Unfortunately, this error might’ve happened at several points in the invoicing, payment or reconciliation process. Perhaps a paper invoice was raised for a self-pay patient and incorrectly recorded, an insurer’s bulk payment could have been wrongly allocated, or maybe a shortfall was missed.

These problems are more likely when practices are trying to manage and reconcile different systems and processes. Whenever you re-enter data manually onto another system, it increases the chance that inaccuracies will creep in, making it harder to balance the books. Such duplication also takes up valuable time and diverts members of your team from more productive tasks.

With an integrated invoicing and payment system, you’ll have a single, consistent source of truth about your finances at each stage in the invoicing cycle so you can see at a glance what you’ve invoiced, what’s been paid and what’s outstanding. This is essential for running your practice day-to-day but it also means you have the data required to plan ahead and make informed business decisions.

ePractice Lite and Pro give you the tools you need to manage your practice finances efficiently, starting with accurate invoicing with help from unique features like our Pricing Matrix and Membership Enquiry. You can then send electronic invoices securely to both insurers and self-pay patients from one place thanks to the seamless integration with the Clearing Service and Online Payments solution with insurer invoices automatically validated so they enter the payment cycle on receipt.

Once you’ve submitted your invoices, the payment allocation and debt reallocation features help you keep on top of bulk payments, shortfalls and other credit control tasks without swallowing up time and resource. You can even automate this process with our Electronic Remittances service with participating insurers and Online Payments.

Finally, you have complete oversight of your practice’s current financial position with access to real-time financial reporting options which can be easily exported to other software for accounting purposes.

If the scenario at the start of the blog sounds familiar, we recommend you audit the strengths and weaknesses of your back-office set-up. Ask yourself:

• How much manual intervention and duplication of effort is required?
• How much time do my team spend detecting and correcting errors?
• Can I get an accurate view of our current financial position?
• Will it support or hinder your practice as it grows?
• Is there scope for improved automation of some of the practice’s accounting tasks?
• Could I save money and increase productivity?

Discover more

Find out how to keep track of your finances by signing up for our free Electronic billing & collection | Module 3 online tutorial 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.

To find out more about upgrading to an integrated and secure system, contact our Business Development team or book a demo to discover how ePractice can transform the way you work.

The post Why you need a single source of truth appeared first on Healthcode.

Recent surveys show how important the self-pay market is to the sector. YouGov found that 13% of British people had personally paid for private healthcare services in the previous year – most using disposable income or savings – and LaingBuisson’s research found that 53% of respondents believed the self-pay market would grow by 10-15% in the next three years.

If you want to embrace this opportunity, you’ll need our online invoicing and payment service. This is more efficient, cost-effective and secure than alternatives like printing and posting paper invoices, sending unencrypted emails, or paying for a merchant account with card processing fees. You won’t pay any transactional Clearing Service charges but will pay patientzone a transaction fee of 2.5% per paid invoice (+ VAT) and a charge of 10p (+VAT) for each reminder letter sent.

It’s a convenient option for your patients too, ensuring their episode of private care ends on a positive note. Your co-branded collection notice or reminders are sent by email or text with a unique link so they can access the secure patientzone website and pay what’s due. They’ll receive an electronic receipt and you’ll get confirmation as soon as the invoice is settled.

After our Clearing Service paved the way for the private healthcare sector to adopt electronic invoicing for insurers, we now want to support this transition in the growing self-pay sector through our ongoing partnership with patientzone.

Want to know more?

To find out how our online payment solution can help you manage your self-pay invoices, contact our Business Development team.  

The post An effortless way to invoice self-pay patients 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.

In the private healthcare sector, there’s good reason for the positivity about growth in the self-pay market. Surveys by the charity Engage Britain and Yonder (commissioned by PHIN) have shown that more people are ready to consider paying for medical treatment following the pandemic. A report by analysts LaingBuisson predicted that the self-pay market would expand by 10-15% by 2024.

However, it’s important to make sure that an increased level of activity translates into a healthier balance sheet. Having the right technology to manage you practice can make the difference between running a profitable business and running yourself into the ground. Here are just some of the ways we can help.

Invoice at the click of a button

You may be seeing more patients come through your practice but you still need to make sure you get paid. Efficient and accurate invoicing is the single most important thing you can do for your practice finances.

Our innovative technology allows you to create and send invoices to all the major insurers, self-funded patients and other payors:

• Time-saving shortcuts 
  Saving time can mean saving money and that’s great for your bottom line. Our invoice auto-population feature is a prime example. If you’ve treated a patient in a hospital setting, you can search for them on the system and generate an invoice with the correct details already completed. Simply track progress with our status updates.

• The Clearing Service 
  Submit invoices to all the major insurers from one place. Each is automatically checked against the relevant criteria. Errors and anomalies are instantly flagged to be corrected and re-submitted. Simply track progress with our status updates.

• Online Payments via patientzone 
  Practitioners and clinics who are registered with patientzone can send electronic invoices to self-funded patients. Provide the convenience of secure online payment. You can also benefit from sending shortfall letters, details of debt reallocations and payment reminders.

• Paper invoicing 
  We cater for you to be truly flexible. If you need a paper invoice, our template ensures that these are clearly laid out and meet industry standards.

• Mobile invoicing 
  Available on the ePractice iOS app. We know you’re always on the go. Now you can set up and send an electronic invoice from your Apple device.

Payment tracking and collection

An effective and efficient system for recording money received will allow you to focus on outstanding invoices. However, this process is not always straightforward. Insurer payments may cover several invoices and there will sometimes be a shortfall amount to be reallocated to the patient. With ePractice you can:

• Record and reconcile payments 
  The payment tracking section of ePractice Lite and Pro makes it easy to find and allocate payments to the correct invoices. Make sure your accounts are up to date. Where insurers send electronic remittances (AXA Health, Aviva and Bupa), the system automatically analyses the remittance advice, generating a summary that assigns the payment to one or more invoices. Simply confirm with the click of a button. For self-pay patients or other payors, online payments are made via patientzone. Stay in the know – set up notifications so you can see when invoices have been paid. What’s more your ePractice is updated within 30 minutes.

• Reallocate debts 
  In the event of a shortfall, you can reallocate the debt and create a shortfall letter for the relevant patient. This automatically completes the invoice details and outstanding balance. Just register with patientzone and you can send these shortfall letters and payment reminders electronically.

Financial information

Every practice management system should provide a range of real-time financial reporting options. You need to monitor your practice’s vital signs. ePractice includes a variety of financial reports, all of which can be exported to other software. These can then be anonymised and shared as required.

Here are five of the most frequently used reports:

• Aged debt analysis displays outstanding debt by patients and segments by age bands (eg. 0-30 days, 31 – 60 days, 61 – 90 days outstanding). It’s an essential tool for credit control in any business.

• Outstanding invoices by payor shows all invoices with a current outstanding balance by payor type, including or excluding shortfalls. This makes it easy to see who requires a payment reminder.

• Invoice listing by payor provides a summary of invoices, by payor, for a requested date range. A filter allows you to view outstanding or settled invoices.

• The payment summary report shows the payments received, by invoice, within a selected date range. Now you can keep track of what has been paid and the payment method used.

• Financial snapshot provides a snapshot for the selected period, including the total number of invoices with values for payments, refunds and debts. It also provides a total of the debt outstanding at the start and end of the period.

Discover More

Find out how to invoice and track payments by signing up to our free Billing and Payments online tutorials 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.

To learn more about our ePractice features, see our guides in Help and Support.

To find out more about how ePractice can help make your business more profitable, contact our Business Development team.

The post How technology can help you make your practice profitable appeared first on Healthcode.

With a record number of patients now on the waiting list for NHS hospital treatment, it is probable that people who might not have previously contemplated going private will think again. Laing Buisson’s recent report into the UK Self-Pay market found evidence of heightened interest in private treatment across the country.

At the same time, the private sector cannot simply expect patients to come to them. As Laing Buisson put it: “practitioners need a compelling and attractive reason for patients to choose them and – more importantly – speak positively about their experience to friends and family.

Technology has a key role to play here, offer a high-quality level of service that will impress new patients and attract word of mouth recommendations. Here are five ways that Healthcode’s technology can help you exceed patients’ expectations:

1. Efficient appointment booking

Using the appointment functionality within ePractice, you can provide a professional and responsive service when someone calls to make an appointment.

Receptionists can instantly see which practitioners are active on a specific day across all treatment sites, as well as available slots. This means they can reserve a suitable appointment there and then, rather than having to check and call the patient back. If nothing is available at the patient’s preferred time, they can be added to a waiting list and there will be an automatic alert if the slot becomes free. Once an appointment is made, the system can generate confirmation letters, emails or texts with all the information that patients need. And when a patient presents for their appointment, their status on the system can be updated to ‘arrived’ so the practitioner is aware.

2. Choice and convenience

Other people would rather use an online booking site to research private health services and book an appointment. But until recently, central appointment booking has not been possible because there was no way to synchronise the mass of data – providers, services, practitioners and appointment slots – and the many different booking systems.

Healthcode’s online appointment booking solution, ICE, is the hidden engine room which powers the appointment booking process by enabling diverse service providers to connect and exchange information in real time. Practitioners and other providers will be able to publish their services and synchronise availability with multiple booking websites.

ICE will make private healthcare more accessible, increasing its appeal. For the first time, it will be possible to use a single booking application to search multiple healthcare organisations, using different criteria and filters to find the service that meets patients’ needs and then make an appointment at a convenient time and location.

3. Reassurance about private medical insurance

While self-pay market is growing, the majority of patients will still have private medical cover although not all will have their membership details to hand when they contact your practice.

Healthcode’s insurer membership look-up feature enables you to put patients’ minds at rest that they have valid insurance cover by matching their details against participating insurers’ databases. This simple and secure online check eliminates the need for multiple telephone calls and also ensures your practice has the correct details on its own system from the outset.

4. Ensuring continuity of care

Whether you are ordering diagnostic services, arranging for a patient to be admitted for surgery or discussing their case in a multi-disciplinary team meeting, it is essential that you provide relevant information in a timely and secure way.

Regular email is inherently insecure and should never be used to send identifiable patient information. By contrast, Healthcode’s secure messaging and file sharing services (healthDrive) are encrypted, enabling you to share sensitive information with individuals or specifically created contact groups on our global directory of practitioners, private hospitals and PMIs, without compromising patient privacy. This enables you to co-ordinate patient treatment effectively and ensure continuity of care when patients transfer to other healthcare settings.

5. Efficient invoicing

The rise in self-funded healthcare means practices need to consider how best to collect payment from patients, while patients themselves expect to be invoiced promptly and have a stress-free way to pay.

In partnership with the patientzone online payment platform, Healthcode offer a secure online patient electronic invoicing and payment service for you to charge for self-funded care and PMI shortfalls. Once signed-up with the patientzone service, you can create patient invoices in ePractice and send them through to patientzone. Patientzone then notifies patients by email or text that they have received an invoice which they can access and pay securely online. Within thirty minutes, their payment is automatically reconciled (in ePractice plans with payment recording) and you also receive notification of payment by email or text.

This online patient invoicing solution meets your data protection obligations and is more efficient than sending a paper invoice in the post. It is a more cost-effective way to implement online payment as there’s no need to arrange merchant accounts or pay credit card processing fees. Most importantly from a patient perspective, the process is seamless, secure and convenient and they have the reassurance of payment confirmation so they can focus on their recovery.

Want to know more?

Find out how our ePractice technology can help improve patient experience by contacting our Business Development team.

If you’ve already got ePractice but don’t know it’s full potential sign up for our free ePractice training modules 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.

The post How technology can help you exceed patients’ expectations appeared first on Healthcode.