement online patient invoicing and payment. There is no need to worry about card processing appliances or arranging merchant accounts and patientzone charges only 2.5% per invoice + VAT per paid invoice*. Patients will appreciate the security, convenience and the reassurance of payment confirmation. ePractice Lite and Pro users can also create and send shortfall letters, details of debt reallocations and payment reminders and credit notes if the original invoice was sent through patientzone*.

Quick guide

• Click on Integration Services in the settings menu to register for patientzone as a single practitioner or multi-practitioner practice.
• Use the link from patientzone to log in and follow the steps to complete your account set-up.
• Set the invoice template you would like to use for patientzone in Integration Services.
• Create an invoice in Quick eBill or Advanced Bill, ensuring that you have a valid email address and mobile number for the payor.
• Save and send the invoice. Once registered, your ePractice settings will change so non-insurer invoices are automatically sent through patientzone.
• patientzone sends an email notification to the payor with a link so they can pay securely online.
• patientzone sends confirmation to you and the payor once the invoice is settled. Your invoices are automatically reconciled within 30 minutes of payment

* There is a charge of 10p + VAT for each reminder letter sent.

Discover More

Learn more about using patientzone to send a Quick eBill to patients and other time-saving ePractice features by visiting Healthcode’s Online Payments Help & Support page which has a range of informative articles from setting up all the way through to getting paid by patientzone.

If you’re interested in finding out more about ePractice Lite or Pro why not book a demo with our Business Development team.

The post Have you tried… online patient invoicing? appeared first on Healthcode.