Our recommendation is to assign charges to the insurance payer first, then transfer the charges to a secondary insurance or the patient. This is the recommended process for several reasons.
- Allows you to only leave on the insurance invoice what you are expecting insurance to pay.
- Allows you to charge the appropriate tax based on unit price, or patient's responsibility via the Split button, also allows you to assign any copay, co-insurance, or deductible amount without tax from the Patient Portion button.
- Lessens confusion if charges need to be reassigned for any reason. You will be able to go directly to the insurance invoice to reassign if needed, e.g., different copay, or patient responsibility, remove write-off, transfer out to secondary.
- Your reports will be more accurate when running the Sales report by payer. The results in this report are triggered by the FIRST payer the charges are assigned to. For example, if charges are sent to the patient first, this report will be have a larger value for patient payers, than insurance payers where the primary billing should be coming from.