Patient Member Responsibility - PMR
Estimating patient member responsibility can be a huge component of your practice. Knowing what your patient owes at checkout can help with your collections as they can be done at time of service vs. sending patient statements.
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ChiroSpring has advanced PMR logic built in to assist you with this process. Below we will show you how to set up PMR as well as use it on a daily basis.
Procedure Allowances
First you will need to set up procedure allowances (also known as allowed amounts). These are the amounts that the insurance carrier (third party payer) allows on a given charge. To setup your procedure allowances go to billing/third party payers.
Select a third party payer. In the top right, click the 'Configure' button (see below).
In the following screen you will see all of your services. For any given service, select, first, if it is covered (check box). If it is not covered by that third party payer, leave the checkbox blank.
Next add the allowed amount for that service. We support up to 6 units. This ensures that your PMR estimations will be as accurate as possible.
Insurance Verification
Now that you have setup your procedure allowances (allowed amounts), it's time to setup insurance verification on a patient. To do this, go to the patient's dashboard/insured information.
As insurance benefits may have different coverage based on the category (e.g. chiropractic, therapy, etc.), we have defined three categories to enhance PMR calculation.
General Benefits: The 'General Benefits' category will calculate PMR on any service that is not chiropractic or therapy.
Chiropractic-Specific Benefits: For any service that falls under chiropractic, PMR will use the copay, coinsurance and deductible under this category. This section makes your PMR calculation more accurate for chiropractic codes.
Therapy-Specific Benefits: For any service that falls under therapy, PMR will use the copay, coinsurance and deductible under this category. This section makes your PMR calculation more accurate for therapy codes.
Example:
Bruce Willis receives care at Spinal Care Chiropractic and pays $70.
99203: E/M Code - Copay applied $30
98941: Chiropractic Services - Copay applied $40
97110: Physical Therapy Services - covered in copay amount
Customize Settings
Next you will want to determine if your practice (at the practice level) wants to calculate PMR using copay, coinsurance and deductible. Some practices, as an example, may not want to collect coinsurance. In that example, you would want to uncheck (exclude) coinsurance. To access these settings go to settings/customization settings. Then select PMR preferences.
Set your PMR preferences.
We already defined our PMR calculations are incredibly accurate as we segment chiropractic, therapy and general (into three groups). For practices that do not want multiple groups you may remove groups by toggling them off. See below.
Here you can remove chiropractic specific benefits and therapy specific benefits.
For patients that may want PMR NOT to estimate based on copay or coinsurance or even deductible, you can exclude those options as well at the PER PATIENT level. To do this go to the patient. At the bottom select 'Patient Preferences'.
Then enable or disable any of the three options (see below).
Check-out Screen - Cash Register
Now that you have setup your procedure allowances as well as individual patient insurance, it's time to checkout your patient and see how PMR actually works. To do this, click the checkout icon from the front desk. This will open our cash register.
Here you can see all of the patient's outstanding claims and products. If you only want the patient to pay for today's visit, simply select that visit using the checkboxes.
The cash register automatically calculates the payment based on which claims/products you select. The payment amount is displayed in green (and cannot be edited). If you wish to change the payment amount change this using the 'Payment Amt.' field on the actual claim or product.
You can see the PMR for the selected claims at the bottom of the cash register.
The Cash Register also lets you accomplish the following:
- Create an appointment
- See and edit next appointment
- Request a 5-star patient review
- Print payment receipt
- Use unapplied money for products or services
Claim History
Claim history clearly defines a breakdown of PMR showing insurance owes, patient owes as well as a breakdown of copay, coinsurance and deductible.
Fee Schedules
Fee schedules are not part of PMR, but do allow you to provide a discount on any service for non-insurance claims. To create a fee schedule go to billing/fee schedules.
We hope you enjoy our PMR. Our PMR offers a great way to estimate what the patient owes at the time of service. This ensures you are collecting money that is due vs. sending patient statements.