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While this may sound obvious, having good systems in place and implementing “best practice” protocols are vital to avoiding missed charges in a practice when it comes to laboratory tests. This is one of the most common services that often gets missed. It can be easily avoided by implementing best practice protocols, and requisition based integration between your practice management software and your external pathology provider, or in-house diagnostic equipment.

Lab to Practice Management Systems

The basic purpose has always been that when a test is carried out, a patient ID allows the information to come back into the patient’s clinical notes. While this is still the primary purpose, new 2-way integration methodology achieves a lot more.

Requisition Based Integration

Tests are carried out on a regular basis on patients but not all practices have a “formal” way to request such tests from within their practice management software. And, even if they do, there is no guarantee it will be billed out if the requisition “process” is not captured for billing. For it work efficiently a 2-way integration system is necessary. However, the “way” in which it is used is also very important. This is where good systems and best practice protocols become important.

Automatic Triggers

In order to achieve the full benefit of 2-way requisition based integration is to make sure your practice management system sends a “request” and automatically when a test is billed.

Best Practice

One of the best ways to set up your “trigger” is to have it activated through your billing screen. Once a lab test fee is billed, a request will be sent automatically thereby avoiding missed charges. In short, this would be your “best practice” protocol:

“One may only proceed with a test if there is a requisition on the machine, and the only way to send / create a request is to bill for the test first.”

No chances of missed charges now!

Check out the laboratory and other integrations that VetLinkSQL provides here.