Third Party Billing

Gentu allows you to assign invoices to a variety of individuals or organisations; including patients, parents, guardians or carers, Medicare, Health Funds, or other organisations responsible for the patient's care.

Parents, Guardians or Carers

By default, patients are set as the default 'Self' account holder for their own accounts. 

However if the patient's account is the responsibility of a parent, guardian, or carer, you should assign this second party as the account holder instead of the patient.

Creating the Account Holder

If the parent, guardian or carer is not already a patient in your practice, you will need to create them as an Account Holder in Gentu's Address Book.

If the parent/guardian is already a patient in your Gentu, please disregard these steps and move directly to Setting the Account Holder below.

1. Open the Address Book and select Add > Account Holder.  
2. Ensure the entity type is set to Individual.
3. Enter the account holder's details.
   
   • Note: if you wish to submit Patient Claims or Bulk Bill accounts for the patient under the parent/guardian account holder, you will need to enter the account holder's Medicare card and DOB details.
4. Once you have completed their details, click Save Contact.

Setting the Account Holder

1. Open the patient's file to Patient Details.
2. Locate the Account Holder section and click the + icon to add a new Account Holder.
3. Search for and select the account holder. 
   
   
   
4. Click Save to set them as the account holder. 
5. You will now see two account holders assigned to the patient. If the original Account Holder is not needed (i.e. you never wish to bill them directly), you can remove them by clicking on their name and then clicking Unlink. 

Billing the Account Holder

To bill a Parent, Guardian or Carer as Account Holder, simply create an invoice and select Self as the Account Type.

If there is more than once Account Holder attached to this patient, you can select the correct one by clicking the Addressee drop down and selecting them from the list.

Create the invoice as per normal, and the invoice will be printed with the Account Holder's details. 

Organisation, Business, Hospital or other Individual

In some cases you may wish to address an invoice to an organisation, business, or individual who is not normally responsible for the patient's accounts. For example, as part of a Workcover claim.

In this case, you can create an Account Holder, Hospital, or Contact record for an organisation/individual, and address the invoice to them directly using the Other account type. 

Note that if you wish to directly bill an individual third party, they must be created as a Contact.

See the Address Book article for more information.

Creating the Organisation or Hospital

1. Open the Address Book.
2. Select Add > Hospital/Contact/Account Holder.
3. For Organisations or Businesses, you should create an Account Holder entry, ensuring that you have marked them as a Business entity type.
   
4. For Hospitals and Contacts, you should ensure that the Issue Invoices to this contact checkbox under Billing Details is ticked; this will allow you to assign the invoice to the Hospital or Contact. 
5. If you wish to charge GST on accounts billed, you should also tick the Apply GST to all items billed checkbox.
   
   
   
6. Once you have entered the details, click Save Contact. 

For more information on the differences between the record types, see the Address Book article.

Billing the Third Party

1. To bill the third party, open the relevant patient's file and select Add > Invoice.
2. Set the Account Type to Other... 
3. Click into the Addressee field and search for the account holder.
   
4. You'll also see new options appear, allowing you to record additional details about any third party claims related to this invoice (if applicable).
   
5. Continue to create the invoice as you would normally.
6. If you wish to apply an MPR, you can do so by clicking Apply MPR and selecting the relevant MPR scale from the list.
7. The invoice will print with the organisation or individual's details in the address field. 

For more information about third party claims, please see the Third Party Claims article.

Receipting Organisational Invoices

Third party invoices cannot be receipted using the 'Pay' or 'Claim' buttons.

Once you have Saved or Printed the invoice you can receipt it via Organisational Remittance.

1. Navigate to Financials > Organisational Remittance.
2. Select the relevant Organisation from the list.
3. Input the payment details at the top of the page, then scroll down to locate the patient.
4. Manually input the payment amount for each relevant item.
5. Once you have assigned the total value of the Total Paid amount at the top of the screen, click Save at the bottom of the page.

Please see the Organisational Remittance article for more information.

Configuring Third Party Billing

If you were using Gentu prior to Third Party Billing functionality being made available, you may need to update some Account Holders in your address book, as well as altering the Account Holders set in Patient Details for any patient.

• If you currently have businesses or billable third parties saved as an Account Holder in the Address Book, you should open their record, mark them as a Business entity, and update their record with the relevant address & billing details.
  
  
• If you have linked any third party organisation to a patients as an Account Holder, you should remove them from the patient's file to prevent any processing errors. You can do this by opening the patient's file, clicking on the organisation under 'Account Holders' and selecting Unlink. 

See Also:

Multiple Procedure Rules