Insurers can only process your electronic bills straight away if you provide the necessary patient and policy information so it makes sense to obtain these details at the earliest opportunity.
However, it’s not uncommon for practices to be tied up for hours in frustrating telephone calls to patients, private hospitals and insurers to check that the information they have been given is correct or to complete missing details.
Healthcode’s online Membership Enquiry feature is a popular shortcut for practices that are subscribed to our ePractice Lite and ePractice Pro plans. It enables users to check the patient details they hold against the insurer’s membership database in a fraction of the time.
Membership Enquiry enhances cash flow because it helps ensure that submitted bills include all the right information, reducing the risk of a bill being held up in the system. And because it is encrypted, the service is a more secure way of checking confidential patient details than the time-consuming alternatives.
The service is currently available with major insurers – Aviva, AXA Health, Bupa, Bupa Global (International), Cigna and VitalityHealth – and we are working with the others to extend this service to cover those member policies.
To use Membership Enquiry, just enter the patient’s details, select the insurer tab and then choose the relevant insurer from the drop-down list. Enter the patient’s registration number, scheme and renewal date if you have this information, but don’t worry if you don’t, and then click ‘save insurer’. At this point, the ‘Request Membership Enquiry’ button will turn blue and you start the process by clicking it.
When a match is found on the insurer database, the patient’s status appears on-screen. You can then use this data to populate your own patient database and/or update the insurer details, ready for billing. To find out more contact our Customer Service team on 0330 900 4900.