A business centered around caring for people's health is still a business. Like any business, healthcare providers need to be paid for services rendered. To keep providing the essential services you do, it's very important to get invoicing right.
Genie’s here to help make that process as simple yet flexible as possible.
Before you begin
Before you begin invoicing a patient or an organisation, they must have an Account Holder record. You can check whether they have one by navigating to Open > Account Holders and searching for their name in the appropriate field.
Creating Account Holder Records
If no Account Holder record exists, they will need to be created using the instructions below.
To create a new Account Holder for an organisation, in this list, click on the blue plus icon and fill in the Account Holder details:
For a patient, the way you add an Account Holder is through the Patient Demographics window from the Appointment Book by clicking on the edit patient icon.
Clicking on the radio button in the middle left of this window makes the patient their own Account Holder and creates a new record in the Account Holders list.
Once you have selected the Self radio button, click into the Account Holder address window:
This opens the patient’s Account Holder record:
Enter the required information and click on the Save button.
Where can you generate an invoice from?
Invoices can be created from several places:
- The Appointment Book (Open > Appointments)
- The Patients list (Open > Patients)
- The Account Holders list (Open > Account Holders)
- From within a Procedure record (based on the quote)
- In the Appointment Book, select any patient appointment and click on the
icon on the left hand side of the Appointment Book (or select Ctrl/Cmd+I). This will open the Invoice window:
- Ensure Self is selected. (This will select by default if the patient's Account Type is Private, HCC, or Pension within their demographic window)
- Add the items using the
button. If the provider has specified items to charge these items will display in the Item/s to Charge Box and drop down in to the new invoice. If not, enter the items manually. Repeat until all items are added
- Apply the Multiple Item Rule (e.g. 100:50:25) if applicable. The
button will become active in the right-hand side of the invoicing window when a second procedural item number is added to the invoice
- Genie allows you to add an assistant's fee to an invoice by clicking on
button, alternatively, if the provider you are raising this invoice for was the assistant, you can use the
button to change the surgical item numbers to the assist item
- Select the correct practice site from the Site of Service drop-down
- If a deposit exists for the patient, you will have the option to
- Pay attention to the Patient Claims area that you will have available in the invoicing window if you have the preference set in File > Practice Preferences > Miscellaneous to Use Patient Claims. The Use Patient Claims tick box indicates whether a patient claim should be created for the current invoice
- Click on Print or Defer to save the invoice to the patient’s Account History without printing it (you can print this from the Account History in the future if you need to)
- In the Appointment Book, select any patient appointment and click on the
icon on the left hand side of the Appointment Book (or select Ctrl/Cmd+I). This will open the Invoice window
- Select Bulk Bill (this will be selected by default if the patient’s Account Type in the demographic window is set as Bulk Bill) or DVA (this will be selected by default if the patient’s Account Type in the demographic window is set as Veterans Affairs)
- Add items using the
button. If the provider has specified items to charge these items will display in the Item/s to Charge box and drop down in to the new invoice. If not, enter the items manually. Repeat until all items are added. If any Medicare Online Over-rides are required, they can be added at the time of adding the items to the invoice by selecting the relevant tickbox
4. Add any relevant item text into the Note field. This is applicable to DVA claims that require more information about how the item number was used. If you receive a error when transmitting the claim as follows "HIC Online error 9492. Condition Assessment Error. Text must be supplied" you will need to return to the Note field and include any information DVA may need to send the claim. If you are unsure what information is required, please contact DVA directly.
5. Apply the Multiple Item Rule (e.g. 100:50:25) if applicable. The button will become active in the right-hand side of the invoicing window when a second procedural item number is added to the invoice
6. Genie allows you to add an assistant's fee to an invoice by clicking on button, alternatively, if the provider you are raising this invoice for was the assistant, you can use the
button to change the surgical item numbers to the assist item
7. Select the correct practice site from the Site of Service drop-down
8. Click Save or Print. If you are using HIC Online, a DB4 or DVA form will print for the patient to sign (if your Printing Preferences are configured to print this form)
Invoicing a health fund or organisation
- In the Appointment Book, select any patient appointment and click on the
icon on the left hand side of the Appointment Book (or select Ctrl/Cmd+I). This will open the Invoice window
- Click on either the name of the health fund or the Other button. When you click on the Other button you will be prompted to search for the Account Holder of this organisation
- Add billing items as normal. The health fund/organisation fee will appear by default
- Apply the Multiple Item Rule (e.g. 100:50:25) if applicable. The
button will become active in the right-hand side of the invoicing window when a second procedural item number is added to the invoice
- Apply a Known Gap to the invoice (if applicable). The
button will become available after adding the item numbers to the invoice.
- Genie allows you to add an assistant's fee to an invoice by clicking on
button, alternatively, if the provider you are raising this invoice for was the assistant, you can use the
button to change the surgical item numbers to the assist item
- Select the correct practice site from the Site of Service drop-down
- If a deposit exists for the patient, you will have the option to
- Click on Print or Defer to save the invoice to the patient’s Account History without printing it (you can print this from the Account History in the future if you need to).
Invoicing a health fund through ECLIPSE
If you have the ECLIPSE module in Genie, you can raise invoices and transmit claims to the patient’s health fund in real time. Further information about creating ECLIPSE claims can be found in the Sending ECLIPSE Claims article.
If you don't currently have ECLIPSE you can find out further information about it in this article.
Before creating a WorkCover invoice enter the patient’s injury and claim number into the Claims section in the Secondary tab of his or her demographics window. Change the Account Type for the patient to be WorkCover.
- In the Appointment Book, select any patient appointment and click on the
icon on the left hand side of the Appointment Book (or select Ctrl/Cmd+I). This will open the Invoice window
- If the patient's Account Type was set to WorkCover, this will be selected by default. If not, select the WorkCover button
- Select a claim from the list (or add a new one). Choose whether to bill the employer or the insurer when prompted. (You must have added the employer as an Account Holder if you wish to invoice them)
- Add billing items as normal
- Apply the Multiple Item Rule (e.g. 100:50:25) if applicable. The
button will become active in the right-hand side of the invoicing window when a second procedural item number is added to the invoice
- Genie allows you to add an assistant's fee to an invoice by clicking on
button, alternatively, if the provider you are raising this invoice for was the assistant, you can use the
button to change the surgical item numbers to the assist item
- Select the correct practice site from the Site of Service drop-down
- If a deposit exists for the patient, you will have the option to
- Click on Print or Defer to save the invoice to the patient’s Account History without printing it (you can print this from the Account History in the future if you need to).
For Queensland, if you are set up to use WorkCover online, the claim submission process is different to the above, so please refer to our article on Creating WorkCover Online Claims.
Invoicing for non-patient services
It is not uncommon that practices will need to invoice a third-party that may or may not have anything to do with a patient. Let’s take the example of invoicing a law firm for a legal report they requested.
Using the method below you can raise an invoice for the third party law firm.
- Navigate to Open > Account Holders
- In here, search for the organisation you would like to bill, highlight it, and then select Billing > Invoice or hold Ctrl/Cmd + I
- This will present you with a simplistic invoice window:
- Click on
button. (If you would like to invoice the organisation for a custom item number, you can create this in the Open > Billing Items list by clicking on the blue plus
button)
- In this simple Add Item to Invoice window you will need to select a provider, and you can optionally enter the name of a patient into the Patient free text field if relevant. Don’t forget to click Save
- Select a Site of Service from the drop-down
- If a deposit exists for the organisation, you will have the option to
- Choose to either Print or Defer to save the invoice to the organisation’s Account History without printing it (you can print this from the Open > Account Holders > Billing > Account History window in the future if you need to)
Note: In the above workflow the invoice will not appear in the patient's Account History even if you enter his/her name in the Add Item to Invoice window.
If you are unsure of which item number to charge, you can search Billing Items (Open > Billing Items) for an appropriate item number by clicking on the Search Fee Schedule button at the bottom of the Add Item to Invoice window.
This will open a Search window allowing you to search on either the item number or description.
For example, you would like to invoice a colonoscopy; you can’t remember the exact item number, but you know that it starts with the numbers ‘3209’. You can enter ‘3209’ in the Item field of the Search window, this will list all items beginning with ‘3209’.
If you do not know the item number at all, you can search for a word that you believe will be included in the description. In this case, we search for the word ‘colonoscopy’. If you simply enter ‘colonoscopy’, into the Description field, Genie will search Billing Items for a record where the Description field starts with ‘colonoscopy’ – this is unlikely to find anything.
Instead, you are able to use the wildcard character, ’@’, before the word ‘colonoscopy’. When you search, the wildcard character can represent any one, or many characters. By searching for ‘@colonoscopy’, Genie will look for a billing item with ‘colonoscopy’ anywhere in its description.
In this particular case it finds many matching records, select the item you would like to invoice and click on the OK button.
The selected item number will be inserted into the Item field of the new item window.
Instead of immediately printing an invoice, you can defer it by clicking on the Defer button in the New Invoice window.
This will send the invoice to the Unpaid Invoices window. Unpaid Invoices can be found in the Monthly tab of File > Maintenance & Reports>Unpaid Invoices. Deferred invoices are printed individually, and only when you choose to print them. For example, consider a patient admitted to hospital on the 28th of the month and discharged on the 4th of the following month; you raise an invoice for each daily visit. In this situation, you can defer each invoice as its created. Then, when the patient is discharged, go back into Unpaid Invoices and print either a statement for the patient or each individual invoice. For more information on Unpaid Invoices, see our article on Unpaid Invoices.
Deferred invoices can also be printed individually, using the Printer button in the patient's Account History (Billing > Account History).