Payment Plans

[drtech]

Jordan,
Wondering what your plans are for the payment plan balance once that section is complete. Are you going to add the payment plan balance to the account balance and that way it will show in the "Due Now" and "What You Owe Now" lines for patients? That seems logical, but didn't know if you had other plans. I was thinking about adding one more line to the "Floating balance section" that says "Total Principal in Pay Plans" or something like that also.

I can't wait to start using the payment plans as we hadn't before since it was rather confusing on what the patient actually owed. I think the new account and statements are a great improvement.

And...btw...I love how the PPO plan writeoffs are estimated now. Very simple to use and it works well!

[jordansparks]

I finished it a few days ago so it's in SVN if you want to see it. For space reasons, I had to add it to the regular amount due.

[drtech]

Jordan, NEW payment plans seem to work great...but I think there is an error on the conversion of some old payment plans.

Here is what I have found. I have about 5 accounts with previous payment plans. These people have paid off the entire payment plan and should have a $0 balance.
Now, their accounts show balances. Example, The account has a $680 balance and the payment plan shows an equal credit. So technically it is still $0, but very confusing. Payments are posted directly in the payment plan window. Not sure exactly what happened, but something didn't convert correctly. The statements will show a $-680 payment plan and the balance $680. I either need to manually adjust these or if you can figure out what happened and can fix it automatically I will wait.

Don't want all OD users to have balance problems with conversion. Can you duplicate this? It is on all 5 of my prev. payment plan accounts. Using Beta v5.6.8

[jordansparks]

It's simply because some payments are attached to the payment plan which should not be. Open them and detach them.

[drtech]

good, that is what I already did

[B.Thomas]

I have to say the changes to the payment plan are excellent. Much easier to understand and use. Surprisingly the new math discovered many errors. We were using various adjustments to make the accounts balance when there was a discrepancy from the child to the guarantor. This all showed up on the aging report which we are still cleaning up.

Good work!

[drtech]

I posted a changed in v5.7 head that incorporates payment plans into the totals at the top of the account module. Before it was just to easy to miss the patient actually does owe the office $. Just trying it our of office now (I added it back to my v5.6) and everyone seems to like it...just wanting some feedback if everyone likes it or if I should make some changes.

One other thing I think would be really helpful would be to include payments...or maybe just one for space (the most recent) to show in the payment plan grid on the account. Right now, it is not really clear the last time the pt made a payment if they have payment plans without double clicking on the payment plan.

[B.Thomas]

I'm glad you already made the change of having the "payment plan due" amount also show up on the "balance" section above. With the big red font that is what the user's eyes are drawn too and they may miss the payment plan section below. Will the payment plan amounts also show up on the aging?

I'm torn on including the payments on lines. It is important on statements but more lines adds to the confusion. I think Jordan is working on a new "show tab" in the account module. If that works out I would say include everything then the user can uncheck what they don't want to show.

Thanks,

[B.Thomas]

One more problem we discovered which is a little more specific. When we use payment plans to track insurance payments, the insurance checks do not post to the insurance payment plan.

For example, we receive an insurance check and we post it to the insurance claim ("Create Check" button), but the amount is never tracked on the insurance payment plan. When I try to enter the insurance check as a regular payment, there is no option to apply it to the insurnce payment plan (which is probably a good thing anyways). Any ideas?

[jordansparks]

The insurance payment plan handling is addressed in the user manual. It's by design. It cannot show as a row, because those are payment plan objects. I'm ok with adding that information to the description column.

[drtech]

One other thing I think would be really helpful would be to include payments...or maybe just one for space (the most recent) to show in the payment plan grid on the account. Right now, it is not really clear the last time the pt made a payment if they have payment plans without double clicking on the payment plan

Jordan, what about including the most recent payment somewhere on the payment plan grid?

[B.Thomas]

I came across another glitch today. When a payment plan has a gurantor from a differenet family (eg Divoriced dad), the new payment plan box does not include payments that have been paid on the patient's account screen. However, when switching to the gurantor's account page, the payment plan box and amounts are correct.

[jordansparks]

Are you talking about the grid at the top of the Account module, or are you talking about the Payment Plan edit window?

The assumption was made that all splits attached to a payment plan would be under the guarantor's account. The program should be enforcing this assumption. So my question is, when you look at the actual split, which patient is the split assigned to? It should be the guarantor for the payment plan regardless of family situations. If that is correct, then the problem is more subtle. But if the split does not match the pp guarantor, then we have to look at how that happened.

[drtech]

i mean on the grid directly on the account, so when you glance at the account you can see the most recent payment on a plan without opening the payment plan window.
I was thinking one line below the payment plan the payment was made for the most recent payment (not all the payments just for space reasons)

[jordansparks]

Sorry, I don't like that idea.

[drtech]

ok... do you have a better idea? The problem we have is when you are looking at the account you cannot see when the patient made their last payment(if they are only paying on payment plans.) It does not show without going to the payment plan window, so It is very confusing if a patient is current on their account (using payment plans), yet the last payment visible on the account screen could be months old (not attached to a payment plan.)

[jordansparks]

I'm ok with adding that information to the description column.

[B.Thomas]

Regarding using payment plans for insurance, how difficult would it be to have insurance payments post in the payment plan window with the new and improved payment plans? Or is it totally impossible? Having to manually delete each payment as it is received is extraneous work.

Thanks,

[jordansparks]

We had to stop the recent overhaul somewhere. That's one thing we decided was not urgent. It will be improved later.

[yenalike]

Hi,thanks for the posts. Is this thread still active? Any updates bout this? Thanks!


Regards,
yenalike
Placement financier

[jordansparks]

It's a pretty old thread. We are a number of versions ahead of this discussion.