SOAPware Billing

2nd Alpha demo released

2009-10-28T08:03:00.001-07:00

Just wanted to stop in real quick and let everybody know that a second more formal demo has been released of the billing system. That demo can be found here: http://soapware-demovideos.s3.amazonaws.com/project7.htm

The billing system remains in Alpha as we work on polishing and preparing it for beta. As mentioned before though we wont put it into beta until we get the 2010 pre release and the 2010 release out of the door. As soon as that time comes we will be sure to let everybody know.

The Alpha continues....

2009-10-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

As most of you know by now we have not and will not release standard billing as planned this fall. Randall talks towards the details in his blog post on Oct 2nd http://roates.blogspot.com/2009/10/tentative-soapware-product-release.html

In a nut shell, we are somewhat stuck behind what I call the release train. We have 2 SOAPware releases ahead of us that must be taken care of before the tracks can be cleared for us to start the process of getting released. Until that happens we are quite simply sitting in Alpha.

This isn't all bad of course, the longer the application sits in Alpha the more polished it will be when released. As we wait for the tracks to clear we will continue to work on billing ensuring that all features are implemented and that the overall quality of the product is sound.

If you have any questions about the product or the expected release, please feel free to leave comments here or twitter me at SOAPWynne.

Alpha demo released to the public

2009-08-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

A few days ago we gave a demo to the company showing many of the new features that will be released with the upcoming Standard Billing. This demo is in a presentation format with a few questions from the audience mixed in. It's about an hour and a half long and should give everybody a better idea as to what is going to be released.

Let me apologize in advance for the annoying beeping sound that you will hear in it. This was a problem with the recording that we wish did not happen but given the amount of content and the desire to allow our customers to view and give feedback, we decided to go ahead and release it.

For now, feel free to comment on this blog or send me a e-mail/tweet if you have any questions. We will soon be reorganizing our forums and will have a new home to discuss billing related ideas.

Here is the link: http://soapware-videos.s3.amazonaws.com/SWBillingWalkThru.wmv

Billing goes Alpha!!!

2009-08-19T11:56:00.001-07:00

As of this week SOAPware's Standard Billing product has moved into the Alpha phase. What this means is that we are at the end of scheduled new development/coding. We have achieved all of the goals we set out to achieve and are now moving forward with the next phase in the project.

So what does Alpha really mean? What we mean by Alpha is that we are moving into a stage where we start preparing the application to be used by users outside of the company. It's where we start pulling everything together and make a number of very important decisions about the product. It's where we ramp up our documentation and support to make sure the proper foundation is there for the release. And of course, the most important aspect is that we continue to test and resolve issues that are found.

One of the most frequent questions we get here at SOAPware is when will users be able to install and use/test our new billing system. The Alpha phase isn't a good time to do that for many reasons, but the following phase (Beta) is. Once we move into the Beta phase we will start a closed Beta program and progress form there.

Let's take a moment and look at our schedule. Back in March I blogged about the Billing Release Schedule and talked a bit about dates etc. For SOAPware Standard Billing we said in the Winter of 2009. I'm happy to say that we are still very much on track to releasing this Winter.

To be more specific, I would like to move from the Alpha phase to the Beta phase in early September. Once we are in beta things become a bit more unpredictable. User feedback will certainly drive the process from there and will help determine just how close we are to release. So, let's all hope for a smooth Beta so that we can get this out there for everybody to use!

New Features in Scheduling...

2009-08-07T13:21:00.000-07:00

A month or so ago I blogged about the new outlining functionality that we will introduce in Scheduling once our Standard Billing package is released. I wanted to spend this month talking towards another new feature in Scheduling that I'm sure many of you will be excited about.

When we originally wrote Scheduling we tried to keep it as basic and affordable as possible. This simplicity has helped Scheduling become one of the more popular products we have sold here at SOAPware. That simplicity though has also proven to be inadequate for sites dealing with larger volumes of appointments. With the Standard Billing release, we plan to address some of those issues.

Starting with Standard Billing, Scheduling will now be able to notify all clients of changes occurring on the Schedule. This change allows all clients to update their view automatically without requiring the user to refresh the screen. What this means is that at any given time, the Schedule that you seen on the screen is an accurate representation of your appointments.

I plan to demo this soon in a video that will hopefully be released in a couple weeks. If you would like to be notified when that video is released, please follow this blog or follow me on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/SOAPWynne

Outlining to be introduced into Scheduling...

2009-06-25T11:37:00.000-07:00

With the upcoming standard billing release we will see some long awaited new features implemented into Scheduling. One of the new features allows you to define Outlines that will assist staff in scheduling the correct type of appointment for the defined day/time slot. For example, if you want all of your new patient appointments to be scheduled between 8am and 10am on a Monday, you can define that in Scheduling and assign it a color that will show up on the Scheduler.

Below is a screen shot of Scheduling showing a New Patient outline between 8am and noon. It also shows Surgeries between 1pm and 3pm and then Follow Ups between 3pm and 5pm.

Note that Outlining doesn't prevent staff from scheduling appointments before, during, or after any of those times, it's quiet simply a guideline to help staff correctly schedule an appointment into the desired available time slots.

This new feature will be released with the standard billing release of SOAPware.

Time flies when you are working hard..

2009-06-08T14:34:00.000-07:00

It seems like just yesterday I made a post to our billing blog but of course, it's been much longer than that. It certainly isn't for the lack of want or content, but rather the lack of time. I did want to pause for a moment and let everybody know where we are at and how we are doing.

At the moment, we are 'close' to being on schedule. We have done a substantial amount of work but still fell short on 1 or 2 of our goals for the 3^rd milestone. We have added a new member to our team who has already had a positive impact so we do feel that we will catch up during the 4^th millstone.

Back to the 3^rd millstone though, one of the major screens that we worked on was the payment screen:

The act of taking a payment may at first seem straight forward, but as you get into the details you will find that things can get complex very quickly. The dialog we have designed is designed to be intuitive and allow for easy payment entry, but also allow for the different complex situations that can arise.

For example, you can add multiple patients to this dialog allowing for payments to be applied to as many patients as you like. This allows for a customer to easily pay for their entire family and allow for your front office staff to easily capture it. Hopefully we will get some demo videos up before to long that shows how you would go about filling out the payment dialog and showing some of the more involved aspects of this dialog.

Within the next week or two, I'll also try to show some of the reports we have been working on. We aren't taking the reports lightly and have been working on them for the past 2 months. At the moment, most of the reports created aren't very exciting but they are required for the billing system. As we get into the more exciting ones (which will be in the coming weeks) we will post those and talk towards their meaning/use.

That's it for the moment, as always if you have any questions or comment please feel free to contact me. Thanks!

Billing Update

2009-05-05T08:29:00.000-07:00

It's the beginning of May and I wanted to stop by to give a quick update on where we are in development with our Standard Billing product. After reviewing the project we are right on schedule for the winter 2009 release. We have just completed our second milestone which entailed building the infrastructure and in addition to that, we have started building interfaces that reflect the different types of data that the billing application will be working with.

One of these interfaces is the Fee Schedule view. This view allows users to define new Fee Schedules as needed, manually enter them or base them off an existing fee schedule. You can edit codes directly in the grid view or use our quick entry dialog to enter codes in an intuitive and quick manner.

As we move forward and through the 3rd milestone, we will post more screens showing functionality that we are developing. It's my intent to keep this process as open as possible so make sure to check back from time to time for further information and updates.

Before finishing out, I wanted to add that 2009 is looking really good. The SOAP1500 (the ability to print CMS1500 forms) and SOAPClaim (the ability to export a claim) are in and ready to go. I'm looking forward to getting this version into your hands as not only does it contain 2 new products, but it also contain a large number of fixes for SOAPware that I think everybody will be very happy to see. As always, if you have any questions please visit our forums and drop us a message. Thanks!

837p and 2009

2009-04-04T10:02:00.000-07:00

As you know the SOAPware 2009 release has taken a little longer than expected. We are getting closer but it's not quite there as of yet. Due to the delay we have decided to include the 837p implementation into the SOAPware 2009 release. This will not delay the 2009 release any longer than expected as we have separate resources working on the 837p. A couple things to announce in relation to this:

With this release we will only allow for sending electronic claims to our Clearinghouse partner Gateway EDI. In the future we may allow for different options but for now, it will just be Gateway.
We are tentatively naming this SOAPClaim, this isn't finalized yet but there is a good chance that this will be the final name.
We will be releasing pricing information on all of our billing releases here in the near future. I know quite a few of you have been asking for this and it will be made public very soon.

Our Standard Billing package is moving along quite nicely and is still on schedule. I'm hoping that over the next few weeks we can release more information related to that offering but at the moment I don't have anything that would be of interest. As always if you have any questions please post them on the forums and we will respond, thanks!

Some Clarification Needed

2009-03-18T12:50:00.001-07:00

I need to take a quick moment to post some clarification to my post on March 16. For item #4 'SOAPware Clearing House integration', it is not worded very well. It should read as 'SOAPware Clearing House automation'. This represents our billing systems ability to send claims to a clearing house and automated remit posting among other things. It is very important to note that with our SOAPware Standard Billing release you will be able to upload claims and process them accordingly. In short, with Standard Billing you will be able to use a clearing house.

Billing Release Schedule

2009-03-16T07:04:00.000-07:00

I wanted to spend a few moments talking about the different billing related releases that will be offered over the next year or so.

First and foremost, the CMS-1500 form generation tool has been approved by our QA staff and is ready to be released. It will be included in the SOAPware 2009 offering (the next major release of SOAPware). The release date for that is ASAP. We had hoped to have it released by now but we have had to make some adjustments in the Rx Manager that has taken longer than expected. As soon as I can nail down a release date for this I will let you know.

For those of you who are new to the site, the CMS-1500 form generation tool allows you to create a CMS-1500 form in SOAPware, will be stored along with the SuperBill in the chart and can be printed directly onto a pre-printed CMS-1500 form or to a color laser that would print the data and the form. Because it's stored along with the SuperBill you can re-load and reprint the form (with data) when needed.

There is a second offering that may or may not go out this summer. This offering allows users to export a 837p form to a file on your hard drive. This file can then be uploaded to insurance or a clearing house for processing. This isn't an official offering as of yet and it may be rolled until the later main billing release. Over the next month or two we will have a better idea on where we stand with this.

The third offering is scheduled for the 4^th quarter of 2009. This is the main billing offering by SOAPware and likely will be called our standard billing system. This will include the accounting/ledger functionality along with reports and the ability to process claims. Most of my future blogging will be themed towards this release.

The forth offering is scheduled in 2010 and will include automation or integration with our clearing house GEDI. The details for this release will be fleshed out later this year.

So to sum it up:

SOAPware 2009/CMS-1500 – Pushing to release ASAP
Billing 837p – Possible Summer, may get rolled into main Winter release.
SOAPware Standard Billing - Winter 2009
SOAPware Clearing House integration – 2010

If you have any questions about these releases please let me know.

O Billing, Where Art Thou?

2009-03-06T07:59:00.000-08:00

Here at SOAPware we get a large number of calls inquiring as to the status of our Billing application with the #1 question being, when will it be released. I wanted to take a few moments to talk about the past, where we are and where we are going with this application.

To put it simply the Billing product has been quite the adventure for us over the past couple of years. We originally licensed a billing system to integrate into SOAPware but during that process we had a key member of our team pass away. This was certainly a shock to us all, and obviously delayed our progress towards having an integrated Billing system. We decided at that point to seek outside help to complete the integration in hopes of getting Billing to market as fast as possible. As we neared completion of the project though, we started to see what we felt were some rather large problems that would have to be addressed.

Without going into too much detail, we started to understand that the technology that the billing system was built on (which was different than what SOAPware is built on) presented some logistical problems in terms of installation on newer operating systems such as Vista. It also became apparent to us that there were a number of licensing concerns beyond the Billing and SOAPware applications that was pushing the price of the product into a range that we weren't comfortable offering to our customers. Because of these and other factors, we decided to stop development on what could be considered a nearly completed product. These types of decisions are very difficult to make but it's one that had to be made for the betterment of the Billing product and SOAPware as a whole.

From that point, we went back to the drawing board and started over. We began work last year creating our own Billing system built on the technology that our entire product line is built on. We quickly found out though that we now had a different problem on our hands. SOAPware (the EMR software) needs constant attention. Things are changing so fast in the medical world that as a development team we are always working on adding new features and addressing standards such as CCHIT. We were trying to add new features, address standards, and develop Billing in very short time frames. Important issues, such as quality control in SOAPware, were falling through the cracks.

Once we identified that the quality control was becoming a major problem in SOAPware, we had stop, go back to the drawing board, and figure out a way to do all the things we want while maintaining quality and production throughout our product lines. This effort is what Dr. Oates refers to in his latest blog posting . What this means to billing is that we now have a dedicated team working on the billing product to ensure its success, and a dedicated QA team to insure it's quality.

Back to the question of when billing will be released. We get this question on a daily basis and it's been a difficult one for us to answer because of the fast changing nature of the EMR side of the software. Now that billing has a dedicated team, we can more acutely estimate our resources and dedicate time towards the project. The answer to when it will be released is that it is very likely to be the 4^th quarter of 2009. If that estimate changes for whatever reason we will let you know through the blog as soon as we know. It's our intent, moving forward, to keep you as informed as is possible on the status of our billing product.

If you have taken the time to read all of this, I hope that you take the time to sign up and follow this blog. Over the next few months, I will post updates on the Billing project with the intent of keeping you as informed as possible. If there is any specific issue you would like me to blog about pertaining to billing, please let me know.

Preliminary Preview of Charge/Payment Posting in SW Billing

2008-12-11T09:56:00.000-08:00

Here is an initial view of the Charge/Payment posting process in SOAPware Billing (virtually a sample of a patient checkout). Please note: These processes and screens will be evolving and will include much more in time.

To check out the video, please see the link below:

SWBilling Preview

SOAPware Billing Blog

2008-11-05T11:57:00.000-08:00

Hello All, this is the first of several posts that we will be making in the coming months to help keep you updated on the progress of SOAPware Billing. It is our top priority right now, and we are quite eager for its release. Unfortunately at this time, due to a number of factors, we cannot announce an estimated release date.

In the interim of its release, this blog will provide you with updated screenshots, as well as a forum for discussion on billing related matters. Also, please feel free to email us at billing@soapware.com as well, with any additional questions.

Below are some of the coming features of SOAPware Billing:

· Single, integrated solution
· One-step check-out processing
· Apply payments to multiple patients within Checkout
· File claims electronically directly to Gateway EDI
· Print paper CMS 1500 Forms
· Electronic Remits/EOBs
· Error checking on claims prior to being filed
· Send secondary claims electronically via Gateway EDI
· Send electronic statements via Gateway EDI
· Online patient eligibility and claim status tools
· Easy-to-use electronic reporting tools
· Schedule multiple providers/facilities
· Customize fee schedules