Overdue payment plan and account balance

[Mifa]

We've been using payment plans to track insurance claims and payments (eClaims don't work for Canada). Since we upgraded to 5.8 from 4.6 a few months ago, there has been confusion with overdue payment plans. Before the overhaul of the account module, past due payment plans were added to the patient's balance. Now, whenever a payment plan is past due, the amount owed does not get added to the Balance, it does not appear in the patient account table as overdue and it does not appear either on aging reports as past due. It is however added to the balance on printed statements (which is correct). Moreover, the payment plans table is by default scrolled all the way up, and shows the oldest payment plan (as opposed to the patient account table which is by default scrolled all the way down to show the most recent entry). Version 6.1.5, which I have in test, has the same issues.

Is there a way to have the amount of past due payment plans accounted for in the balance (account module) and aging report?
Would it be possible to have the payment plans table scrolled down to the most recent entry by default, so that the staff can easily see when a payment is overdue?

[drtech]

I would like better tracking of payment plans on the aging report or something too. The payment plans are better/different certainly since the account re-make, but could still use improvement.

[jordansparks]

Just because e-claims don't work in Canada doesn't mean there is any problem with paper claims. Why on earth would you do a workaround like that when ordinary claims work perfectly well?

[Mifa]

Dr. Spark, I'm not sure if your answer is for me or Drtech. Anyway, my point is that aging report and account module balance don't include the amount from overdue payment plans. That's all, it had nothing to do with paper claim, Iwas just trying to explain why we use payment plans this way.

[jordansparks]

I think the payment plans grid is slightly larger now since version 5.8. But it is true that payment plans are now tracked entirely separately from the main account amount due. So payment plan reports should be used instead of aging reports. A lot of effort has gone into this new paradigm.

[Mifa]

Could it be possible to have the payment grid scrolled by default all the way down, to the most recent entry? That would make our life easier, and also it'll be consistent with what's done in the patient account grid.

Regarding the payment plans report, even in 6.1.5, there is no filtering option, so it's bringing back all the plans since day 1. In our case, about 60 pages... I'll try to create a request to produce a more focused report (i.e. only customers with "due now">0).

[jordansparks]

It is already filtering out payment plans that are paid off. Maybe you didn't attach the payments to the payment plan?

[Mifa]

No, payments are properly attached to plans. Any idea why paid off plans still show in this report? Also what about my suggestion regarding scrolling?

[jordansparks]

You're right. It's still on the request list. It's not too hard to add that feature, so I moved it up on the priority list.