November 2004 Newsletter

HARP Features

The Overlooked and Forgotten HARP Enhancements

By: Gina Judson, HARP Technical Support Manager, Partner

HARP has grown and matured so much over the years that it can be a full-time project just trying to keep up with all the features. There have been many valuable enhancements that have been developed to help manage your accounts. So, I thought I would highlight some of these enhancements that you meant to get back to, but may have been overlooked or forgotten.

A long time ago in the late 1990s...

• Release 2.04 - February 27, 1998 Payment Arrangements was born. This function is a valuable tool that assists in keeping track of patients who promise to make monthly payments. Since its inception, many enhancements to this feature have been made that makes it a must-have. Reports, action function keys, and a rounding parameter have been added; and the system can even handle new charges that are added to an account that is already set up with payment arrangements. You really should check into this one.
   
• Release 2.05 - April 28, 1998 Work Lists saw the light of day for the first time. This is another great feature that allows the creation of user-defined lists of account numbers and/or ticket numbers. The list of account/ticket numbers can be brought up one after another through the Account Selection Window. You can create as many Work Lists as you want. One for collection calling, one for insurance review, and as many as are needed for tickler files to ensure proper and timely follow-up on problem accounts. The option to add a ticket to a work list is now available from the Inquiry, Receipt, and LIRP Receipt screens, and from the new Populate Work List screen accessed from User Tools. Tickets can be added to a work list for mass processing operations such as Mass Claims, for producing Patient Reports, or for work by another department. These lists are available to view so it is easy to monitor that the accounts/tickets are being worked so it keeps the cash coming in.
   
• Release 2.06 - July 20, 1998 the long-awaited Receipt Exception Monitor report arrived. This report identifies tickets that may be billed incorrectly and therefore have become dormant. This dormancy is caused by tickets that are marked as billed to an insurance that has already paid, or by a payment posted using a receipt source that does not exist on the ticket/account. If you are not using this report, I strongly suggest that you run it at least one time. You may just be surprised by what you find.
   
• Release 2.09 - June 3, 1999 introduced Overpayment Processing. This feature was created to facilitate the management of overpayments and credit balances. Information can be entered on the Receipt or Inquiry screen that is used to print an overpayment letter to the parties involved in the overpayment; i.e. either the insurance company or patient. Tickets are marked so the system can then print a second letter after a specified time period. If no response is received after the specified time period for the second letter, the system will automatically debit the ticket. Now that's letting the system work for you.
   

More, More, More in the year 2000 and beyond...

• Release 2.11 - June 29, 2000 brought you the UPIN Lookup. We have the UPIN numbers for just about every state and they are updated every year. The latest UPIN file is right at your fingertips.
   
• Release 2.14 - October 22, 2001 Inter-Department Workflow connected everybody in the office and at other sites too. This feature enables the routing of a ticket from one office department to another for additional work on a ticket. It works in conjunction with Work Lists; therefore, you must have the Work Lists component in order use Inter-Department Workflow. A work list is defined for each department along with a workflow hold code. Tickets that need additional work are then routed to the appropriate department with a ticket message giving instructions or notes. These tickets will be placed on hold until the department completes or resolves the ticket. This approach replaces note-passing and instructions that all too often are lost or misplaced. It is also a great way to easily see the history of all actions taken on a ticket, and by whom.
   
• Release 2.15 - March 4, 2002 gave us selections beyond our wildest dreams in the Mass Ticket Selector. With the use of the Mass Ticket Selector, you can select on just about any piece of patient, ticket, or transaction information needed to do a Mass Adjustment. Many of you will recognize that the selection screen uses the same selection criteria as those of the Patient Report. Then to make things even better, in Release 2.16K - September 27, 2002 Mailing Labels were incorporated with the Mass Ticket Selector. Then to make things even better than that, in Release 2.18 - February 17, 2003 Mass Claims were added to the mix. Mass Ticket Selector allows for extremely refined selections of tickets. Oh yeah, then in Release 2.21 - December 15, 2003 we saved the best for last, Mass Change Status was added. It just doesn't get any better than that.
   
• Release 2.15D - April 8, 2002 the first screen type to capture additional subscriber information came about. Screen type COMMHM got fields to enter subscriber address, date of birth and sex. Then, on December 15, 2003 Release 2.21 updated yet another screen type with these fields for additional subscriber information - COMM. When the patient is also the insurance subscriber, the above information will automatically default to the information entered in the Demographic screen. Keep this in mind when you set up your MSP claims for electronic submission.
   
• Release 2.17 - October 7, 2002 a function filled a need for Standalone clients to Delete Old Data. This function is used to clean out old messages and processing schedules from the System Monitor, also referred to as SYSMON. Just like the datasets in your patient billing database, there are datasets in SYSMON that can fill up also. How many of you remember this one?
   
• Release 2.19 - May 19, 2003 System Monitor took on Total System Backups. With one push of a button, you can backup your entire system and have processing automatically streamed in one or all your accounts. As an added bonus, in Release 2.19B - June 4, 2003 the ever-popular Job Scheduler was added to SYSMON. Just decide on the day and time you want your Date Job or Total Backup to take off, then sit back and let the system take over. You may require our assistance in setting it up, but that's OK, we are always happy to help.
   
• Release 2.20 - September 2, 2003 looked to the future with Two Open Accounting Periods. No longer did we have to wait until after month end to enter transactions for next month. Charges, receipts and adjustments can be entered for the next month while being applied immediately to the patient accounts. No more pressure to hurry up and close this month so you can start processing next month. That's the way to keep production flowing.
   
• Release 2.20 - September 2, 2003 didn't deny us any longer for the Denial Tracking System. This feature allows storage of payer denial information in an organized manner that can be used to generate denial statistics. This can provide you with valuable information about a provider's patient base, insurance contracts, and billing process performance. The reports offer many options including a function to categorize denial codes, options to include or exclude denial codes, and selection of certain insurances. It is best used with Auto-posting since it uses the ANSI denial codes. This is definitely easier that trying to go through every EOB to see what kind of rejects you may be getting, don't you think?
   
• Release 2.22 - March 14, 2004 changed everything with Dynamic Entity Names. HARP supports such a wide variety of medical practices that our entity names just didn't fit some of the practices, so we gave our clients the ability to name them to fit their needs. An example would be Ambulance Billing. Since they are billing for the ambulance service and not a physician, they can change the Physician entity to read Ambulance. This changes not only the screen, but all reports as well. Now that is definitely a change for the better.
   
• Release 2.23 - June 14, 2004 finally offers the ability to eliminate paper by using some modern technology with CD Reporting Packages. Standalone clients can now create CD Reporting Packages to share with their clients, thus eliminating printed reports. This feature would also be an excellent means of saving old reports that you no longer need on your system but just aren't ready to delete.
   

Those are just a few of the enhancements that have been made since the inception of HARP; it doesn't stop there. Not only have some of these enhancements been enhanced since they were first introduced, there are many more to come. In preparing this article, I ran across some things that even I had forgotten. For more information on each of the enhancements reviewed above or to review all the many other enhancements not mentioned, I urge you to sign on to the ASP Portal and click on Release Notes for a refresher course on all that HARP has to offer.