In the dental clinic at school, patients are "required" to pay for dental treatments before or immediately after the treatments are done. To guard against patients running up high balances, our schedulers will not schedule a patient for their next appointment until they have paid for the previously rendered services. Occasionally, though, (and by occasionally, I mean most of the time) someone slips through the cracks in that system and ends up successfully making an appointment even though they have a balance.
New rule this year--patients who have a balance will have their electronic charts "locked," so no one can access their health information or continue treatment until the charges have been paid. Our schedulers have encouraged us to look on our patient's charts to see if they have a balance so that we don't get into that situation.
Let's break this down: Schedulers encourage us to look at our patient's charts to see if they have a balance. Schedulers lock us out of our patient's charts if they have a balance. Therefore, the only way we know if our patient has a balance is if we cannot look to see if they have a balance. Oh yeah, and if they have a balance they'd like to pay, we can't tell them how much they owe...because that information is listed in only one place: the patient's (locked) chart.
Just another way The Man (Dental School) is keepin' me down these days.
No comments:
Post a Comment