At the behest of certain medical aids based on their internal processing, Clinic Manager now allows for bed days (ward rates) to be billed separately, appearing line by line on a statement.

By default, the medical aids on your system will be set to the traditional way of billing ward rates whereby the rates are billed in a single line (from a date to another date). However, if a certain medical aid requires each day of a patient’s stay (and the ward rates billed on each of those days) to be displayed line by line, the medical aid must be set to do so.

1. How do I set the medical aid to bill days/ward rates separately?

In order to set a medical aid to bill ward rates separately, follow the below instructions:

Click on Patient

Click on Code File Maintenance

Click on Medical Aids

Click on Medical Aid Codes

Select the specific medical aid from the list provided.

The Medical Aid Codes browse will now appear.

Click on the Indicators tab

Next to Room and Board at the bottom of the window, select either Totals (for the normal billing method that just creates a single line with the total days stayed and rate billed) or Detailed (for line by line billing that displays each ward rate billed per day separately).

When the selection has been made, click OK.

Now that you have set up the billing method, you are ready to start billing.

2. How do I bill days/ward rates separately?

In order to bill days/ward rates separately, follow the below instructions:

Access the Room and Board browse by clicking on the below shortcut:

Alternatively, you can follow the below instructions to navigate to the Room and Board menu option:

Click on Patient

Click on Patient Administration

Click on Patient Transactions

Click on Bed Transactions

Click on Room and Board

A browse will appear with a full list of patients.

Select your patient from the list and the Room and Board screen will appear.

If the medical aid that the patient is on is set to bill days/ward rates as a total (i.e. not line by line), you will see the normal Insert and Change buttons at the bottom of the screen:

If you the medical aid that the patient is on is set to bill days/ward rates in detail (i.e. separately, line by line), you will see a single button marked as Detail at the bottom of the screen:

Click on the Detail button

A new screen will open which displays each ward rate billed to the account for each day of the patient’s stay.

In the example above you will notice that four ward rates have been billed.

You may now either Insert additional ward rates or Delete incorrect ward rates.

If you click on the Insert button the following screen will appear:

Enter the Service Date and press the TAB key on your keyboard for the rest of the options to appear.

The reason that the date must be entered before the rest of the options appear is because the tariff schedule used by the medical aid may be different depending on the service date (for example, if Discovery updated their tariffs at the start of August but the service date was before this change, the system needs to know not to use the current Discovery tariff schedule but to rather use the older one).

You will now be able to select the ward rate from the drop-down list (the system will list all available ward rates for the specific medical aid that the patient is on).

Enter the number of days you wish to bill the ward rate for.

You will notice that you can only bill a full or half day. This is because each day is billed separately.

Enter the time in and time out.

Some medical aids require not only the days to be listed separately, but also for the exact time that is being billed. For a full day’s stay simply enter the time in as 00:01 (just after midnight) to 23:59 (just before midnight).

The amount will automatically be calculated by the system based on the information entered above.

When finished, click OK

You have now successfully billed a single day’s stay line item to the patient’s account. Repeat the process to bill additional days/ward rates.

If you wish to change the date or time of a transaction you can do so by simply clicking on the Change Date and Time button at the bottom of the screen:

3. I’m trying to release an account but it tells me that there are transactions that need to be corrected.

Because of this change, the system will now alert you to any transactions that are either dated incorrectly (perhaps after a discharge date – the discharge date may have been backdated at some point, for example) or that contain a ward rate that does not belong to the medical aid that the patient is currently on (perhaps the patient’s medical aid was changed at some point but the ward rates were not updated in Room and Board).

To correct any transactions that contain the wrong dates, follow the below instructions:

Click on the Patient menu

Click on Patient Administration

Click on Patient Transactions

Click on Correct Transactions Dates/Codes

Select the patient from the list of patients that appears.

In the Date column, click on the Date heading to sort the column in chronological order.

At the top of the screen, note the date that the patient was discharged.

Scroll to the bottom of the list and note any transactions that are dated after this discharge date.

Click the Change button and amend any incorrect dates.

When finished, be sure to press the ENTER key on your keyboard to save the change to that specific transaction. Alternatively, if you are presented with a large list of dates to change, you can change the date and press the DOWN key on your keyboard to go down to the next date to change, keep doing this until you have changed all the necessary dates and – when done – press the ENTER key to save all changes.

You may now proceed to release the account.