Recording payments for patient and third-party bills

If you do not receive complete payment at the time you bill a patient or a third part (for example, if you bill a patient for missing an appointment and send the bill by mail), you can record a partial or complete payment at a later time when you receive payment.

When you receive a payment, you record the payment in the Invoice Detail window. This is an important practice to establish because the EMR cannot track which bills were paid or not paid unless you record payments correctly.

The method you use to record payment of a patient or third-party invoice depends on the information that came with the payment:

If the patients name came with the payment information, access the Invoice Detail window via the Patient Maintenance window. See Recording bill payments by searching patient name.

If only the invoice number was included with the payment information, access the Invoice Detail window via the Billing program. See Recording bill payments by searching invoice number.

If you bill a patient for more than one service or product, and the patient pays for only one service/product at the time of billing, on the patient’s invoice, you can choose where to allocate the payments. See Distributing invoice payments.