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

[Karsten Hilbert]

On Fri, May 20, 2011 at 08:18:54AM +0200, Hilbert, Sebastian wrote:

> This could be the very first implementation. For that we have identified that 
> we currently lack a way to enter billables.

And we don't plan to gain one this time around. Let ${LSMB}
handle managment of billables. Let GNUmed sync that.

We need a way to select items-to-bill from the billables list.

> b) some sort of tagging /marking) medical data (procedures, diagnoses) in the 
> EMR as billable item so it will appear in said plugin before sending off to 
> LSMB

Not in the first iteration or else I don't understand what
you want to achieve with that.

> To make this clear. Here in Germany I am not aware of any software that could 
> automatically detect billable items. These softwares need the doctor to enter 
> an abstract billing code which is connected to a certain amount of money.

I wish it was. It is only connected to an
once-theoretically-agreed-upon-but-long-broken-promise-of-perhaps-to-be-paid
amount.

> >     - with some sane way to acquire clinical information as needed to 
> > support
> > payment - EMR may push it
> 
> In Germany this is implied by the textual representation of the billing code 
> one enters. In our scenario billable items (articles) in LSMB will have item 
> code (which for Germany could be identical to the billing codes of the GOÄ 
> coding system) and a textual representation.
> 
> I am not aware that other clinical information will be needed for billing (it 
> might even be forbidden to have this information on an invoice)  

You need to put some sort of clinical hint on the bill so
the patient easily identifies with his duty to pay.
Typically, that's one or more diagnoses. There's an
(unsolved) legal problem what happens when the insurance
company learns of previous history of the patient when some
older diagnosis ends up on the bill.

Karsten
-- 
GPG key ID E4071346 @ gpg-keyserver.de
E167 67FD A291 2BEA 73BD  4537 78B9 A9F9 E407 1346