Re: [Gnumed-devel] Introducing myself and questions on billing/accounting

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Thu, May 19, 2011 at 09:29:30AM +0200, Hilbert, Sebastian wrote:

> > > 2) On a completely different matter (on of interest later on and might
> > > not pertain to LSMB at all): Here in Germany there exist a set of rules
> > > which billable items can be combined and which cannot.
> > 
> > Not sure I understand.  But if it has to do with what can be on the
> > same invoice, that sounds like a mess.

You don't imagine the imagination you'd need to grasp the
breadth of the mess.

> Here is the deal. Patient calls in and you talk to him. you can bill that. 
> then patient comes in and you talk to them, then you do a physical 
> examinnation. In this case you can only bill the physical since you talked to 
> him before (on the phone). Had the patient not called befor you could have 
> billed the talk before the physical examination.

It's much worse, actually, but the above gets the point
across by scratching the surface.

> It involves three different billable items but only two can be billed for 
> combination reasons.
> 
> However this step (rules engine) could be implement above the gateway to LSMB 
> so data send to LSMB has been processed by the rules engine before.
> 
> In the end this has nothing to do with the initial implementation. Just 
> wanted 
> to raise it in case it changes things conceptually.

I agree.

For a first implementation the doctor/accountant can be the
rules engine. They are genetically optimized for that, anyway.

> > > Is there such a multiplier concept in LSMB ? In a first working (and
> > > highly usable) implementation we can assume the multiplier to be one
> > > (1). We could also have LSMB host multiple billiable items (which imply
> > > the factor) or LSMB could have the concept of the multiplier (but maybe
> > > this does not make much sense since this is Specific for Germany).
> > 
> > LSMB has a discount field which could be hijacked to act as a
> > multiplier....  If you have per-line discounts too, then that could
> > require a little more work....
> 
> We have per line discounts :-) You though it was that easy ?
> 
> each billable item can have a discount ( or negative discount in that case)

That would nicely solve it :-)

I don't think it's hijacking. It's rather non-imagined use :)

One important point (Sebastian said so but perhaps not
clearly): Each bill can contain billing items each of which
needs a different discount from other billing items on the
same invoice. So, yes, line discounts would work. Billing
item specific discounts would work, too (if you can specify
a discount per billable item). The discounts are pretty
fixed (1, 1.8., 2.7, 3.5) as such but all of them must be
applicable to individual invoice lines.

Karsten
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