Weāve broken this guidance up into small, digestible chunks. Youāll find links to the other steps at the bottom of the page.
This guide is a bit more detailed, so you might want to grab a cuppa before settling into it. āļø
Weāll break this down into two sections: Booking a Patientās Initial Visit and Booking Follow-Up Visits.
It may seem like there are lots of steps here, but weāre going through things in fine detail. In practice, it can be as quick as a few seconds and a handful of clicks to book an appointment, select the policy, and set the fee. Itāll all become second nature in no time at all!
Booking and insuring initial visits
Letās imagine we have booked our patient in for an appointment, and they bring their insurance policy information in with them. Hereās what their appointment might look like before adding their policy:
In the above example, the patient is booked in for an Initial Assessment and Treatment with our Physiotherapist, at our private rate of Ā£75. Now, we know our patient has a Vitality Health policy, and we need to change the appointment and invoices to reflect that.
Scroll to the Insurance Info area of the appointment panel. Click Add Policy > Select the policy you created for them OR Add New Policy. As Iāve already created a policy for them, I can select it from the list of options:
Youāll now see two invoices for the appointment, and a little briefcase icon showing thereās an insurance policy linked to the visit in the diary:
You may be thinking āwe can see the policy on there, but it looks like the insurance company are being billed the private rate of Ā£75, which isnāt right.ā Youāre spot on, and this is where the billing codes and contract rates come into play š
Just above the insurance policy you selected for the appointment, youāll see a search field labelled āAdd Billing Codesā. Click into that field, and you can search through your list of created billing codes. Hint: Press your space bar in the search field to load all your favourites. Any codes you create are automatically added to your favourites.
Add your billing code to the appointment, and Jane will quickly refresh the invoice, so it reflects your billing code rate, rather than your standard rate. In my example, Iāve added my code for an Initial Physiotherapy Appointment. When I set the code up, I told Jane that Vitality Health cover Ā£50 for those appointments. Jane knows to flip the fee to Ā£50 based on the code and contract rate for Vitality, and quickly refreshes the invoices to reflect that.
If you kept the policy set at the default billing amounts (100% covered by the insurer), you should see an invoice for the insurer with their contracted rate, and a āNo Chargeā invoice for the patient at this stage.
Awesome! Thatās the patientās initial visit booked with the correct fee š
Booking and insuring follow-up visits
Jane makes it super simple to copy a patientās insurance policy from one visit to the next. The only thing youāll need to remember to do is change the billing code to the follow-up price from the patientās second visit on.
Iāve booked my patient in next week for their first follow up visit, a regular 45-Minute Physiotherapy Appointment. When booking the visit, Jane flags up that they have an insurance policy. Iām going to select to use āSame as previousā to pull through all the correct details.
The insurance policy will be set at the initial assessment rate (as thatās what I copied from the previous visit). All I need to do is scroll to the Insurance Info area, and use the small dropdown arrow next to the billing code to select change billing code.
Now, select the code you created for your follow-up fee. In my case, I set my contract rate for Vitality Health at Ā£42 for a 45-minute physio appointment. Again, Jane will quickly update the invoices to reflect the correct fee.
Hereās how the invoices appear for this appointment now that Iāve added the correct billing code, and Jane has picked up the contract rate:
Now, every time you book the patient in for a subsequent visit, you can select to copy the insurance information from their previous appointment. Thatāll ensure the follow-up code is copied over, so the fee is correct for each subsequent appointment.
Typically, youāll only ever need to worry about changing the billing code when they move from their initial appointment to their first follow-up. From their second appointment on, the follow-up code will be populated automatically.
Phew, we have covered quite a lot in this one, nice work making it this far! Thereās one final step to go, and it might be the most important of allāinvoicing and recording payments. šø
You can navigate to any section of this guidance using the links below:
- Step 1 - Setting up Insurers
- Step 2 - Billing Codes & Contract Rates
- Step 3 - Insurance Policies
- Step 4 - Insuring an Appointment
- Step 5 - Invoicing & Payments
Written by Jamie - UK Support Team