BENEFITS OF THE PRODUCT:

· Practices have the option of incorporating automated calling and emailing to guarantors versus letters

· Automates the entire patient collections process using CURRENT technology

· Different work flows based on the amounts due from guarantors

· Works at the guarantor level

· Works with multiple tickets

· Will watch for patient payments and determine whether it was sufficient and automatically act accordingly

· Prints one collection letter per guarantor account for each collection status for the guarantor

· Can be configured to run at prescheduled times for any combination of collection statuses

GENERAL OVERVIEW:

The Automated Collections System (ACS) parameters are set up by the practice and runs in the background. It manages all the relevant guarantor tickets as a group, watching for sufficient payment or expiration without sufficient payment and automatically takes prescribed actions. Users can intervene in the automated process for a specific guarantor, changing the course of the automation for that guarantor or removing that guarantor from the automated process all together.

The practice establishes “Global Settings” that will apply to all guarantors, tickets, and collection statuses. The practice sets up the details of each collection status that will be automatically managed. Once the settings are configured, all tickets in collection statuses that are included as a “Managed Status” will be automatically processed as defined by the practice. Actions per status can include any combination of a letter, automated phone call, and/or email.

The practice configures the ACS Printer Application for a more powerful means of printing collection letters. Because the collection letters are printed by guarantor, Summit Software Technologies provides many new data elements that can be included in the collection letter templates. These data elements allow the addition of specific information about the guarantor balance, related tickets and payment information.

POINTS TO REMEMBER / GLOSSARY OF TERMS:

• Minimum Amount Due / Sufficient Payment
  • This inforrmation is used to determine whether the amount of guarantor payments received is sufficient enough to prevent moving to a higher ranking collection status.
  • Calculated using a “Global Percentage” established by the practice. This percentage is applied to all guarantor past due balances.
  • A user can also override this calculation by entering a set dollar amount.
• Balance Past Due
  • This is the grand total of the guarantor’s patient balances for tickets in collections.

• Managed Collection Status:
  • The practice chooses which Collection Statuses it wants to automate. Some or all of the Collection Statuses listed in GE Centricity CPS (CPS) are included in the Automated Collection System (ACS); these are referred to as “managed” tickets or “managed statuses”.
  • Each managed status has settings determined by the practice. The settings are automatically applied when the ticket enters a new collection status, when a sufficient payment is made on the guarantor account or when the status expires without sufficient payment.
  • Collection Statuses included in the ACS are ranked by the practice from lowest to highest priority. The highest priority ranking is used whenever a decision is made by ACS in order to maintain all manged tickets within the guarantor account in sync.

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ACS ADMINISTRATIVE FORM – SYSTEM MAINTENANCE – INITIAL START UP

This section allows the practice to indicate which users will have the ability to change the minimum amount due for a guarantor, the collection status, the date the guarantor entered the collection status, the number of days left in the status and/or whether a collection letter should be included to print in the next batch for the guarantor collection status.

ACS ADMINISTRATIVE FORM – ESTABLISH GLOBAL SETTINGS

• What dollar amount / percentage of Guarantor’s Past Due (Patient Balances only) is considered to be a sufficient payment?
  • ACS watches for payments on any ticket in an automated collection status and decides whether the Minimum Amount Due has been paid against the guarantor past due amount. For example, for accounts with $100 past due and the practice has a policy that 50% of the past due amount is acceptable, then receipt of a $50 payment or more would move these accounts down a sufficient payment path.
• Will users have the ability to override the calculated sufficient payment with a different minimum amount due?
  • Answering “Yes” allows users to override the calculated minimum due (as in the case of a payment plan)
  • Answering “No” will always calculate the minimum due based on the percentage of the past due and users will not be presented the option of overriding the amount for specific guarantors.
  • The ability to override is limited to the users selected under the system maintenance security set up page.

• If and when another visit for the guarantor enters Collections, should the minimum amount due for the account revert back to the calculated (%) amount or maintain the user-specified override amount?
  • Determine whether the practice wants to maintain the current payment plan assigned to the guarantor when additional tickets become past due or to default back to the sufficient payment %.
• Do you want to continue to print statements for guarantors while they are in the Automated Collections System?
  • Determine whether the practice wants the guarantor to continue receiving statements along with the collection letters that are assigned to their specific collection status.

• Select collection status to use as work list for guarantor tickets that are affected by a credit balance.
  • Determine what collection status to use to identify any accounts that have rolled into a credit balance.
• Guarantor Balance Driven Statuses
  • If the practice wants to manually place tickets in the automated system, balance drived ranges are not used.
  • To ensure that every ticket with a patient balance entering collections is sent directly into the Automated Collections System, the practice will have at least one balance driven range and status. If all tickets should start at the same collection status regardless of a balance, there is only one range (from .01 to as high as necessary). If the starting collection status can vary based on balance, there are different dollar ranges for each starting point.
• Determine Collection Statuses for which phone calls should be made. Custom messages are available for each collection status for the practice. Call confirmation data will be loaded back into Centricity.

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ACS ADMINISTRATIVE FORM – COLLECTION STATUS PARAMETER SETUP

1. Select Status to Automate (status listing is generated from what is already set up in Centricity) and click Add.

2. Select Status from the Current Status List and click Edit to set up the practice parameters for the selected status.

3. Upon Entering this Status

a. Determine the Visit Owner to be assigned when the guarantor enters the collection status.

b. Create the Correspondence Note (leave blank if none).

i. This is the note that will show under the description field for each ticket that is moved to this collections status. The user will show as “ACS”.

c. Number of Days to next contact

i. This is the number of days that the guarantor has in this status until the system will automatically check the guarantor payments and apply the status settings.

d. Process to Next Contact

i. Selecting the “Only Reset if date is in the past” option will keep the Next Contact Date as it currently is unless the date is already past. For example, if you indicate that the Next Contact Date should be set for 15 days after entering this status, but the Next Contact Date is already scheduled to take place in 5 days, then the system will not move the date back 10 more days.

ii. Selecting the “Always reset date” option will reset the contact date regardless of whether it would otherwise occur sooner.

4. Expiration without Sufficient Payment

a. Number of Days to Status Expiration

i. This is how long the guarantor should be left in this status without a minimum payment being made.

b. New Status of Expiration

i. This is the new collection status the guarantor will move to if the current status expires without sufficient payment.

c. Visit Owner at Expiration

i. This is the visit owner to be assigned after currerct status has expired.

d. Create Correspondence Note when leaving this status (leave blank if none)

i. This is the note that will show under the description field for each ticket that is moved to this collections status. The user will show as “ACS”.

e. After expiration, reset Minimum Due

i. Selecting “Require Payment in Full” will no longer accept a minimum due such as a payment plan if the collection status expires without the minimum due having been paid.

ii. Selecting “Leave as is” will continue to accept a minimum due, either through calculating it from the practice percentage or accepting an amount from a user’s override of the percentage.

iii. Selecting “Use Global %” will continue to accept a minimum due payment, but any established payment plans are dropped and the minimum due is calculated from the practice percentage.

5. Sufficient Payment

a. Acceptable Payment

i. Allows you to accept minimum payments or only payment in full when in this status.

b. Set Next Collection Status to

i. If sufficient/minimum payment is made, this is the next collection status to move the guarantor into. You are able to select the same collection status; it will simply execute the entry settings again, such as re-setting the clock until expiration.

c. Create Correspondence Note (leave blank if none)

i. This is the note that will show under the description field for each ticket that is moved to this collection status. The user will show as “ACS”.

6. Payment Plan Option

COLLECTIONS LETTERS

The Automated Collections System provides additional “data elements” for placement in collection letter templates that provide data on the guarantor level.

• Print one letter per guarantor.

• A letter will print for a guarantor at the following times:

o Each time a new automated collection status is set, such as:

– When a ticket enters the visit status of Collections

– After every sufficient payment (depending on practice parameters)

– After every expiration without sufficient payment

– When an insurance balance is transferred to a patient

o When an additional ticket enters the visit status of Collections

• Practice can choose to attach a copy of the letter sent to the relevant patient(s) and/or visit(s).

HOW TO MAP COLLECTION LETTERS TO COLLECTION STATUSES

• Double click on ACS Icon
• Click on File
• Select Printing Configuration
• Under Create Letters- Letter Options- select Edit Mappings, the below screen will appear
• Click on Find Document and select a collection letter
• Select the Collection status that should be mapped to the selected letter
• Click Map Status – the mapping will now show in the Current Collection Statuses that are mapped box
• When back at the main Configure screen – Select Save & Minimize

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ACS is designed to automatically print collection letters and generate call/email files:

• Within the ACS Administration – Click on File – Printing Configuration
• Under Run Options – Select Auto (Run Schedule)

• Click Configure Schedule

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• Select Day to print letters or generate calls/emails
• Specify Time to print letters or generate call/email files
• Select Collection Status
• Make sure to check mark the Active box to ensure the program will recognize and run schedule
• Click Save
• When back at the main Configure screen-Select Save & Close

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GUARANTOR ACCOUNT

Launched from either the Patient Information Screen, the Collections Screen, or from the Visit Screen, the user can see the outstanding tickets for the entire Guarantor Account. (If launched from the Collections screen, be sure to select a ticket before opening the page. Otherwise, it will not know which guarantor you want to view and will come up with no data on the page.)

The Guarantor Account Page is only editable when the logged in user has security permisstion to edit AND when the guarantor has at least one ACS managed ticket. If one or both of these conditions are not met, the buttons and data entry fields will not be visible.

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Payment Plan Option

ACS Admin Setup for Payment Plans now allows practices to define the due date based on Month, Week or Days.

Select the Status is for a payment plan box if your practice will allow patients a payment plan option. This will trigger a Pay By date in the Guarantor Account page.

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ACS Guarantor Account Page will include an additional section that will show date of month when payment plan amount is due as well as number of days remaining before expiration.

If the patient moves from payment plan to delinquency and then back to payment plan, the original date of month will be retained for calculating due dates in the future.

GUARANTOR BALANCE WORKLIST

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Launched from the Main Menu of Centricity, the user can perform various searches for tickets and letters related to patients/guarantors in managed statuses within ACS.

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1) Search by Collections or Printed.

2) When Collections is selected, the criteria page allows the user to search for specific information related to managed tickets.

3) Search all tickets specific to a patient and/or guarantor.

4) When a row is highlighted, user can click Guarantor Page to view all activity for ACS tickets in Collections.

5) When a row is highlighted, user can click Multi Visit Page to perform MVA functions.

6) Export Data – will export to a .csv file all tickets which are selected via check mark.

7) Displays totals for report based on search criteria.

1) Search by Collections or Printed.

2) When Printed is selected, the criteria page allows the user to search for specific information related dates letters were generated by collection status

3) Search all letters specific to a patient and/or guarantor.

4) When a row is highlighted, user can click Guarantor Page to view all activity for ACS tickets in Collections.

5) Export Data – will export to a .csv file all tickets which are selected via check mark.

6) Displays totals for report based on search criteria.