End of Year Care for THOMAS
Some ideas for you before you post any charges for 2010:
Complete all posting of payments and charges that you have received up until 12/31/08. Do not post 2010 information until this is completed.
Run all the reports your Accountant wants for year end. Ask the CPA now if they have all the documentation they need BEFORE you post next years stuff.
Reconcile all accounts. (This re-adds the transaction ledger. If items are changed/removed in the transaction the patient/insurance balance may be off. Reconciling corrects any of those balances.)
Do all patient statements.
Check other claim status from the Paper Claim Billing Menu. All open/hold/rebill/inquiry claims should be reviewed. Verify that all claims that can be billed are changed to the appropriate status and available to be billed. Only claims in an unbilled/rebilled/inquiry status will be prepared.
Work all Edit Reports and rejections from 2009.
Run Delinquent claims Report – Work all non-paid claims. Especially those that will reach filing limits early next year.
Run an Aging by Patient Report. Review all balances including credit balances for patient account that need corrections. If your office writes off balance under a certain amount (ex: any patient balance under a $1.00) do so at this time.
Prepare and send all electronic files. (including inquiry claims)
Prepare and send all paper claims.
During the following steps everyone needs to be out of the system. All computers need to be completely out of THOMAS. Depending on the size of your system the time of these functions can vary.
Do a back up that you can store off site. (Backing up is extremely important on a daily basis, however, at year-end it is extremely important. If for any reason you need to pull the data that was in your system when you sent data to the accountant you may have that ability. (but you should have run them before next year's postings) You will also have a back up that is off site in case something happens in your office, it really does happen!)
After you do your backup run a Pack databases. (When you delete information from THOMAS it is not necessarily removed right away. When you pack it deletes any information that you have deleted that is being held in you databases.)
