TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

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happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Mon Dec 10, 2018 2:34 pm

Very Bad experience with TSI I recommend not using that agency. I wonder why would open dental allow such a company to tie up with its software. I can tell more details shortly.

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Wed Dec 12, 2018 9:38 am

further information
1: do let let TSI be tied up with opendental, the software connection between TSI and opendental is not good. It does not separate lot of things.
for example if the front desk team member changes unearned to earned income after moving the account for collections it is reported as if the practice collected new monies through the efforts of TSI
2: the sales people of TSI are very pushy and want to sell more and more accounts. My sales guy was james barnhill and he called the office every other day for pushig accounts into collections. obviously this company does not seem to understand health care. This guy wanted us to even push orhto payments for collections which are on longer payment plans.
3: the company doesnot separate insurance collections from patient collections. for example if your office moved an account for collections after 6 months and the patients insurance paid after that, you will have to pay 50% of that money coming from insurance to TSI.!!!
I wonder somebody could recommend a better company for collections. I understand that pre-collecting is the best but there are nuances when a collection agency may be helpfull.

allends
Posts: 235
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:29 am

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by allends » Wed Dec 12, 2018 11:50 am

I will be taking a look at this more in-depth, but for now I would like to address a few of your concerns.
I wonder why would open dental allow such a company to tie up with its software.
TSI is an integration that is optional to our customers. We integrate and bridge to many different softwares, many at the request of our customers. TSI is an example of this and many customers were requesting an integration for this service. Many companies have different approaches than Open Dental, but if our customers want an integration, we do not evaulate the style or approach of the company but do consider reputation. If there are shady, illegal or nefarious actoins taken by a thrid party toward our customers in common, we take this very seriously and will take action if warranted.
do let let TSI be tied up with opendental, the software connection between TSI and opendental is not good. It does not separate lot of things.
for example if the front desk team member changes unearned to earned income after moving the account for collections it is reported as if the practice collected new monies through the efforts of TSI
Choosing to use the TSI integration does synchronize many aspects of the account with TSI. This is intended functionality since these accounts have been sent to TSI and changing those accounts could have an affect on the overall balance that TSI needs to know about. Use another service if you do not want integration.
the sales people of TSI are very pushy and want to sell more and more accounts. My sales guy was james barnhill and he called the office every other day for pushig accounts into collections. obviously this company does not seem to understand health care. This guy wanted us to even push orhto payments for collections which are on longer payment plans.
TSI calling to encourage you to use their system seems expected, especially since you were a new customer. If you contact them and ask them to contact you less, and they do not, then Open Dental would like to know this so we can warn other potential users.
the company doesnot separate insurance collections from patient collections. for example if your office moved an account for collections after 6 months and the patients insurance paid after that, you will have to pay 50% of that money coming from insurance to TSI.!!!
I discussed with Nathan, our CEO, and he said that we should look into it, but that it seems strange to send a patient to collections while insurance is pending. We could even prevent this so it does not happen by accident. Did you do this on purpose? If so, why?
Allen
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Thu Dec 13, 2018 7:23 am

Dear Open Dental Representative,
Few Points to consider
1: It is not strange to receive payments form dental insurances over a 6 month to 12 month period. The reason being coordination of benefits. When a patient has 2 dental insurances it may take longer. Also dental insurance companies play many games of delaying payments. In this specific situation the patient had 2 dental insurances one from her job and the other from her husband.
2: My office have a billing company who bills dental insurance claims and when received it posts payments in the open dental. The integration of open dental and TSI does not separate these 2 payments.
3: I had transferred only 3 patients to TSI as a Test drive and that study has failed. Off of these 3 patients for 1 patient when unearned was turned earned income by a front desk team member while cleaning up accounts it showed as if the office collected new money from the patient in collections. This patient is roaming around with temporary crown for about 9 months now.
4: When my dental insurance billing company posted payments after one year of date of service. The payments came from the second insurance after as mentioned above.
5: the sales guy's job is to sell understood but it is beneficial to work with a company who or a team with in a company who understands these nuances. I would not know who designs softwares for open dental or TSI and who is responsible party due to its open architecture nature. I tried to work with TSI but they are behaving like Kindergarten Kids and sales guy is saying talk to manager and when i called the manager he said he do not care talk to the sales guy.
6: I LOVE open dental but it is a work in progress as well.
Do ask me more info as need be.
Thank you for looking into this matter.

nathansparks
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:39 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by nathansparks » Fri Dec 14, 2018 11:43 am

Dear Happysapiensdental,
I take two issues here that we can address, one from your original post and one from your follow-up.
1. Insurance payments should not be considered as payments form the patient. Perhaps expected insurance payments should also be subtracted from patient balance sent to TSI? But certainly insurance payments could be considered distinct and not subject to any of their fees.
2. Unearned income switched to earned should not show as a payment. This is the first we have heard of this and we will consider possible fixes after reproducing.
We will get back to you once we have determined a path forward on these issues. As a note, if someone calls with an issue like either of these, especially when you can do such a good job of conveying them, we do consider and add to the software to improve it as a high priority. Does this path forward sound like it might help?

allends
Posts: 235
Joined: Fri Aug 23, 2013 11:29 am

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by allends » Mon Dec 17, 2018 2:51 pm

Happysapiensdental,
I have looked into both issues and have solutions for each.

Unearned income switching to earned
We will be enhancing the payment window to not send to TSI if the income transfer box is checked and all of the splits are for the same family. Since you can only complete an income transfer with a $0 value then there should be no balance changes to TSI.

Insurance Payments
I realize that receiving payments from dental insurance 6-12 months later may not be a rare occurence, but this is why we have a built in checkboxes for the Accounts Receivable Manager to exclude accounts with insurance pending or unsent completed procedures. TSI is a large player in this business and we had many requests to integrate with them. Despite that, we do not see a way to separate insurance payments from patient payments using the integration tools provided by TSI. Our recommendation would be to check the "Exclude if insurance pending" checkbox in the Accounts Receivable Manager and save that as the default. The will allow you to postpone sending accounts with pending insurance to TSI so this problem will no longer occur. Information on the filter and window can be found here https://www.opendental.com/manual/tsimanage.html

I am glad that you and I agree on OpenDental being a work in progress. Here at OpenDental we are constantly working to improve our product and the services we provide.
That drive to be a better management software is what this company was built on and we have every intention to continue to improve for the betterment of every one of our customers.

I hope this alleviates your issues with TSI.
Please let me know if you have any additional concerns.
Allen
Open Dental Software
http://www.opendental.com

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Tue Dec 18, 2018 7:19 pm

Dear Allen,
thank you for looking into the issues. Obviously the Integration is Deficient in its capacity.
I wonder if Open Dental has talked with TSI about this deficiency.
We were never trained on this matter either by Open Dental or TSI.
This issue may go for litigation. I am not willing to pay TSI for deficiencies in their or open dental's software.
I hope that somebody at open dental explains the deficiencies to TSI and resolve this in a friendly way.
It also convey's that Quality Assurance was not very well implemented.
My Recommendation for fellow dentist's is that do not directly connect open dental with TSI. You can go on TSI's online portal and manually add the numbers which is much safer than half baked integrations.

nathansparks
Posts: 172
Joined: Mon Aug 04, 2008 12:39 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by nathansparks » Wed Dec 19, 2018 9:23 am

Happysapiensdental:
In fact, if you connect to TSI outside of Open Dental (which is fine), you will have the same issue with the insurance payments unless you violate your agreement with TSI. You must report the insurance payments whether automatically or through TSI's portal or some other way. It is standard in this industry that all payments are considered. Any payment that lowers the debt owed is considered by TSI. They are simply not giving you a way to collect a debt that you have agreed that they are to collect without their fees.
Once you send them an account, no matter how you indicate that a debt owed you has been reduced, they get their fees. This is not in any way unique to this integration, which we carefully implemented with TSI involvement.
Regards,
Nathan Sparks
CEO, Open Dental

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Wed Dec 19, 2018 4:43 pm

Dear Mr. Sparks Sir,
I hope you are doing well. Few points:
1: I have very strong reasons to believe that there is a flaw in the integration or the person who did the settings did something wrong. I have been invoiced for things which were "OUTSTANDING CHARGES!" in open dental. Also these charges were entered before the account was moved to collections!
2: I have been invoiced for Insurance Payments entered before the account was moved into Collections! The account was moved to collections on 08/20/2018 and I am being invoiced for everything that happened in the account since May 2018.
3: I have been Invoiced for reporting unearned income to earned income in the software. Which i have mentioned before.
4: I was not given any agreement to sign by TSI / or his sales rep. This guys James Barnhill is cooking something or does not know what he is doing. James Barnhill is an Independent Contractor of TSI, that means he is his own business and some how has agreement with TSI. I purchased the accounts from this Independent Contractor.
5: James Barnhill is probably a novice in IT and he did the installation and setup of part of the integration. I have to suspect this person if he is trying to embezzle the practice by moving data as mentioned above. Myself and my front desk team member had complained to james barnhill and he went and changed something in the integration setup.
6: Yes I do agree with one thing that I did not Know that an account is an account and i have to pay even if insurance pays. The account in question here was the first account I moved with TSI on the Day of Training and James Barnhill obliviously "encouraged" us to move all the accounts and luckily i moved only one account on that day.
I had no choice but to look for help from open dental about this issue because we got tired of presenting our issue for about 3 months and getting a ping-pong treatment by the sales rep/independent contractor and its manager. We are being bullied by this representative and his manager to pay the invoice with out regard to anything else. I can prove all the info above if a senior member of open dental would like to do a screen sharing and see what we see on open dental as well as TSICO.COM
Again thank you very very much sir for looking into this matter.

kezian
Posts: 7
Joined: Sat Oct 20, 2018 2:52 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by kezian » Sun Dec 30, 2018 4:17 pm

I feel like I have to chime here and give my experiences with TSI and specifically Jim Barnhill. I am a long time user of dental software and imaging going back to the days of Dentrix when it was Easy Dental in the DOS version from Texas.

We have recently converted from Dentrix to Open Dental and in the process of working out the bugs and configuring the items that we used in Dentrix. I feel OD is far superior to Dentrix and a true pleasure to work with the staff.

A big missing module in OD is the A/R reporting, tracking and collections which after many discussion with high level techs at OD , I was introduced to the TSI Accounts Receivable program.

After a bit of evaluation of the program, I thought it was great , very close to the Dentrix Collection manager , it has the patient balance filtered by amount so that anything under 25.00 is not listed, it has last payment, aging of the balance, # days outstanding and most importantly it allow you to link to patient account and write notes for the patient.. It’s a very much improved Interactive report that is very useful for collection of past due account by our front office staff.
The current A/R report in OD is relatively useless for active collections and notation process.
The TSI collections report which is currently located in MANAGE module of OD 18.3 can only be accessed by signing up with TSI and it is FREE of charge. I am surprised that OD will not release this to the entire OD user base because it is a very valuable report and I understand in 18.4 will be enhanced to include the history section which will allow detailed documentation of the collection process and communication of past due accounts.

The installation of the TSI link by Jim Barnhill was very quick, flawless and I almost thought that he was one of the advanced tech support personnel form OD. He also in about 10 -15 minutes ran through the program and described the services of TSI and the value of the collections services. His work was very profession and thoroughly competent . We had used them prior when they were Trans world and were very happy with their services, but lost touch in the past years.

We are in the process of using their services form the letter sending service to the hard core collection service ,all this is truly facilitated by the linked software written by Open dental specifically for TSI.

I think you will be very happy with the software and this should be a trend for OD to write reports that are interactive and allow integration with the other modules in the software.
A few of my favorite reports are the Outstanding Insurance Report, Treatment Finder and the Recall Report which I hope all future reports will adopt this format.

So to conclude , my experiences were completely opposite from the above Drs view and I only have positive results and gratitude toward TSI and OD for allowing this report of A/R collections to be created. I would love to hear others thoughts on how their Front office does the collection letters , calls and follow up and your opinion on how this report can be improved. Thanks

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Fri Jan 04, 2019 7:14 pm

Can someone please tell me how to place images or say screen shots on this forum so i can show pictures. I tried the insert image "Img" but did not work. I have qualifications in DBMS - database management systems (SQL SERVER, oracle etc) and have some previous programming experience in C++ in late 90's, though i am a dentist in private practice at this point in time. Regardless the purpose of initiating this discussion is to bring up the point that there is a bug in the filters of the TSI module, or there has been a human error in the installation and setup unique to my office. The purpose is not to defame any person or a company but to seek "EXCELLENT" customer service and be "HEARD". At this point I am in communication via personal emails with Mr. James Barnhill, I will be setting up an appointment with him in the coming week and convey the forum the verdict or pursue a resolution further.
The very first line item in the TSI incoive i am disputing has an amount of $ 3900, this amount is a total of 3 crowns billed at $1200 each and 1 surgical extraction @ $300 office fees equaling $ 3900 billed to the patient in the account module. Now this amount is not even a payment from anybody an insurance company or a patient or even unearned turned into earned income. TSI is Invocing me on this !!!!

To be continued......

rhaber123
Posts: 415
Joined: Fri Dec 11, 2009 12:09 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by rhaber123 » Fri Jan 04, 2019 9:01 pm

How to insert Images or screen shot in the message, in OD forum:

youtube : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9antIjDz-9Q

1- take a screenshot
2- upload the photo to the web ( to google drive, or any photo album website on the web....)
and figure out the URL (web address) of your image on the web, for example http://www.googledrive/screenshot.jpg

3- Now in OD forum, click on "POSTREPLY"
4- Here you get a menu , and a text message area to write your text
5- click on Img, in the menu. Now you can insert an image

6- you will automatically get in the text box the following: img] [/img
just don't change what is displayed automatically
the word img must be between [ ]

7- insert your image web address in between img] [/img , for example img] http://www.googledrive/screenshot.jpg [/img
note: I had to remove the " [ " to be able to show it to you,

8- click submit
DONE

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Fri Jan 18, 2019 9:47 am

Update:
I had a phone meeting with Mr. James Barnhill and he told me that he has decided to null the Invoice. I have not received a new Invoice yet with zeroed out liabilities yet, but it may happen by end of January. Mr. Barnhill mentioned that he wants to keep the relationship and I agreed with the same. He said i am the only dentist who has complained about this data problem. Either I am actually the only office with this issue or may be other doctors have missed this data problem.
I wish to apologies that I made personal comments for Mr. Barnhill out of anger and wish I would have been more polite in my previous posts.
The next step as has been agreed upon between myself and Mr. Barnhill is to have a conference with open dental technician present and discuss. I will be scheduling that date and time soon.
thank you

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Fri Apr 19, 2019 10:40 am

An update on this issue: So far we have not been able to meet with Mr. Jim Barnhill and opendental representatives to look at what had happened. So far 3 attempts has been made to get a meeting done. The first time I had to reschedule because i had to see an emergency patient. after that second time Mr. Barnhill said he had a doctors appointment few hours before the meeting time. Today the third time he cancelled again 2 hours before the meeting time and have not given any reasons yet. we called open dental and they said the reps assigned to this issue Sarah and Mark received a cancellation notice. Now I have been waiting for the meeting to happen. I am trying to see if i can meet sarah and / or mark atleast today to look into the software.

happysapiensdental
Posts: 9
Joined: Tue Dec 04, 2018 12:06 pm

Re: TSI Collection Agency BAD experience reporting

Post by happysapiensdental » Fri Apr 19, 2019 6:13 pm

So after some emails and phone calls I could manage to reach Mr. James Barnhill (TSI representative), Mr. Mark Johnson and Ms. Sarah (Open Dental).

What was done during this meeting:
1: Invoices from TSI was checked against the open dental account module by screen sharing where TSI and open dental reps both visualized the issue.
2: Ms Sarah ran a special query in the open dental database of my practice and said that there was some software problem and agreed to it.
3: Yes a BUG and Programming deficiencies were identified. BUG meant here as data transferring from open dental to TSI application which was not REALISTIC / Logical and My Invoice which showed $8000 of payments made to the practice by the patient and TSI asking about $3500 was not correct. Programming deficiencies were basically related to as always all human behavior not entirely represented in a software and human beings not trained enough about the software and its intended algorithmic use.
4: Mr. Barnhill mentioned that in last 6 months after my initiating this post in the forum many other dentists presented similar problems with the TSI - Open-dental software application. He Apologized!
5: Open dental has and will completely fix the programming deficiency soon as updates per Mr. Mark and Ms. Sarah.

Lessons Learnt for me and my front desk team:
1: If you are moving a patient to TSI, for all practical purpose you are FIRING the patient from the open dental software. You cannot touch the account ledger other than to post any payments made by the patient to the practice.
2: You cannot post any Insurance payments also if you have transferred the patient account to TSI else the practice may have to pay TSI money which was not really collected by their efforts. I believe Open Dental has or will fix this problem.
3: One Cannot turn any unearned income to earned income in the open dental because it is considered as a payment to the practice by the software and again will add to the TSI Invoice.

I would like to end this by saying that DDS is an intellectual class, many other professionals like CPA's, lawyers etc love to work with the DDS group. Overall The DDS group pays pretty well to other professionals and also gives respect. Do we wonder why open dental had to be created in the first place. Nothing New! It is a 200 plus years old fight. It is unfortunate that i had to access this forum to bring TSI to listen to what i am saying. I and my team did not say anything different today then what we had said 6 months ago.
Anyways for now I am moving on and continuing to work with TSI. Thank you very much to Open Dental team members and my special thank you to Sparks Brothers. If Open Dental keeps up with its customer service proficiency. I have no doubt that it may someday dominate the world dental practice management software market.

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