How to Track Bulk Appointment Packages with Authorizations in DrChrono

Appointment packages are used when patients buy a certain number of appointments to be used for a certain time period. For example, some providers will offer packages of 20 appointments a month or 120 appointments a year. It is possible to track appointment packages purchased by patients in your DrChrono account. Please see the following steps to learn how to track appointment packages.

1. The first step is to create a custom procedure code. You can create a custom code by going under Billing > Coding > New Custom Procedure.

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2. Next enter the information such as Quantity Units, Notes, Price, and Type of Product. You have the option to choose either Service or Product under Type of Product.

Bulk_Appointment_Custom_Code_Example.png

2. Next, go to the patient chart, click on Demographics on the left-hand side, and then click on Authorizations. Click the green button that says Add New Authorization.

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3. Fill out an authorization number(you can make up your own number) end date or the number of visits, and the custom code you created. Click Create to add the authorization to the patient.

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You will see the authorization, the number of visits total, and the number remaining in the patient's chart.

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3. When you enter this custom code into an appointment, it will start counting down the number of visits that the Authorization covers. This process will start after the appointment has occurred.

Auth_example_Custom_Code_Entry.png

4. Once you get down to 4 visits, this will generate a flag on the patient's account. This is the process of tracking appointments for a single patient. You can create other custom codes for different numbers of appointments and new authorizations for other patients as well. If you click on the Authorization number you can see the visits connected to the authorization.

Auth_example_Custom_Code_CountDown_Enlarged.png

Note: Each time you enter the code it will charge the amount associated with it. There are a couple of ways to handle this depending on how you would collect payments for the package.

1. You can make your custom code reflect the amount you will allocate for each appointment. In this example, instead of $1600, it would be $200. You can still collect the full package payment and then allocate it to each appointment.

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For the first appointment, we are charging $200 for the appointment but collecting $1600 for the package of 8 appointments.

Package_200_Payment_1600.png

You can then allocate payments to subsequent appointments as they happen.

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2. In this example, we are going to collect $1600 on the first visit, and on subsequent visits, we can change the price to $0. The authorization will still count down the visits.

Package_Procedure_1_Payment_then_0_dollar_subsquent_payments.png