If a patient cancels their appointment

1. Search for the patient OR
2. Navigate to the date & theatre that the patient is booked for
3. Select the patient & right click to open menu
4. Select Edit Episode

5. Use the Cancelled drop down to select a reason for cancellation (N.B these cancelled reasons are fully customisable & can be added or edited in Setting under the Cancelled Reasons option to assist facilities obtain the cancellation data that they require)
6. Click Save

7. The patient will now be displayed with a strikethrough & the appointment time will be available to book another patient
8. To view your screen without the cancelled patients, use the Filter Dropdown Based On and select All Appointments Exc Cancelled

9. To view the cancelled patients ensure you select All Appointments Inc Cancelled from the Filter Dropdown
10. To reinstate an appointment, follow the above steps 1 > 4 and remove the cancellation reason from the episode before clicking Save

Options for dealing with cancelled patients

Depending on how far a patient is along their journey, there are different ways to handle a cancelled episode. For example, a patient who cancels before arriving at the facility will need to be handled differently than one who cancelled after admission.
The facility should determine the most appropriate option for each individual scenario. Below are a few options for processing these cases in FYDO:

Option 1
If the patient did not arrive at the facility and was not admitted, the standard cancellation instructions above will apply. The episode will not be admitted and will simply be cancelled.

If the patient did arrive and was admitted but did not proceed, the facility can choose to revert the episode back to a booking by Un-discharging and Un-admitting the episode. Again, this will be up to the facility to decide if this is require depending on how far the patient journey progressed.
This can be done via the Episodes Screen by utilising the Right-Click Menu.

The patient may need to be refunded any moneys paid, or the facility may choose to keep it and apply to another admission down the track.

Option 2
If the patient was admitted and progressed partway through their journey, the more appropriate option may be to complete the episode by admitting and discharging them.
Depending on how far they progressed, you may need to populate the Visit to Theatre field with No Theatre Procedure Performed when discharging the episode.

As every discharged patient is reported to the Department of Health, a principal diagnosis code is mandatory. If the facility opts to admit and discharge the episode, it will need to be coded.
Please confirm the correct process with your coder. However, as an example, there would typically be a primary diagnosis code, and an additional diagnosis code explaining why the procedure was cancelled.

Other Notes
When raising an invoice, please be aware that if an accommodation band is billed, it is implied to the health fund that the patient received an anaesthetic. In this instance, an anaesthetic procedure code must also be included in the coding screen.
Facilities will need to check their individual health fund contracts in order to decide if they can raise a charge for the particular admission.

Navigating the Appointments Screen

1. Date – Click on the date to display the calendar to select required date
2. Search – to locate a particular patient/booking
3. Info – will display the Number of patients booked & Minutes the theatre is being utilised
4. View – gives the ability to choose how the theatres are displayed

   1. All – shows all theatres for 1 day
   2. Individual – shows 1 theatre for 1 day
   3. Weekly – shows 1 theatre for the whole week
   4. List – shows all appointments in 1 list

5. Theatres – are able to be selected here
6. Filter – the patients viewed to include/exclude cancelled patients etc
7. Custom Views – Create and select Custom Views to displayed relevant information
8. Action Dropdown allows users to
   Print Theatre Lists
   Send Bulk SMS
   Re-Order Lists

Adjustments via the Adjustments Screen

If an adjustment is required for refund, write off, incorrect billing purposes etc it can be done using the Adjustments Screen or from the patient History / Episode screen. Both options are explained below.

Making the entry from the Adjustments Screen

1. Go to Accounts in the main menu & select Adjustments
   
2. For multi-location systems, use the drop down to select the relevant Location
3. Enter the required Transaction Date if it differs from the current date
4. Use the Type dropdown to select the required transaction type e.g., write off, incorrect billing, discount, refund etc.
5. If Refund is selected as the Type, the Payment Type field will be displayed so the method of the transaction can be documented. For all other journal / adjustment Types this field will not be necessary & won’t be displayed
6. Type the required information in the Drawer field
7. Use the Reference No., Bank & Branch fields, if the facility work instructions require, to document additional information regarding a bank cheque for refunds etc
8. Click “Click to Search for an individual Account” and the search box will be displayed to find the required patient. (If processing this adjustment from the Episodes Screen any outstanding invoices will automatically be displayed)
9. Once a patient is selected, the invoices with an outstanding amount will be displayed
10. Use the Show All Invoices option to display invoices that don’t currently have an outstanding balance
11. Type the amount to be refunded in the Allocated column
12. Once you have moved from the Allocated field the system will show you the Possible Balance of the invoice, following the adjustment
13. Once all details have been confirmed & are correct click Save
    
    

Making the entry from the Episode Screen:

1. Search for the patient using the Search field or by selecting the required admission date & theatre
2. Right-click on the appointment & select Episodes
3. Once in the Episodes screen ensure that the correct date of admission is selected
4. Then use the Invoice Options drop down on the right of the screen to select Adjust Invoice
5. You will be redirected to the Adjustments screen where you can follow the instructions above from step 2.

Do you regularly SMS patients? If so, you can create custom SMS templates to save time typing up the message every time and to send tailored messages, complete with the patient’s name, appointment time, serving doctor, and more.

To begin, first go to Settings.

Then click on SMS Templates under the templates menu.

This reveals the SMS templates currently available. By default, an Appointment Reminder template will be available to you. 

Adding a new SMS template

To add a new SMS template, click on the Add SMS Template button.

Then, select the SMS Type, enter the template Name, and type out the SMS content in the Description field.

SMS Tokens

You can use ‘SMS tokens’ which are commands that look like: <<patfirstn>> to send tailored SMS messages. The aforementioned token for instance dynamically pulls the patient’s first name. 

There are SMS tokens for patient details, appointment details, doctor/ practice details, referral details, and more. 

For a full list of tokens, click the link below:

https://wiki.fydo.cloud/?s=tokens

Once you’re happy with the contents of your SMS template, click Save and you’re done! Your new SMS template will be available next time you wish to send a custom SMS message.

For some SMS Template ideas see our helpful wiki page https://wiki.fydo.cloud/sms-template-examples/

PLEASE READ FIRST

This guide is intended for users who have too many or out of control debtors. This wiki page does not cover the basics, it is an in depth look at how to work through the debtors. 

First, lets run the report so we can identify patients that need to be investigated. There are 3 Filters we will want to use.

1. Fund – It may be best to look at one fund at a time, and action those together
2. Period – We can filter the report to only show us debtors that are 45 days and older, if your debtors is really bad you may wish to start at 60 days.
3. Details – Offers a detailed view of the report, showing patient information, make sure this is always on.

In the above example, I can see that there are some patients with outstanding debtors, ranging from 45 to 120+ days. The Balance Outstanding column shows me how much each outstanding patient has. The next step is to select one of these patients to follow up on, and we can go through the steps of what has to occur next.

Checking Invoice Status

The next thing we want to do, is head to the patients Episodes so we can see the details of the invoice, the outstanding amount and check the invoice status, so we know what part of the process the invoice had issues on.

To see the Invoice Status, simply select it from the Invoice Options drop down menu, found near the balance for that episode. As you can see below, the status will show us which batch the invoice is currently in, as well as what the Status of the batch currently is. The batch we have investigated below is sitting as Sent. As this episode was from 02/10/2020, this is probably not a good sign, so it is worth taking a further look into it.

There are three main Status’s you may run into:

• Sent – Invoice received no response
• Processed – Invoice has an exception file but no payment
• Rejected – Invoice was just flat out rejected

In all of the above cases, if a batch is old enough to be in the 45+ days Debtors and has an above status, it is time to call or email the Health Fund regarding its issue. They will be able to help with either resubmitting or amending the invoice, depending what is needed.

We also suggest making use of the Financial Notes, also found on the episodes tab. This will let you keep up to date notes, as well as allow all users to see the same notes, so you can track right on the patient record what you have done as a follow up.

Processing Reports

Once you have established that an invoice has an issue, it can be a good idea to check the Processing Report for that claim. Generally, these reports will include a rejection if there was one, and can help you figure out the issue. We can access the processing and payment reports section via the $ and selecting the appropriate option.

Once here, we need to select the Processing IHC tab at the top.

Now we will be able to view and filter processing reports depending what we need to look at. Make sure to select appropriate filters, since we may be looking at some processing reports we will need to use the From and To filter.

The important date to change is the From date. Since if you have this set to a recent date, Fydo will not display older processing reports. I suggest setting it to the date you sent your claim, so you know the processing report will be in range.

Since we are looking for a specific patient, you should then go ahead and search for that patient.

The can simply search by doing Lastname, Firstname. Now its time to look at the processing report, and try to assess why we were rejected.

Assessing the Processing Report

There are a few main things to look at in the processing report, covered below.

1. Claimed – This is how much you claimed for the invoice
2. Approved – This is how much the fund approved. $0 means a rejection, but you may also receive short payments as well.
3. Assessment – It is important not to just look at this field, as the fund has marked it Accepted, even though we clearly have a rejection. Make sure to look at all appropriate data.
4. Explanation – This is the important one, here you will see a brief description of why something has been rejected.

In the above case, I can see that for this patient, the service for 09/12/2020 was within the waiting period. My best bet would be to give MPL a call, and see if we are able to get it paid at all, since while we do know the rejection reason, there is no supporting information for how to get it paid.

In the cases of short payments, it is a good idea to compare the invoice you submitted to your Contract with the fund, and make sure you have charged the appropriate amount. If you have charged the correct amount, again contacting the fund is vital.

In almost all cases, it will end up best to contact the health fund, since many Explanations they provide can be unhelpful, or too short to convey the real reason for a rejection, as such they are the main contact for help, and can assist to get it paid.

Contacting Funds

See our health fund contacts page.

If needing referrals applies to your discipline, read on to learn how to create new referring doctors on your FYDO system; and how to create referrals on patient records.

Start off by opening a patient’s record. Below is an example of a patient record, with the referral section highlighted.

Notice that the data fields on the record are greyed out and you cannot commit any changes. This is because you are not in edit mode and therefore cannot make any edits. 

So click on the Edit button to continue.

You will now be able to make edits to this record, scroll down to the Referring Details section.

If the referring doctor has never been entered into your FYDO system, click on the blue ADD REFERRING DOCTOR button to add a NEW referring doctor.

This will present you with the below screen, where the main data fields are highlighted. So go ahead and fill this in along with any other additional information you’d like to store about this referring doctor.

Note: this only needs to be done once per referring doctor. 

Referring doctor ‘Type’

• GP: by default, GP referrals have a referral period of 12 months
• Specialist: by default, Specialist referrals have a referral period of 3 months

If the referring doctor has already been entered into FYDO as a referrer, you will be able to search for them by clicking on the search box pictured below. You may search by the doctor’s first or last name. 

Next, enter the Referral Date and you’re done! This is the minimum data set for adding a referral to a patient’s record. 

Notes on other data fields in ‘Referring Details’

• Period: this is how many months the referral is valid for. It may be overwritten by the user, at their discretion
• First consult: if the first Date of Service is after the Referral Date, you may enter the date of service into this field so that the Referral Period is calculated from this date, rather than the referral date
• Referral to: this is which provider the referral is for. If left blank, upon billing it will get linked to that provider; 
• Site Referral (global): allows this referral to be used by any provider rather than one specific provider. 

That’s it! You’ve added a new referring doctor to your FYDO system and created a referral on a patient’s record. Click on the green Save button on the top right corner of the patient record to save your changes.

Made a mistake when creating the referral? No problem. Read on to see how to edit or delete referrals.

Start off by opening a patient’s record. Below is an example of the referral section of a patient’s record.

• Add another referral: FYDO allows you to have multiple referrals for a given patient. Use this button to add another referral
• Edit referral: this button allows you to make changes to any of the data fields of a given referral
• Delete this referral: this button will remove the referral
• Active: untick this checkbox to make the referral inactive

If you have not submitted an OEC yet, please see our guide found here

To find your OEC, first access the Documents from the patients record.

You will see a list of all the recorded documents for this patient. The OEC’s that were returned will have the Name and Type of OEC. The MBS item number the OEC was ran on will also be included in the OEC name, eg; OEC-39323. Select one to view. These documents can be printed or downloaded as needed but will always be kept here, within the patient record.

The first part of your OEC contains some patient information, as well as the Fund status on the check. It will also show the Explanation, on our OEC below we can see that the patient is eligible, but subject to conditions. The conditions will need to be confirmed with the fund:

Health Fund Assessment

The next part of the OEC details the patients financial eligibility. We can see any Excess or Co Payments that are applicable, as well as a description of what the patients cover is limited to.
Any Excess shown here will be automatically updated in the Appointments screen for this patient.

Just below the excess and co payment information, you will find the final details of the OEC. The fund will detail the members cover and the description will mention services that are excluded. There is also space for Benefit Limitations and Exclusions. If your OEC shows the patient as not having cover, these fields will detail what the exclusions are and why the patient is not covered.

Finally, there is a field for any Other Services that were checked, such as Prosthesis items.