USING PAYMENT PLANS

$ Plan Tab is where you will set up any special payment plans that you have made with your patient. If you have a program that includes Care Plans this field will be invaluable. Essentially, if you layout a plan of care for your patient over a specified period of time (i.e. a year is most common) you may fill in the start and end dates of the plan on this screen. You may then note the Payment Frequency, the Usual and Customary amount of this care, if you are placing a cap on this amount, if you offer a one time savings amount and the cost, if any for any additional family members on this plan. TPS2000 will then calculate the total savings that this patient is getting and show you what the payment amount should be (based on what was checked in payment frequency). You also have the ability to set Plan Alerts. These alerts will generate messages based on either a set date, dollar amount that the patient has paid toward this plan, or dollar amount of services that have already been rendered.

The design of this screen makes it easy to track and maintain Care Plan agreements. If, for example, you sit down with your patients and have decided that they will need “X” amount of care over the next year. You may sit down with your patient and contract their care.

Please keep in mind that this screen will not automatically place a charge on your patients ledger. That is not it’s intent. It will track the contractual agreement between you and your patient.

First field is the Payment Plan Type. This field defaults to “No Active Payment Plan”. You must select a plan name for this screen to function.

Next is Plan Start Date. This is the date that this plan of care will take effect. For most offices, this is usually the first day that the patient visits the office. For some, it might be the second or fourth visit. Whatever date is appropriate.

Then comes Plan End Date. This is the date that this plan of care will end. If you are setting out a six month plan of care, this will be six months after the start date.

Payment Frequency is the next block. You have several choices in this area.

Pre-Pay = Patient pays entire amount “up front” so no further collection from them is needed.

Weekly = Patient agrees to pay a set amount each week. You may then select the specific day of the week or the entry of First Visit.

Monthly = Patient agrees to pay a set amount each month. You may then select on which date this payment is due.

Bi-Monthly = Patient agrees to pay a set amount twice each month. You may then select on which dates these payments are due.

Per-Visit = Patient agrees to pay a set amount on each visit to your office.

The next field you see is Payment amount, do not fill in this area. It will calculate automatically based on the next 2 entries.

In Total Plan Price you will enter the value of the care that you will deliver.

Disc. Plan Price will be the amount you agree to charge for the above services.

Plan Alerts are messages that will be added to your daily message report based on the criteria listed here.

Alert Date = A specific date for which you want a notice. Usually, this will be the date that you will start to talk to your patient about his next plan of care.

Amount = This is the amount that the patient has paid to date. You might use this, if, for example, you wanted to notify the patient that they have made one half of their payment amounts. You might want to offer a further discount if the remaining half is paid in full.

Service $ = The amount of service you have delivered to date. If your patient is billing their own insurance company for these services, this date is very important. You want to be alerted that you have delivered the value of the Disc. Plan Price. At this time, you would want to make a change to the policy to show that no further amounts are being charged. After all, the patient stops paying you at this point, you need to be sure that the insurance company stops here as well.

The Plan Accumulated Totals are calculated fields. You are not able to edit these fields. The amounts are entered by the computer.

Downpayment = Any amounts paid into the system AFTER the Plan Start Date and BEFORE the first payment due date.

Payment Due = Tracking of the ‘Patient Pays’ amount. If, for example, this plan setup showed that the patient was to pay $100.00 per month, on the 5^th of each month, then, on the 5^th of the first month of the plan, this field would reflect $100.00. If a payment of $100.00 is then received, this field will reflect $0.00 until the 5^th of next month. Likewise, if a patient misses all or a portion of one of his agreed payments, then this field will reflect the current payment amount PLUS the missed portion.

Total Paid = Total amount paid by the patient to date.

Balance Owed = Remaining amount due by the patient (Disc. Plan Price less Total Paid).

Services$Delivered = Services Delivered to Date. This reflects the total amount of services that have been charged to this patient since the Plan Start Date.

Remainder to Deliver = Remaining amount of service yet to be delivered to the patient (Total Plan Value less Services$Delivered).

For Care Plans, you might, for example, sit down with your patient and determine that their care is going to involve an average of 2 visits per week for 6 months. Each visit will be an average of $75.00. The full care of this amount will be valued at $1950.00. If the patient agrees to stick with the program described for the full six months, you agree to deliver this amount care but only charge $1690.00 a savings of $260.00. The patient agrees to this and to make Monthly payments on the 5^th of each month. This plan is to start on 09/01/2000. You have determined that you want to start talking to the patient about the next six months of care about 6 weeks prior to the end of the plan. You also want a notice when services valuing $1690.00 have been delivered. The screen would then look like the following:

As you can see, the above screen shows that this patient will be making a payment in the amount of $281.67 on the 5^th of each month starting in September of 2000 and ending in February of 2001.