Re: [Gnumed-devel] Re: Billing revisited

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Sat, May 30, 2009 at 07:30:32AM -0700, Jim Busser wrote:

> I see there now exists in v11 the beginnings of a bill schema

...

> the following are not. We maybe need to resolve whether to create and  
> maintain, in the items table, fields that are so granular as currency  
> and amounts.
>
> I suggest not, since amounts per-fee-code will live in  
> reference tables and there exist further complexities like the numbers of 
> units to bill, duration of visit etc.
OK, will remove them.

Can you comment on the current fields directly so I'm sure
what's what ?

 fk_provider
 fk_encounter
 date_to_bill           (I fixed the description)
 code                           (identify item)
 system                         (identify item)
 description            (describe item)
 receiver                       (receiver of bill, typically patient, NULL if 
unknown)

 amount_to_bill         (I believe this was suggested by you)

 currency
 locale
 status

> It was for this reason I was thinking that a comment to the billing  
> clerk "bill 3 x code" would suffice

To be put into which field ?

> , and any more complexity desired to 
> be stored within the item could be achieved as an abstraction in  
> data_formatted much like an HL7 message that is internally delimited  
> with "|" and "^":

Please give some more detail on the purpose of each field:

>       billable (default "true"; false; null)
seems like a generically useful field, could be put directly
into the table

>       key to patient (default current patient)
Seems to be already available via fk_encounter.

>       alt_clinician (default current user clinician)
>       data_narrative (free text vs blob?)
>       data_formatted (free text)
>       comment (free text to guide the billing clerk)

> Can we add a table
>       bill_feecodes
Are those "abstract", "template" billables ? Instances of
which would end up in bill.bill_items and on a bill given
bill.bill_item.billable is true ?

> having fields:
>       fee_key (auto-increment)
>       fee_code (free text)
>       fee_description (free text)

Can you please suggest comments on these so we can define
their meaning in the database ?

Karsten
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