Discounts are reductions of billing items not payments

[seattleod]

When adding discounts, they are currently considered "payments" instead of "reduction of the cpt/bill code". Because of this, when allocating patient payment to the correct codes, the edit payment screen does not reflect the correct discounted amounts. So, for example, if a patient gets a 30% discount on lenses V2750, and they originally cost 120, the discounted amount is 86.  This amount should automatically come up when applying payments, but it doesn't. The result is unknown allocations when receiving that payment from the patient.  The edit payment screen should show 86 under Customize Payment Details, not 120. This area should also reflect amounts previously paid toward the respective codes. It is a hassle to manually subtract discounts to each code under Customize Payment Details in addition to manually keeping track of what has already been paid toward those codes before applying payments.  Why doesn't it reduce the amounts to account for previous payments as well as discounts?

[vaderkty]

You realize you have to set EACH insurance to auto calculate. This will add the discounts were they go but it is very time consuming to set up. I only added VSP signature and Choice to auto calculate to make billing easier. Everything else I just write off in the insurance adjustment section to make invoice say zero.

That said, I am now starting to auto calculate the different plans under Davis, UHC, Block vision and eyemed since plans are now an option. I didn't set it up before because I didn't want a billion insurances in my drop down. It would be too much to do during appointment set up. It is worth the work in the end but very time consuming to set up EVERY plan (especially the 60 different Davis Vision plans)

Not sure if this is what you meant but this is all done in the insurance section of admin and the billing codes. you open up each one and set the insurance amount expected and the discount given along with patient copay...for EVERY billing code.
You can copy and paste the similar plans and just change the difference. That is MUCH faster.

[caitlin]

I think the OP is referring to the Customize Payment Details option that allows you to assign a CPT code and category every time you post a patient payment. This is really helpful when generating end of the month reports, but really annoying in the scenario presented when you discount an item and miscellaneous/unknown CPT codes are added to balance it out somehow. This puts payments into the missing category that can throw off end of the month reporting for revenue. It would be nice if this was much more straightforward. Assigning the payments to invoice line items is great, but the discounts and previous payments can really throw the system off...

[vaderkty]

Are you using the Daily/Multi daily report or the Production report? Production report is a better report for revenue. We only use the other one for a "Day Sheet" to have a list of the patients with activity in the billing screen itself.

[caitlin]

Yes, I'm using the production report- that's the only place to see revenue by category I believe. Do you ever have payments posting in the "Missing" category?

[vaderkty]

Oct 27, 2014 10:35:44 GMT -6 caitlin said:

Yes, I'm using the production report- that's the only place to see revenue by category I believe. Do you ever have payments posting in the "Missing" category?

No never. I didn't know there was a "missing" column. There was a NONE category that came up at first use. It was found to be credit card payment type not being selected. A little training and problem is resolved. Haven't seen it in over a year now.