Assign patient ID (account number)

Special Notice:

The windows-compiled version of the Stratford program will allow 17 character patient IDs - alpha-numeric - including spaces and some punctuation. This is compliant with the specs for ANSI X.12 v4010 A1 (also v5010). Although the Stratford windows program will allow almost any ID, you must be aware of the requirements of the payers you bill. We recommend using 9 or fewer characters, alpha numeric, no spaces or punctuation to be certain that your claims will transmit the way your want to most payers. You are responsible for knowing how to bill your payers. For example, if you have 14 character patient IDs and your payer will only accept 10 characters, the Stratford program will truncate your patient ID to comply with the payer requirement. If we did not do this, your claims would be rejected by the payer. It will be up to you to match the payer EOB and other paperwork with the correct patient.

A patient account number is assigned when you create a new patient. You have two choices of enter account number:

1.        Type the account number you want

2.        Let the computer assign an account number for you

Automatic Numbering Patient Accounts

If you do not want to continue your previous account numbering system or did not use patient account IDs, let the program assign the next available account ID. You can do this by pressing: dot [.] enter in the Lookup Patient Account ID field from the Lookup Patient Accounts. This will bring you to the Patient Demographic Information. (see create a new patient. for more detail).

Manual Numbering Patient Accounts

You can do this by entering a new account number in the Lookup Patient Account ID field from the Lookup Patient Accounts. This will prompt you whether or not to create a new patient with the new account number. If you answer yes, this will bring you to the Patient Demographic Information. (see create a new patient. for more detail).

From a Previous System

If you had another software package before you bought SSI® you may wish to keep using your old account IDs. If your old account IDs had 17 characters or less, you may continue to use the same ID. If you have Stratford electronically convert your data from your old system to SSI® and the numbers meet the conditions above, you should have the same account numbers.

Resetting Automatic Numbering.

If you want to reset the counter for the next sequential ID, enter the number symbol "#" followed by the last used account number. For example if you want your counter to start with the number 999, you would enter #998. Then the next time you enter "." [ENTER] the next assigned account number will be 999.

You can also change the next account ID in the Master settings screen.

If you only enter the single character # (pound sign) the software will look at every record in the file and calculate the next, best account id. If you wanted to, you could always enter # instead of . (dot). Remember that if you have a lot of data, it will slow you down to have the software look at every record in the file every time. We recommend that if you are not happy with the present next id, you should (1) manually set it (2) use # and have the software calculate the next best id. After that you should only enter . (dot) for the fastest, next id.

Family Accounts

You must assign the family account or guarantor number; the program will not assign it for you. If you want the transactions of the members of a family to appear on one statement, assign an account number to the family, for example 123456. Account number 123456 would be the guarantor or family number. Type your guarantor number. After you have assigned the guarantor number, fill in the rest of the account information. See Create a New Guarantor

Guarantor Accounts/Company Accounts/Legal Accounts

If you are billing a facility (e.g., a dialysis unit, hospital) for procedures that were performed on patients for that hospital you may wish to assign a guarantor number to the hospital. You could select an account number for the hospital, for example 50000, then for each patient billed to that hospital you could enter as 50000.1, 50000.2, etc. You can create an invoice to the hospital with the individual names of the patients listed. This also applies to billing attorneys and corporations for employee visits.

Family accounts are also useful for HMO billing when the HMO requires you to send one statement to them for all of their patients. Other uses would be any time you have a group of patients that are not billed directly, rather one bill is sent to one location to cover a group of patients. In cases where the Family Account feature is used for non-family type situations (like the HMO example), the guarantor would be the HMO. All the patients who use the HMO would have the same account number as the HMO, but with an extension. For example, if the HMO is account #1000, then all the patients could be account 1000.01, 1000.02, etc. (Note: the extension may also be alphabetic -- 1000.ABC, 1000.ABD, or alpha-numeric -- 1000.01A, 1000.A01.) As medical billing procedures change you will find many other uses for the Family Account feature of SSI!