Identify unpaid accounts to be followed up
These metrics can help identify unpaid accounts to increase cash flow, and reduce the risk of bad debt.
Cash is key to the continued operation of the practice, so these metrics can be used to review and create lists for your team to chase up.
Keeping debtors low not only helps with the cash flow, but it will also help show your Service Fee-paying Practitioners that you and the practice are working on minimising what is owed by patients or other account holders.
To navigate to this cabinet, go to Clinic Insights > Today's clinic metrics > Outstanding debt.
The sections included in this article are:
- Debtors
- Outstanding debt
- Unbatched invoices
- Outstanding rejections
- Oustanding debt by Payer
- Outstanding debt by age
- List of debtors
Debtors
This figure is the combined number of private payers with an outstanding invoice. The second number is the total number of invoices.
TOP TIP! I'm clickable! This circle symbol means that you can click/tap on this metric in order to change the context of the charts on the current page.
This graph represents the number of unpaid invoices by Practitioner.
Outstanding Debt
This dollar amount shows the value of all unpaid private invoices.
TOP TIP! I'm clickable! This circle symbol means that you can click/tap on this metric in order to change the context of the charts on the current page.
This graph represents the dollar value for all unpaid private invoices by Practitioner.
TOP TIP! Moving from fully bulk billed to mixed billing can also have teething problems as patients need to be informed that future appointments may incur an out-of-pocket expense. Make sure to clearly document when you inform a patient of your new billing policy in their patient file. You can offer to bulk bill any outstanding accounts for those patients as a goodwill gesture, but also so they have full financial awareness of the costs associated with seeing a Practitioner in your practice, as per ACCC Guidelines.
Unbatched invoices
This figure represents the number of eligible invoices that have not yet been batched to Medicare or DVA.
TOP TIP! I'm clickable! This circle symbol means that you can click/tap on this metric in order to change the context of the charts on the current page.
This graph represents the number of unbatched invoices by Practitioner.
TOP TIP! This figure will identify any outstanding invoices that have not yet been sent to Medicare or DVA for payment and therefore revenue (billings) not yet paid. You can access the full metric with a full list of unbatched invoices at Clinic insights > Today's clinic metrics > Unbatched invoices.
On that full metric, you can download the list by clicking on the download arrow on the top right-hand corner of the list and then provide this list to your reception team to finalise the billing in Best Practice.
NOTE: This metric is updated overnight outside of business hours, so anything that has been batched after these times will still show in the list until the next data update.
Oustanding rejections
This figure shows the number of outstanding Medicare and DVA rejections that require follow-up.
TOP TIP! I'm clickable! This circle symbol means that you can click/tap on this metric in order to change the context of the charts on the current page.
This figure shows the number of outstanding Medicare and DVA rejections that require follow-up.
TOP TIP! This figure will identify any outstanding rejections that have been sent back from Medicare or DVA to be reviewed. You can access the full metric with a full list of outstanding rejections at Clinic insights > Today's clinic metrics > Outstanding rejections.
On that full metric, you can download the list by clicking on the download arrow in the top right-hand corner of the list and then provide this list to your team to review and process any rejections in the online claiming in Best Practice.
NOTE: This metric is updated overnight outside of business hours, so anything that has been batched after these times will still show in the list until the next data update.
Oustanding debt by payer
This figure represents the proportion of total outstanding debt attributed to the different types of Payers.
TOP TIP! Workers' Compensation payments can sometimes blow out and be owing for extended periods of time; worse yet if the claim is rejected it leaves the Practitioner owed for the work they performed as part of this claim. Depending on your practice policy, advising the patient of the need to pay privately in the event of a rejection, can help relieve this issue. Otherwise, these consults will need to be bulk billed returning around 50% of the outstanding amount.
More and more practices are now asking the patient to pay for these appointments upfront until such time as the claim has been approved, from which time the accounts can then be sent directly to the insurer for payment. Here you can see the percentage of outstanding debt under Workcover (Qld).
Outstanding debt by age
This figure represents how long debts have been outstanding.
TOP TIP! Use the filter to update the metrics on the page by debt age, using the Select invoice age filter, this will help focus on the oldest debts in your practice.
List of debtors
This list shows account holder, patient and WorkCover (Qld) invoice details of invoices having an unpaid service and which are not billed to Medicare/DVA.
This list can also include Medicare and DVA services, using the respective filter Include Medicare and DVA services.
To action an item in this list, follow up with the Payer.
TOP TIP! Use the filters on the page to filter the debtor list by Payer. Selecting Patient Account will show you a list of all outstanding patient accounts to be followed up. Then you can sort the list under the column Next appt date to view patients with upcoming appointments and outstanding debt first. This gives your team the opportunity to flag this with the patient prior to attending their appointment OR flag it on the appointment so all accounts are finalised on the day to reduce debtors and follow-up tasks.
Here you can also see who the next appt was made by and the date it was booked. This can be used as an internal measure to ensure your patients are being advised of any outstanding accounts prior to booking this next appointment if the patient already had an outstanding account when this appointment was being made.