The THERAPIST Pro Tour

Because patients and patient issues are the primary focus of your practice, the patient list is the main jumping off point in The THERAPIST Pro. The main screen shows the patient name, their ID (account number), and their overall balance due. You can view the list in either name or ID order and you can show or hide inactive patients. You can also limit the list to the patients of one selected provider. If you have a large practice, you will appreciate the variety of ways you can search for a patient.

A print button gives you quick access to printing a single patient claim form or reports for the selected patient.

As you can see in the screen image, this window takes you to patient demographics, insurance, responsible parties, case and diagnosis information, transactions (services and payments), appointments (with the add-on Appointment Scheduler), and much more. You can also easily view all insurance claims for the highlighted patient.

The patient demographics window presents you with a screen with nine tabs that organize information in a logical order. On the General tab, shown here, you can see the patient's ID, name—including a preferred name or nickname, a form letter salutation line, their address, sex, date of birth, and principal provider.

Notice also that a "patient" can be an individual, a couple, or a family. You have the flexibility to treat couples and families and now your practice management software doesn't get in the way.

The THERAPIST Pro gives you many options about how you want to bill your patients. These options were designed to let the program handle the wide variety of real-world situations that practices face. Do you bill the patient for your full fee, or only a portion that is not expected from insurance? With Pro, you can make these choices individually for each patient or one time for your entire practice. Do you charge interest on past due accounts? Here again, you can set it for your whole practice and make exceptions for selected patients.

You can even enter specific messages to be printed on one patient's statement. On another screen you can set a statement message for all patients of a particular provider.

For many practices, insurance billing is one of the most important and most challenging aspects of running their business. The THERAPIST Pro offers considerable flexibility in how you do your insurance billing and it all starts on the Claims tab of the patient's demographics screen.

This screen is where you indicate whether to include this patient on batch printed and/or electronic claims. You can also enter the signature on file information for release of information and payment of benefits. This is also where you enter the patient's social security number and, if one is ever mandated, a national patient ID.

You can list several insurance payers for each patient, designating them as primary, secondary, etc. You can also indicate a third party payer in the case where the insurance coverage is the responsibility of a non-related individual or organization and enter a subscriber's eligibility and employment information as well as miscellaneous printed and electronic claim-related settings. You can even specify the particular insurance that will appear in CMS-1500 box 9 for "Other Insurance."

An Authorizations button on the bottom is just one way to get to a patient's authorizations for service.

And speaking of authorizations, The THERAPIST Pro tracks authorizations by visits, dollars, hours, and units. It also lets you specify particular procedure code authorizations by number or units. An authorization can have an optional expiration date by which all treatment must be completed in order to receive payment.

You can also tell the program to alert you when a progress report to the payer is due and when your authorized services remaining reach a certain level. Once again, The THERAPIST Pro gives you flexibility, not limitations.

This screen shows the Axis I and II mental health diagnosis code entry. On the other tabs let you can enter Axis II, IV, and V. You can override the default description for a diagnosis code when, for example, a code indicates substance abuse problem and you change it to indicate the particular drug being abused.

If you prefer a standard medical diagnosis style, The THERAPIST Pro has that too. It's an option you get to choose.

This screen is also a good example of another feature. The small symbols to the left of the date and diagnosis code fields indicate that there is a lookup associated with the field. Just click the right mouse button or press the F2 key for a popup calendar or a code lookup list for the date or code fields respectively.

If you do group therapy, it is easy to create a group and add patients. Create as many groups as you like and add as many patients to each group as needed.

With the optional Appointment Scheduler add-on, you can make group appointments. Then, when the session has been completed, a couple of clicks will create the appropriate services in each patient's account. It even lets you add services for only those patients who actually attended the session.

This screen shows all service and payment transactions for a selected patient. This is where you go to enter new charges and make payments. You can enter a single patient payment or one that covers multiple patients and services.

You can also view a record of the claims generated for a highlighted service, recalculate a patient's balance (in case it gets out of whack) or zero the account for deadbeats so you can make them inactive.

Most of the claim-related information for a service is on the General tab of the service record. All the fields with a small mouse symbol to the left have lookups you can access with a right-click of the mouse or by pressing the F2 key. Fields with a blue background (you can change the color to anything you want) are required and must be filled to complete the screen.

On the screen shot you can see some fields which are flagged as obsolete. These were used on the old (12/90) version of the HCFA-1500 form and will be removed in a later version once the old form is really gone.

All financial information about a service is entered on the Money tab. This is where you indicate the fee you are charging for a service and how much is owed by each payer. The THERAPIST Pro supports the following payers: the patient, up to three responsible parties, up to three insurance payers.

This is also where you enter adjustments and write offs.