Computerized patient billing systems in the health care sector have many advantages and are preferable to manual patient billing system particularly in notifying you about your outstanding payments and the status of accounts. They also enable you to process your hospital bills, such as nursing, medications, lab testing and laundry, with ease. However, there are also some disadvantages to changing over to a computerized system.
Efficient and Effective Data Modification
Computerized patient billing systems allow for effective management of the patient's payment schedules. They store particulars about the patient's payment pattern in such a way that the records can easily be modified. When the patient clears the bill, the accounting records are automatically updated so that account balances will always be kept up-to-date.
High Speed and Mobility of Reporting
Reports on the patient's receipts and disbursements can easily be generated through the system. Database management systems have report-generating applications that can be used to give a report of a patient's bills. The helps you to monitor your payment pattern, such as with the aged debtor's analysis, which shows overdue accounts.
Sharing of Data
Computerized patient billing systems allow health care management to share the patient's billing account with other persons in the system provided they have a right to access the data. Also, two or more departments within the facility can easily consult with each other with regard to the patient's billing account. The data is instantly available even to the patient's insurer in different locations at the same time.
Reduced Paperwork
The computerized patient billing system minimizes paperwork. All the data regarding the payment record is entered into the computer instead of recorded on a sheet of paper which can then be filed. Later, various bills and reports can then be easily generated through the computer. Since the patient's record of payments is stored in the database, the data cannot be easily destroyed.
Minimized Errors
Computerized patient billing systems increase accuracy because they leave less room for errors. With the computer systems performing calculations regarding the patient's bills, errors are minimized except perhaps when you make a mistake of keying in data wrongly, or you enter figures in the wrong fields.
Low Number of Patients
Not all health service providers may see the benefit of introducing computerized patient billing systems. Small health centers which are rarely faced with the problems of patient billing due to the low numbers of patients that visit them may not feel the need to computerize their patient billing systems.
High Initial Cost
When introducing the computerized patient billing system, you may incur high initial costs of buying computer systems and installing them. Aside from that, you will have to purchase patient billing system software. There will also be regular software updates which may vary in cost from package to package.
Special Trainings for Personnel
Changing to computerized patient billing systems from manual may not be easy. To ensure it is implemented properly, training of the personnel within the hospital on handle and use the patient billing software may require extra time and commitment as well as an additional cost of hiring trainers.
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