In a nutshell 

Patient claims is where the practice sends off the patient’s claim on their behalf so that they can receive their medicare rebate 1-2 business days later. The patient could pay in full, partially, or nothing at all.

You would use this claiming channel when the practitioner charges above the medicare schedule. You would not use this claiming channel if you are happy to receive the medicare/bulk bill amount. 

This claiming channel is useful because whilst it would be easier to bulk bill the patient, and then charge a copayment, this is illegal.

Patient Claims is desirable for the practice because: 

• The practice may be paid in full, on the spot
• The practice decides what they would like to charge
• Multiple dates of service per invoice supported
• May avoid the 90 day scheme, more on this below

90 day scheme

When an unpaid or partially paid claim is sent to medicare, the patient receives a Pay Doctor Via Claimant (PDVC) cheque and they are expected to forward this cheque to the practitioner. 

• The cheque will be in the the doctor’s name, so the patient cannot bank this money
• The 90 day scheme is a measure in place to redirect the funds directly into the doctor’s bank account, in the event that the cheque is not banked by the doctor within 90 days
• However, this is only eligible for gps and specialists, and is not applicable to allied health practitioners

Eligible health professionals

Ineligible practitioners

Allied health professionals, optometrists and dentists aren’t eligible to participate in the scheme.

Want to learn more about the 90 day scheme? Click here to read more. 

Important note: for this billing channel, you will send claims, assuming they will get paid as no communications are sent back. This is owing to a Medicare limitation that only allows for one-way communication. That is, you can send claims but will not receive any:

• Exception statements, or
• Payment statements

Medicare Easyclaim

Easyclaim is another billing alternative for bulk billing and patient claims. It may be a stand-alone process via an EFTPOS machine or integrated into your billing software.

Note: FYDO does not currently support Easyclaim

Key features

• The patient receives their Medicare rebate almost immediately into their bank account
• No additional bank transaction fees. However, standard EFTPOS charges still apply
• May be used for bulk billing and patient claims
• Single payment made to practitioner’s nominated bank account for bulk billed claims within 2-3 working days
• Concession verification – instant confirmation of patients’ concessional status
• Available to all allied health professionals

Want to learn more about Medicare Easyclaim? Click here to learn more.

Ready to bill through the Patient Claims billing channel? Click here to learn how.

Disclaimer: Altura Health recommends periodically checking these settings to ensure they are correct. Your fees will not update if these settings are incorrect. You are responsible for maintaining and ensuring these fees are set up correctly.

Tired of updating your Health Fund Fees every time a change occurs?

If Fydo is setup correctly, your health fund fees will automatically be updated! Simply follow this quick 5 minute guide, and never worry about your fees again!

First, lets head to Settings, found on the bottom left hand side of Fydo.

Then select Fee Levels, found underneath Fee Management

Fee Levels

You will now arrive at the Fee Levels settings. This page displays all of the current Fee Levels within Fydo, and lets you edit them as needed.

Now, lets select Edit from the top right hand corner of the page.

To setup automatic fee updates, we just need to change a few settings for each health fund.

• Fund
• State (If Applicable)
• Fee Type (If Applicable)

Fund – This is a simple one, simply select the corresponding fund from the list. In the above case, I selected HCF for both of my HCF fee levels, AHS for my Alliance (AHSA) fee level and MPL for my Medibank Private level.

State – This will only apply to Alliance (AHSA), BUPA and GU Health. Select the state you require fees for. In the above case, I opted for the NSW fees.

Fee Type – This will only apply to HCF and HBF. Simply select if you need the No Gap or the Known Gap fees. In the above case, I have a fee level for both, though you may only have one.

Once you have completed the above, click the Save button.

All done! You can now rest easy, while we take care of the rest. Your Health Fund fees will automatically update as soon as we have the latest fees, usually every 2-3 months.

Disclaimer: ACSS recommends periodically checking these settings to ensure they are correct. Your fees will not update if these settings are incorrect. You are responsible for maintaining and ensuring these fees are set up correctly.

You can find the fees that Fydo will import here.

There are two main ways to perform an Online Eligibility Check (OEC) for a patient.

Patient Record

Simply go the patient’s record and under the ‘More Actions‘ select Eligibility Check (OEC)

Appointments

You can also access the OEC from Appointments (Hospital appointment), simply right click on an appointment and select OEC.

You can also use the handy hotkey: O

OEC Request

The next step is the fill out the required fields in the OEC request.

Patient Details

The patient details will be automatically filled in by information taken from the patients record such as Name, Fund, DOB, Membership Number, Medicare Number and Gender.

Eligibility Check

Like the Patient Details, the Eligibility Check fields are also pre filled from the patient record/booking. Things such as the Admission Date, Hospital, Provider Number and Surgeon/Doctor.
The most common type of check you will be running will be Fund Only.

Items

The final part of the OEC is to select the Illness Code or MBS Items to check. There are also Protheses items available to check. While the list of Illness Code’s is comprehensive, it is generally more accurate to check if the patient is eligible for the items you will be billing.

Now that the OEC is filled out, click OK to run it and we can take a look at the results.

To find out how to see the OEC results see our wiki page here

Medicare & DVA

Health Funds

Start off by opening the patient in question’s record and hit the Accounts button.

This button reveals a patient’s billing/ treatment history where each line is an invoice: 

So from here, simply right click on the desired invoice to be printed and select Print Invoice. This will produce a PDF file of the invoice, which you may print or store/ send electronically.

If selecting Print Invoice presents you with the below message, this means you do not have an invoice template for the type of invoice you are attempting to print,

So, click here to view our guide on how to upload an invoice template.

While you can create your own invoice templates from scratch in Microsoft Word, you may also contact FYDO support and request an invoice template be uploaded to your FYDO account, for you. 

This template will allow you to print invoices right away. You may further customise this template as desired, should you choose to.

Uploading / editing clinic invoice templates

To upload or edit existing templates, you will need to go to Settings > Templates.

This will reveal the templates currently in your FYDO account.

Note: an invoice template is necessary for each type of invoice; such as Medicare, DVA, and Private.

Adding a new template

So you may upload a template by clicking on the Add Template button to the top right corner of the screen.

Then, you will need to browse your computer for the template file or simply drag it in, as shown below.

Give it a Name, select a Category (invoices in this case) and a Sub Category (whether it is DVA, Medicare, Private, etc.).

Once you have entered the above details, hit the green Save button and you are all done!

You may also mark a given template as the default template for its category and sub category.

Editing an existing template

To make edits to existing templates, you will need to download the Word file by clicking on the Download button associated with the template.

Once you have downloaded the file, go ahead and open it, make the desired edits and save the document.

You may type whatever you’d like in plain text or add ‘tokens’ to print things onto the invoice that change from invoice to invoice like patient names, medicare/ health fund card numbers, servicing doctor, etc. 

Click here to view the list of tokens for clinic invoices, or

Click here to view the list of tokens for hospital invoices

Once the document has been updated with the desired edits, it is ready to be re-uploaded. You can do this by going back to where you downloaded the template at Settings > Templates, finding the template downloaded and hitting its associated  Upload button.

Needing to remove an invoice? As long as the invoice does not have a payment associated with it, and the accounting period is not yet closed, invoices can be deleted.

Not sure what the accounting period is? Click here to learn more.

There are two places where you could do so:

1. Via the Patient’s Record, or
2. Via the Batch in Claiming Medical

Additionally, there are two use cases for deleting invoices:

1. Deleting the entire invoice (all items within the invoice)
2. Deleting a part of the invoice (1 or some items deleted, but not all items)

Let’s take a closer look at both options.

Deleting through the Patient’s Record

Begin by opening the patient’s record and click on the Accounts button.

This button reveals a patient’s billing/ treatment history where each line is an invoice: 

From here, simply double click on the invoice you wish to delete.

This will open up the invoice, revealing the item numbers inside.

From here, you may simply right click on the desired item and hit delete, enter a reason, and hit OK to delete the item.

Alternatively, you can delete invoices from the Claiming Medical section of FYDO, found under the Claiming tab.

Deleting through the Claiming Medical

Important Note: Private and WorkCover invoices will not appear here as this screen is only for invoices that are to be sent electronically. 

Private invoices are invoices with the Bill Type set to Private in the billing screen.

Put your mouse over the Claiming tab and select Claiming Medical.

You will now see all your batches. So select the batch holding the invoice(s) you wish to delete.

Now, double click on the batch holding the desired invoice to be deleted.

You will now see the invoice(s) inside the batch. 

Important note: Pay attention to the number of items in the invoice to be deleted.

• If you wish to delete all of the items within the invoice, simply right click on the invoice here, and select Delete Invoice

• Otherwise, if you wish to only delete a portion of the invoice (some items, but not all), simply double click on the invoice to open it up. Then right click on the items to be deleted and select Move Item

Next, you will need to find the moved item(s) in the newly created invoice in the open/ closed batch, at the top of the Claiming Medical screen and delete as desired.

Closing the ‘Accounting Period’ refers to locking down your financial figures up to a given date (usually the end of the month) so that they cannot be changed. 

We do not recommend closing the accounting period for the last month, on the first day of the current month. Rather, give yourself seven to ten days to get your figures to a point where you are happy. That is, after all rejections and adjustments are made. 

In other words, it ensures that the figures seen on your revenue report run out of FYDO match the figures seen on your bank account, to the cent. And that those figures then cannot be amended in FYDO. 

So let’s see where the accounting period is closed.

Start off by going over to settings.

Then, click Close Accounting Period.

Enter the date you wish to lock your figures to and hit Save.

I should also mention that this action is recorded in FYDO’s audit log, so you can see who closed the accounting period and when.

To view the audit log, go to Settings, then click on Logs.

You will see a log similar to this when the accounting period is closed.

Want to know how to add items into Fydo? Follow the below steps and you’ll be billing them in no time!

First, lets head to Settings, located in the lower left hand corner of Fydo.

Then select Items, this will display a list of all your current items.

To add a new item, lets click the yellow Add Item button.

Simply enter the item you need in the Number field as below, found under the Item Details.

You will see the Procedure name be automatically filled.

Now just click on the green Save button.

All done! The rest of the information regarding the item will automatically be added from information via the Medicare Benefits Schedule online Website.

Things such as:

• Fees (Medicare and DVA rates)
• Description
• Rule (If it has one e.g Surgical step down)

Need to delete or remove an existing referring doctor? Read ahead to find out how we can make them Inactive.

1. Click on Settings

2. Then, Referring Doctors

This will display a list of all the referring doctors you currently have.

3. Select the doctor you wish to make Inactive by clicking anywhere on their row in the list of doctors.

4. You will now see the details for this doctor, now click on Edit on the top right hand corner of the page. Simply untick the Active box next to Status as shown below.

Now the doctor has been made Inactive; you will not find them when searching for them, and they will not appear on the list of Referring Doctors.

If you wish to view the doctor again, or make them Active again, simply tick the Show Inactive box from the Referring Doctors screen.

You will now be able to see the doctor, and you can edit them as per normal, including making them Active again.