Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
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Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
Jim we just add a "Patient Alert' for Pet Insurance so it comes up on the summary on the LHS - then the notes can have more details. Anna
Re: Pet insurance should be under patient information
Sure, but we want to crunch the numbers with reports and also know total number and proportion of active patients that are insured, so we can then improve. Happy to contibute to modifications, please advise.
Re: Pet insurance should be under patient information
We certainly can add insurance information to the patient.
The "Insurance Plan" field on customer would be retained; there would be a new "Insurance Plan" fiield on patient.
The customer insurance plan is currently modelled internally by "lookup.customerInsurance".
A new insurance plan for patients would be required, "lookup.patientInsurance"; this would contain the same fields as the customer lookup.
When a customer has an "Insurance Plan", it would indicate that the plan applies to each of the customer's pets. At the patient level, it would only apply to the patient.
I'm assuming you don't want to collect the policy number as well?
-Tim
IDEA: Pet insurance should be under patient information
There is real room for expansion here. In Australia, the number of pets actually insured is quite low, but growing, for those of us who have worked in the Uk, the numbers are a lot higher.
We can bitpiece expand this area, ie make the small change above and I think we should do this, because Clients insure pet by pet. Each policy applies to a pet, not all pets.
However Long term I would think that it would be helpful that Insurance claims end up working a bit like Laboratory investigations
ie they are linked to a claim form....and the invoices and medical history are also associated.
In the Uk there is a project underway that allows the electronic submission of insurance claims via a system that implements a HL7 type protocol (actually they call it VetXML. I am not entirely sure that was intelligent to break from HL7 and design a new XML structure but that is another topic entirely)
Expanding to allow these systems would mean we somewhat future proof Openvpms however it would likely cost out quite expensively.
Again just my thoughts
Ben
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
1. What information do you want to track, other than that a patient has insurance?
2. Is the insurance at the customer level still required, e.g. for flocks of animals, or is insurance only ever at the patient level?
-Tim
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
I would envisage insurance working a bit like a referral, I still struggle with the way refferal is setup in Open, the way it currently works for Primary care veterinarians is a limited, but more on that at another time.
Insurance on the other hand.
1. Lets look at the in clinic process.
1. Consult -> Billing -> Client Pays
2. Client returns with Claim form (or may have it with them) Nurse and Vet hand fill out the claim form. (+++time)
3. Client mails claim to Insurance company. - Insurance company sends reimbursement to client.
It is step 2 that is vital that OpenVPMS simplify . To enable this we would need to be able to produce a report that connects the consultation details, Invoicing, and Vaccination history ( these are the three things the vet needs to complete generally and sign off on.
I invisages this would be done via an investigation style entry with a document attachment which is proforma claim form that is autofilled with the Details of examination, invoice total, and vaccination history, plus pet and owner details as well as practice details where applicable.
So we could great medical entry - Insurance Claim - with attached claim form autogenerated, print sign and hand to client. for them to sign and send.
Subsequent to this either generating a intergrated claims system similar to the VetXML initiative would be the next logical step. This would simplify step 3 for the client.
I honestly believe that making the insurance process simplier, with better reporting. Unfortunately I forsee a time when insurance companies start creating a "Recommended Vet List" US HMO style....I hate the idea but if pet insurance grows it is a potential reality, we need to be seen as being transparent and efficient.
Ben
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
Hi,
Sorry for replying to this topic a bit late but just came to my attention.
The customer insurance field was an inclusion mainly to support migration from other systems that only had customer insurance information available. I agree this is not how it should be modelled.
The Patient Discount tab was originally designed to hold this type of information as it also provides start and end dates which are important. You do not necessarily need to apply any specific discount (i.e no need to setup discounts attached to the discount group) so it can be used for insurance purposes.
What is missing is for this information to be clearly visible to the user when a customer/patient is selected and, as Ben mentions, the ability to use this information to identity and process insurance claims.
I would not like to see yet another field created that in essence partially replicates this information (i.e no date ranges). Showing discounts in the summary areas would be preferrable and also attaching some claim processing information to discounts would also be viable alternative I believe.
Look forward to your comments.
Cheers Tony
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
Having a Date begin and end range is fine, however not sure how much it will get used, I think the key here is to be able to associate an "investigation" style entry that allows a custom form attachment ....Basically because we ask if a patient is issured and then it doesnt get ended. until a client tells us.
I dislike the fact its a "Patient Discount tab" I dont think its an accurate naming convention, but then I disagree with the use of discounting full stop. Fair price for fair service, but thats a seperate story. In fact I would argue that insurance should remove the need for discounting.
Aside from that sounds good.
Ben
Re: Pet insurance should be under patient information
I find it a little 'clunky' being under Patient Discount tab. It is time consuming having to also add an Alert as well to ensure staff know that a pet is insured. Is there any way a report could be written based on the Alert tabs that would give the number of insured vs non insured patients ? That would seem the simplest solution.
Re: Pet insurance - alternate kludge
An alternative kludge for getting something to stand out is to set up a new account type (eg Monthly - Insured) with a colour set, and then for the insured pets, change the account type.
When processing by account type Monthly% will pick up both the standard (non-insured) and insured monthy accounts.
Regards, Tim
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
Hi all,
I agree with the need of having the insurance tab under patient info rather than client info and I like Ben's comments above too. It would be great to be able to generate a claim form electronically by plugging patient details etc in the right fields similar to what we generate for a 'investigation' submission form for the pathology labs.
As far as I understand, 12 out of 13 pet insurance companies in Australia are underwritten by the same company and therefore their claim forms are very similar in their required fields and layout. This would make customising a 'template form or letter' much easier too.
And finally a report that can list insured pets' details and numbers vs non-insured pets on Open will be a very useful tool as well! eg for marketing purposes.
Regards,
Anthony (ActiVet)
Kind regards,
Anthony (ActiVet)
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
Hi,
I second Anthony's comments.
I have tried (unsucessfully) to make a templte form for insurance claims. Unfortunatly the formatting on most forms is complex and none of the companies I tried would supply me the forms in a word or openoffice format for easier alterations. Has anyone else had any sucess with this?
Cheers,
Adrian
Re: Pet insurance should be under ppatient information
The way I did our lab forms was scan them in to JPG and drop it as a background to a doc file then simply use a combination of textbox's form design to design over the top. Its tedious but you only do it once....
then you share it with us all and we all rejoice :)
Ben
Pet insurance report & claim form
Insurance issues -
1) Report on number insured and breakdown
We (and many other vets) have identified this as vital to our future. Ideally we would benefit by having a report with insured vs unisured and a breakdown of insurers. I asked Tony de K if there was any way a report could be written based on the Alert tabs that would give the number of insured vs non insured patients ? That would seem the simplest solution involving fesest keystrokes and also being most visable on current system. I would be happy to contribute - and to know others thoughts.
2) Claim forms - automated
Great idea, would be happy to support.
Pet insurance report & claim form
I am willing to fund the Number of pets insured report when "insured" is added to alerts rather than discounts.
You would need to determine number of active patients and number of those patients with "insured" alert, then work out a simple % and report month by month.
Obviously some patients would have multiple alerts, eg a drug allergy. I presume just ignore all alerts other than "insured".
Re: Pet insurance report & claim form
I've created a new project for patient insurance here.
Please review it to see if it meets your requirements. We can potentially automate common insurance claim forms; if you have existing templates or good quality scanned copies we can add these to the project.
-Tim