If you have previously enrolled in patient statement services with Kareo, you may have been baffled by how long it took and frustrated with the number of steps required to set up patient statements. We're excited to report that we have worked closely with our patient statement partner to completely eliminate the enrollment process. That's right; you are no longer required to enroll in patient statement services. You can now simply configure patient statement options through the menu item Settings > Options > Patient Statement Options, and send patient statements immediately using the menu item Encounters > Send Patient Statements... for any existing or new practice on Kareo. No more enrollment, period! For more information, please consult the new Kareo Patient Statement Guide.

Kareo offers several different subscription editions, each including a different mix of features. Prior to this release, every customer could access every feature in Kareo, regardless of the subscription edition configured for each practice. This has been changed and you will now only see the features, including buttons, menus, and screens, which are allowed under your subscription edition. If after this release, you no longer can access a feature you need, please ask your company administrator to check the subscription edition configured for each practice by selecting the menu item Settings > Company > Find Practice..., then open a practice and check the Subscription Edition field. You can also consult Kareo.com for a list of features included with each Kareo subscription edition.

Are electronic claim rejections disrupting your cash flow? Check out the new Kareo Rejection Troubleshooting Guide, a guide which provides a list of the most common rejections among Kareo's customer community along with information about how to correct and rebill rejected claims. This guide is hyperlinked from the Clearinghouse Reports screen and is also available from the Kareo Help and Support website.

Setting up provider and group numbers can be tricky, and getting it wrong can mean rejections and denials. So we put together the Kareo Provider and Group Numbers Guide to help you sort through the confusing payer requirements. This guide is hyperlinked from the Provider record and the Group Numbers screen. You can also find it on the Kareo Help and Support website.

After our last release, several customers wrote us to say they were thrilled with the hyperlinks we added to the clearinghouse reports. So we decided to take this one step further, and add similar hyperlinks to electronic remittance reports. You can now access Encounter records and Claim records directly from ERAs by clicking the hyperlinked encounter and claim ID numbers.

Many Kareo customers have asked us to offer a broader variety of encounter forms to meet the unique needs of different providers. We are excited to announce the availability of more than 20 additional encounter forms. To view samples from the new library of Kareo encounter forms, please visit the Kareo Encounter Forms Library located on the Kareo Help and Support website. Once you find an encounter form you like, you can configure your new Encounter Form with your custom set of procedures and diagnoses codes through the menu item Settings > Encounter Forms and select your desired print format. Then, link the new Encounter Form to a specific provider through the menu item Settings > Providers > Edit Provider.

If you have patients running up an account balance, you want everyone in the medical office and billing office to be aware of their delinquency at every interaction with the patient. That's the idea behind the new Automatic Alerts feature of Collection Categories. You may have already learned about Collection Categories, a Kareo feature which helps you categorize patient accounts based upon their collections status. Now, you can add Automatic Alert messages which display for every patient linked to a particular Collection Category. To set up Automatic Alerts, select the menu item Settings > Other Lists > Find Collection Categories... > Edit Collection Category, then check the Show Automatic Alert box and type in an Alert Message. Then, the alert message you entered will display for each patient linked to the Collection Category on all key records, including the Patient record, Appointment record, Encounter record, Claim record, and Payment record.

How do you know where to focus your insurance collections work to achieve the highest reimbursement in the shortest possible time? That's what the new Insurance Collections Summary report is all about. Located in the Reports > Accounts Receivable menu, the new Insurance Collections Summary report shows a summary of insurance claims pending insurance payment grouped by status and ordered by outstanding balance. You can start aging from First Billed Date, Last Billed Date, Post Date, or Service Date. You can filter by Rendering Provider, Scheduling Provider, Service Location, Department, Payer Scenario, Patient, Batch #, Procedure(s), Age, or Status. You can group and sub-group by Age, Claim Status, Error Reason, Insurance Company, Insurance Plan, Patient, Payer Scenario, Procedure, Procedure Category, Rendering Provider, and Scheduling Provider. Once generated, the report provides hyperlinks to details on the Insurance Collections Detail report. For more information on this feature, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

How do you find a specific list of pending insurance claims to focus on when managing your insurance collections work? That's the purpose of the new Insurance Collections Detail report. Located in the Reports > Accounts Receivable menu, the new Insurance Collections Detail report shows a list of insurance claims pending insurance payment grouped by status and ordered by outstanding balance. You can start aging from First Billed Date, Last Billed Date, Post Date, or Service Date. You can filter by Rendering Provider, Scheduling Provider, Service Location, Department, Payer Scenario, Patient, Batch #, Procedure(s), Age, or Status. You can group and sub-group by Age, Claim Status, Error Reason, Insurance Company, Insurance Plan, Patient, Payer Scenario, Procedure, Procedure Category, Rendering Provider, and Scheduling Provider. Once generated, the report provides hyperlinks to specific Patients, Encounters, and Claims. For more information on this feature, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

Kareo's two-step payment posting process of entering payments and then applying those payments to open charges results in an unapplied balance represented on the Key Indicators Summary reports as the Change in Unapplied Balance. Many of our customers have asked us to provide a report that shows the details of how this number is calculated. That's what the new Unapplied Analysis report is all about. Located in the Reports > Payments menu, the new Unapplied Analysis report shows a complete ledger detailing the beginning unapplied balance, each transaction that changes the unapplied balance, and the ending unapplied balance over a date range. You can filter by Payer Type, Insurance Company, Insurance Plan, Patient, Payment Category, Payment, and Batch #. By default the report only shows the transactions that have a net change to the unapplied balance over the date range of the report, however, you can set the Style option to "All" in order to see all transactions. For more information on this feature, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

How do you reconcile your Kareo invoice with system activity in your customer account? That's what the new Customer Account Summary report is all about. Located in the Reports > Company menu, the new Customer Account Summary report shows a summary of your account, including the number of currently active providers, along with the total number of clearinghouse transactions, patient statements, and document storage space over the date range of the report. You can filter the report by Practice and Rendering Provider. Once generated, the report provides hyperlinks to the new Customer Account Detail report. For more information on this feature, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

How do you find a specific list of transactions or other details associated with your customer account? That's the purpose of the new Customer Account Detail report. Located in the Reports > Company menu, the new Customer Account Detail report shows a detailed list of clearinghouse transactions, patient statements, and documents over the date range of the report. You can filter the report by Practice, Rendering Provider, Transaction Category, and Transaction Type. You can group by Category, Patient, Practice, Rendering Provider, Service Date, Transaction, Transaction Category, and Transaction Date. For more information on this feature, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

Prior to this release, the Key Indicators Summary report displayed all metrics by Post Date, but some customers asked to run this report by Service Date. Now, it's possible. Use the new Date Type customization option to run the Key Indicators Summary report by either Post Date or Service Date. For more information, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

Some customers have requested a report that shows adjustments by Payer Scenario. So we have added new customization options that enable you to group and sub-group both the Adjustment Summary and Adjustment Detail reports by Payer Scenario. For more information, refer to the help topic Generating Reports > Understanding the Reports in the Online Help and User Manual.

Several Medicaid payers now require the rendering provider taxonomy code to be printed with a "ZZ" qualifier in box 33b of the new CMS 1500 form. You can now do this by following these steps. First, link the taxonomy code to a specific provider by selecting the menu item Settings > Providers, open the provider record, click the Specialty button and select the provider's specialty and corresponding taxonomy code. Second, configure a specific insurance company to print the taxonomy code in box 33b by selecting the menu item Settings > Insurance > Find Insurance Companies, then open the Insurance Company record, go to the Paper Claims tab, and select "ZZ Provider Taxonomy Code" from the Group Provider Number field. Once you follow these steps, then any new CMS 1500 form (w/NPI) submitted to the given paper will contain "ZZ" followed by the taxonomy code in box 33b.

Effective May 23, 2007, most government and commercial payers require paper claims to be submitted with the new CMS 1500 form with support for NPI numbers. While Kareo has provided support for the new CMS 1500 form for a couple of months, it was not the default paper form selected on new insurance companies. This has now changed, and any new insurance company record will default to the new CMS 1500 form, labeled "CMS 1500 Form - Version 08/05 with NPI - Standard (with NPI Numbers)". For more information, refer to the help topic Setting up the Company > Setting Up Insurance Lists > Setting Up Insurance Companies in the Online Help and User Manual.

Prior to this release, the list of transactions associated with a claim were displayed on the Claim record differently than the Payment record > Apply tab. This has changed, and now the Claim Detail screen displays a list of transactions in an identical format to the Payment record. For more information, refer to the help topic Sending and Tracking Claims > Editing a Claim in the Online Help and User Manual.

Many customers have asked for a convenient way to find all claims associated with an encounter on the Track Claims Status screen. So we added the Encounter ID to the list and as a searchable field. For more information, refer to the help topic Sending and Tracking Claims in the Online Help and User Manual.

Claims are now ordered by Service Date, then by Encounter ID on the Track Claims Status screen. For more information, refer to the help topic Sending and Tracking Claims in the Online Help and User Manual.

When the insured is different than the patient on an insurance policy, the insured is usually the same as the guarantor entered on the Patient record. So in order to eliminate an extra step in the data entry process, Kareo now automatically copies the Guarantor Name field to the Insured Name field on the Insurance Policy record. For more information, refer to the help topic Managing Patient Records > Entering a New Patient > Adding Insurance Policies to a Patient Record in the Online Help and User Manual.