User Guide — Practice Settings

 

Authorized athenahealth staff members (such as your Customer Success Manager or CSC representative) use practice settings to enable or disable athenaOne features according to your needs, preferences, and in some cases, your service contract. Some features may require an additional fee, a signed agreement, or an addendum to your service contract.

 

During the onboarding process, the athenahealth Onboarding team works closely with practice managers to determine the optimal settings for a practice.

 

After your practice is live on athenaOne, you can still make adjustments to practice settings. To discuss or request changes to your practice settings, please contact the CSC by selecting Support > Create Case or Call in the Main Menu.

 

1. Do you want to send out a courtesy claim to payers if you are not accepting assignment? (Practice setting: Courtesy Bill if Not Accepting Assignment)
2. What day do you want to close your prior month? (Practice setting: Day To Close Prior Month)
   athenaOne defaults to the 7th of the month unless you request a different date. The month must close by the 12th to allow for monthly invoicing. The Day To Close Prior Month practice setting should coincide with the day your practice does your "soft" accounting close.
3. Do you need to print zero $ charges on claims? If yes, do you always print them or do you print them only in selected circumstances? (Practice setting: Default print zero dollar charges)
4. What is the first day of your fiscal year? (Practice setting: First day of Fiscal Year)
5. Do you need sliding fee schedules turned on for any self-pay programs (charity, financial hardship programs)? Sliding fee schedules allow you to write off part of a self-pay charge automatically at the time of charge entry. (Practice setting: Sliding Fee Programs)
6. Should "Bill Another Carrier" denials be routed to your HOLD bucket, or should they be automatically transferred to patient responsibility? (Practice setting: BAC Routing)
7. Should claims that are marked as "Fully Worked Receivable - Small Balance" be automatically written off? (Applies to Collector clients only — Practice setting: FWRSMALLBAL Routing)
8. Should "PCP Not on File" denials be routed to your HOLD bucket, or should they be automatically transferred to patient responsibility? (Practice setting: PCPNOF Routing)
9. Demographic options: Do you want users to be able to add new employers to the employer table? (Practice setting: Disallow add employer)
   Do you want "Country" as a field on the Registration page for patient demographics? (Practice setting: Patient Foreign addresses)
   Do you want "Address Line 2" available when registering a patient? (Practice setting: Show Address Line 2)
10. What is the location on each computer where you have set up the insurance card scanner to temporarily store the card? (We highly recommend that this be C:/card.jpg — Practice setting: Card image remote filename)
11. What file format does your collection agency want to receive? We default to CSV2 but can also export in CSV format. (Practice setting: Collections Format = CSV2)
12. How many separate HIPAA documents do new patients sign (1, 2, or 3) (Practice setting: Number of Patient Privacy Checkboxes = 3)
13. Will you need to enter any charges for services rendered prior to your go-live date? (Practice setting: Earliest date of service)
14. For patient outstanding balances, what do you want Collections settings set to?
1. # of days since first billed: _____ (defaults to 94 days, which ties to the time frame for four statements)
2. # of statements before collections: ___ (defaults to 4)
15. For patient payment plans, what do you want Collections settings set to?
1. # of days since first billed: _____ (defaults to 94 days, which ties to the time frame for four statements)
2. # of statements before collections: ___ (defaults to 4)
16. What do you want your Minimum Statement Balance set to? (Practice setting: Minimum Statement Balance)
17. Do you want to have an automatic Write-off statement balance for balances under a certain $ amount? (Practice setting: Write-Off Statement Balance Amount)
18. Do you want athenaOne to automatically write off any patient balances to "PRE COLLECT" if they are in a COLLECT status for more than 90 days? (Practice setting: Auto Pre-Collect Adjustments)
19. Do you want athenaOne to automatically apply unapplied credits?
1. Apply unapplieds to oldest charges first (including Collections balances)? (Practice setting: Apply Unapplieds To Charges Oldest-First)
2. How many days of patient inactivity need to occur prior to athenaOne auto-applying unapplied credits? (Practice setting: Number Of Days Before Applying Unapplied Payments)

20. Do you want to block access to your athenaOne tables for your users by IP address? If so, what IP addresses should be allowed? (partial address followed by a "*" is acceptable). IP restriction can be overridden for a user in the user access table. (Practice setting: Allowed IPs, Allowed IPs (extended list))

21. Should users be allowed to be logged in to more than one computer at a time? If no, users will be kicked out of the first computer when they log in to a new computer. If your computer's IP address changes, we do not recommend turning this setting on. (Practice setting: Disallow Login From Multiple Machines)
22. Should all practice users be allowed to see the "Live Benchmarking" table (appears 90 days post live), which compares your performance against other athenahealth clients in your state, region, and specialty? (Practice setting: Live Benchmarks)
23. Do you want the supervising provider name for each line item to appear on patient statements (instead of showing only the usual provider once at the top of the statement)? (Practice setting: Patient Statement Provider Display)
24. Do you want to set a default gender for patients (no default gender if not specified)? (Practice setting: Default Gender)
25. Do you want the default "Relationship to Insured" to be anything other than "Self"? If yes, what should the relationship be? (Practice setting: Default Relationship to Insured)
26. Do you bill out on any claim forms other than a CMS-1500? (Practice setting: Allowed Claim Formats and Additional Default Claim Formats)