SumTime® for Chiropractors Version Five Demonstration User¹s Manual Contents: Introduction Getting Started Patients Activities Printing a Bill A Tour of the Main SumTime Screen The Activity Calendar The Menus Setting Up Your Own Database Entering Data and Printing Reports Standard Reports Accounts and Balances And There¹s More! How To Order SumTime Introduction Thank you for trying SumTime®. This Demonstration version does almost everything the full system does. Its chief limitations are a maximum of five patient records and five activities per patient per month. Also, the diagnosis and procedure code lists cannot be added to; in the full system, it is very easy to add any code you need. This brief manual will guide you in exploring the demonstration data base, and in setting up a small data base of your own. SumTime can be customized and expanded in an almost endless number of ways, to accommodate the unique aspects of your practice. The on-screen help provided with SumTime should answer almost any question you have as you use the demonstration. But of course, if you have questions that Help does not answer, please feel free to contact us by e-mail (sumtime@sumtime.com) or by phone (707-967-8581). We have enjoyed creating SumTime. We hope you will enjoy using it. When you have finished with this demo kit, please pass it on to a friend or co-worker who might find it interesting. Getting Started The next four pages tell you everything you need to know to get SumTime® started working for you. In the SumTime Demo folder, double-click on ³Demo database² to start SumTime with the demonstration data base. When asked, specify whether you want the demonstration to be for a single doctor or for a group practice. (You can change this setting later if you wish). Have fun. Don¹t worry about messing up the database. You can always re-install it from the installer. We strongly recommend that you make full use of the on screen Help system. You can access it three ways: € Click the HELP menu (at the top of the SumTime main screen) and choose CONTENTS to see an index of major topics. € Click the HELP menu and choose CONTEXT HELP. The cursor changes to a ?. Move the cursor to any icon, field, or menu item on the SumTime main screen and click to get an explanation of that item. € Most SumTime screens have a HELP button. Click it to get an explanation of that screen. The SumTime Help system contains almost the full User¹s Manual. By clicking on the <<*>> symbol following a phrase in the help text you can get more information on that phrase. For a detailed explanation of the Help system, click the HELP menu and choose HELP ON HELP. Patients On the left half of the main screen is an array of 12 icons which we call the ³12-Icon Grid.² Click the upper right icon (Patient), select a patient on the pop-up list, and click OPEN. This opens the Patient Screen, containing information about the selected patient. The MORE, NOTES, RATES, REPORT SELECTOR, and INSURANCE 1st, 2nd, and 3rd buttons lead to more information (which can be ignored for many patients). To return to the Patient List, click the OK or CANCEL button. On the list, click DONE to return to the Main Screen. Throughout SumTime, use the OK button to close a screen and incorporate any changes, or the CANCEL button to close a screen and discard changes you don¹t want to keep. If you choose CANCEL, SumTime will ask you to confirm it. If you find this question annoying, you can turn it off by clicking Hide in the question box. Activities On the right half of the Main Screen is the calendar, which gives access to a patient¹s sessions, payments, etc. (called activities). Above the calendar are one or two fields. For a group practice, the top field shows a doctor¹s name, or [All Doctors]. The next field (the only one shown for a solo practice) shows a patient¹s name, or else [Expenses]. If the top field (if present) does not show [All Doctors], click on the Doctor field (above the calendar) and select All Doctors. (This field is not visible in a single-doctor data base.) Next, click on the Patient field (above the calendar) and select Elizabeth Boop. Next select a month (and year) in which this patient (Miss Boop) has activities, shown by hi-lighted dates on the calendar. On the calendar, the dates on which Elizabeth Boop had one or more activities (visits) are highlighted. Click on any highlighted date and select an activity to open the Activity Screen. Change whatever you wish, then click OK to return to the Main Screen. Pick any date and select new. This brings up an Activity Screen for that date, filled in, for example, for spine manipulation (Elizabeth Boop¹s default type of activity). Click OK to exit the screen. That¹s all it takes to enter an activity for Elizabeth Boop. Before clicking OK, you can change the Type of activity by clicking on the TYPE field (under Elizabeth¹s name), or change any other information you wish (e.g., enter a payment). Note that selecting an Activity Type fills in most of the information on the screen for you (which you are always free to change as necessary). The ANOTHER button on the Activity Screen closes this activity (like the OK button) and pops up the Patient List. Choose a patient and a new Activity Screen for that patient (on the same date) opens. This allows you to enter sessions from your daily appointment book very quickly: if the patients¹ default Activity Types are set up, recording a session takes just two mouse clicks and no typing at all! (The Another button can also be set to quickly set up another activity for the same patient. Go to File-Preferences-Other and check the box "Another same patient/client".) The figures at the bottom of the Main Screen summarize the patient¹s account for the displayed month. Click on the ACCOUNT field to see other accounts (the demonstration comes with just one account, which is all many doctors ever use, but you can add more if you wish), or to see how much the patient owes on his/her copayments. Printing a Bill SumTime can generate many bills, statements, and reports. You will usually print a bill, statement, or report for several (or all) patients at once. Now, though, we will print a bill for just one patient, as an example. Click on the PRINT icon (third row, right icon) and open BILL-INSURANCE. Now you should be on the Print Screen for the insurance bill. The From and To fields on this screen specify the activity dates to be included in the report. The fields are preset to the month showing in the calendar. Make sure they are set for a month that has activities. The Patient field should be already set to ³Elizabeth Boop.² If not, click on it and select her. Make sure that your printer is on. Then click the PRINT button to bring up the printer control screen. Click its OK (or PRINT) button and the bill should print showing the doctor¹s name & address, Elizabeth¹s name & address, the diagnoses (from the Patient Screen) and the activities in the month. You can adjust SumTime¹s margin settings to match your printer on the Preferences - Other screen (on the FILE menu). and you can change the format of this bill, and of any other bill, statement, or report (see the Help topic ³Report Definitions²). When you print a bill, SumTime can create a Pending Bill record. (On the demo, Bill-HCFA 1500 is set up to do this.) You can use the pending bill record for two things. First, you can ask SumTime to remind you of overdue bills. (You can check the Pending Bill record for details of the bill.) Second, you can use the Pending Bill record to help you record the payment when it comes in, as explained below. When you receive a payment, you need to put a payment list activity on the patient¹s calendar. To do this, you can click on the payment date and choose [New PayList]. This opens a payment list (PayList) screen where you can record the amount of the payment and also, if you wish, which activities are paid for, and how much for each. Entering all this information can be a bit tedious, but if you have told SumTime to create a pending bill, it becomes very simple. When the payment arrives, just open the pending bill screen and enter the date and amount of the payment. If you wish you can also enter amounts to be posted to each activity shown. Then click OK to change the pending bill into a payment list activity. Now you know how to do the four main functions: entering patient information, entering sessions, printing bills and reports, and entering payments. The rest of this manual helps you explore a few more of SumTime¹s many capabilities. A Tour of the Main SumTime Screen After you select a database, SumTime will open the main SumTime screen. The screen has three elements: the 12-icon Grid, the calendar, and the Balance Box. Above the screen are the program¹s menus. We¹ll go over each section in brief here. The Help system will give you more information on any screen or topic. When you click on any icon in the 12-Icon Grid, a pop-up list will appear, from which you may make a selection. The More Buttons icon leads to a grid of less-used buttons. The demonstration database has items in each list, and many of the entries (such as reports) are also in your database. The pop-up list allows you to do many things. For now, you only need to know how to select an item and open it, create a new item, and leave the list. You can select an item (e.g., a patient) from the list by clicking on the patient¹s name or by typing part of the name in the Selection Field at the top of the list. You can open a screen showing information about the patient by double-clicking on the patient¹s name or by clicking the OPEN button. You can create a new, empty Patient Screen by clicking the NEW button. And you leave the list by clicking DONE. Here is a brief description of each icon in the 12-Icon Grid: Click on the PATIENT icon at the top right of the 12-Icon Grid. Open ³Peter Rabbit.² (If Peter is not in the list of patients and this is a multi-doctor data base, make sure that the Doctor selection field, the top field over the calendar, is set to [All Doctors]. This field is not visible in a single doctor data base.) Peter¹s Patient Screen and the associated More, Rates, Report Selector and Insurance screens (accessed by the so-named buttons on the Patient Screen) contain information about Peter Rabbit, and his special rates, doctor, insurance, referrals, diagnoses, reports and bills needed, default (most common) type of activity, etc. The Patient Screen includes a Notes button, as do many of SumTime¹s screens, where you may enter up to ten pages of notes and comments as needed. Notes can be protected by use of the No-Notes password (see Help topic ³Passwords²). Information about Peter¹s managed care contract, if any, is entered on his First Insurance screen. Use the SELECT button in the Managed Care box to select an existing contract or to enter a new one. When you enter an activity for Peter, the number of units used for that activity will be added to the total number used on this contract, as shown on the Insurance screen. The value of a unit can be one hour or part of an hour, as defined on Peter¹s More screen. If you enter a copayment amount or percent, it will be copied to each new activity screen, where it will be used to compute Peter¹s current copayment balance, and to enter his payment (if he pays in full each visit). What all this means in practice is that if you enter the Managed Care information just once, on Peter¹s First Insurance screen, SumTime will automatically take care of it from then on. Once you¹ve examined (and changed, if you wish) Peter¹s Patient Screen, click OK or CANCEL to return to the patient list. After you¹ve examined the demonstration database, you can go into your own database and enter your patients by clicking the Patient icon and clicking NEW. Just below the Patient icon is the INS. CO. icon. Before entering information about insurance on a Patient Screen, you need to enter information about the insurance company. Click here to get a list of insurance companies, or to add a new one. The Insurance Company Screen holds information about the company and also information needed to file insurance claims by modem (³electronic media claims²) if the insurance company allows it. To the left of the Ins. Co. icon is the OTHERS icon. The Others list contains information about any person, organization or facility of interest: hospitals, people who refer patients to you, consulting physicians, etc. Under the Ins. Co. icon is the PRINT icon. This icon allows you to choose a report, bill, or statement to view or to print. See below for descriptions of each report. The Print list is a little different from the others, in that it does not allow you to define a new kind of report, just view or run them. (Reports are defined using the Define Report button, which is on the More Buttons screen.) In the center of the top row, the DOCTOR icon gives access to information about the doctor(s). For a solo (single doctor) practice, there is no list; the Doctor icon opens the Doctor Screen. For a group practice, the Doctor List shows each doctor in the group, as well as the group itself. Below the Help icon, the PEND. BILL icon accesses information about bills you have sent out. You can¹t create a new Pending Bill record here; that is done, if you wish, when you print (or electronically file) the bill. From the Pending Bill Screen you can review charges and payments for each activity on the bill, and you can post payments to the activities. To create a Pending Bill record, go to the Print Screen and click MORE OPTIONS. Set Pending Bill to Patient or INSURANCE. Then print or file a bill. Below the Pend. Bill icon is the MEMO icon. Memos contain a Creation Date field and a Notify Date field. Every time you start SumTime, the system will, if you wish, notify you of all memos whose Notify Date has arrived, and of upcoming patient birthdays, patients whose Managed Care contract is about to expire, overdue bills, and patients needing attention. All this and more is controlled from the File menu, under Preferences-Messages. Next to Memo is the MARK icon. This icon accesses a very powerful feature. Using it, you can locate and mark patients, months, or activities that meet specific criteria. For example, you can find all patients who owe you more than $1,000 (or any amount you define). You can find all patients who have made a payment (or not made one) in the past three months. You can find all hospital visits over a given period of time, and the patients you visited. You can find all patients with a Whiplash diagnosis, or all activities with a specific doctor, or all patients who pay a non-standard rate‹and a lot more. After marking selected activities or patients, you can then look at the patients or activities; print reports restricted to these patients or activities (via the PRINT icon); export them to another data base; or use the UPDATE selection under the Utilities Menu to flag them for later consideration, delete them, or modify information in their records. MORE BUTTONS accesses a grid of six less often used buttons: Clicking the ACTIVITY TYPE button brings up a list of Activity Types. Activity Types may be changed, deleted, or (in the full system, not this demonstration) added. DEFINE REPORT lets you define new formats or edit them, change the margins, control which records are included, and set other characteristics of existing bills, statements, and reports. SumTime generates a wide range of pre-formatted reports designed to meet the needs of most practices, so you may never need to use this button. DIAGNOSIS brings up a list of the most common diagnoses, with their codes and descriptions. You can change or delete existing entries, and in the full system (not this demonstration) you can add to this list. ACCOUNT brings up a list of accounts. SumTime allows you to categorize your income by account. (Many doctors use only one account.) Selecting any item from the Account List will open the Account Screen containing the name of the account. SumTime comes with one account (³Standard²). You can add more. EXPENSE TYPE lists categories of expenses that you want to track. SumTime provides a few for you and (in the full system) you can add more. FLAGS are symbols used to mark a patient, activity, or other record. For example, you might use the Flag feature to identify patients with a large balance due, identify inactive patients, etc. SumTime comes with several flags; you can add your own flags in the full system. The Activity Calendar On the main screen, the calendar is where you record activities (including payments) for your patients. You can also use it to record your professional expenses. The Doctor Selector Field (above the calendar) is used in a group practice to select a doctor whose patients will be shown in the Patient List. If you have a solo practice (one doctor), this field does not appear. Click the field and select the doctor, or select [All Doctors] to see all patients. The Patient/Expenses Selector Field (above the calendar, just below the Doctor Selector Field in a group practice) is where you select a patient for the calendar. Click the field to display a list of patients, plus an Expense entry. The entire month¹s records of whatever patient you select from this pop-up list will be reflected in the calendar below. The patient displayed in this field becomes the default selection in most other windows that contain a patient field. When you choose EXPENSES from this list, you can use the calendar to record your professional expenses. You can then print reports showing your expenses by month, year, and/or account. Please note: SumTime does not contain an expense list for each doctor; there is only one expense list for each database. To use the calendar, after you have chosen a patient in the Patient/Expenses field, you need to choose a month and year for the calendar. Click on the YEAR field and a pop-up list appears. Each year in which you have entered activities for this patient has a # mark beside it. The same is true of the MONTHS list. When you have selected a year and a month, the calendar will indicate the days that have activities recorded by highlighting the dates. When you click on one of those dates, you get a pop-up list of the activities. All days have a selection for [New Activity] to enter new activities, and [New PayList] to enter payments. The easiest way to understand all this is to try it! Using the demonstration database, select Peter Rabbit, and a month with activities (hi-lighted dates). Then click on an a highlighted date and select an activity from the pop-up list. This works the same way for expenses. To enter a rental expense, select [EXPENSES], the year, the month, and the date you paid the rent. Select [New Activity] and fill in the screen that appears with the type of expense (e.g. Rent); the cost, and the amount reimbursed, if any. For recurring expenses, you can enter a default cost on the Expense Type Screen. If the year you want is not on the list of years, click the YEAR and select [NEW]. At the bottom of the 12-Icon Grid are the SEE (eye icon) YEAR and SEE MONTH icons. These allow you to see all the activities for the chosen patient for the month or year selected in the calendar. You can select an activity from these lists as well as from the calendar. The See icons show you the charges and payments on each of the month¹s activities, and they allow you to mark, copy, paste, and archive activities. At the bottom of the screen is the Balance Box which shows the prior balance, charges, payments, and current balance for the current patient for the month and year chosen on the calendar. If you click on the Account field in the Balance Box, you are offered a pop-up list to choose the account for which you want a balance, or choose [COPAYMENT] to see the patient¹s copayment balance (total copayment amounts less total patient payments). Copayment amounts are blanked out for patients who do not have copayments. The Menus In the File Menu, use OPEN to change to another data base. Use NEW only to create a new, empty data base with no codes, no reports, no nothing. (It is rarely used.) SAVE COPY backs up your database onto diskette or hard disk. Unlike other systems, SumTime automatically saves your information as you work, so you do not have to use Save Copy each time you exit SumTime. PRINT SETUP does the usual printer setup (it is seldom used). Under PREFERENCES, APPEARANCE allows you to select calendar colors. LABELS defines your own labels for several SumTime fields. MESSAGES sets the verbosity level (how much SumTime talks to you) and controls reminder messages. And OTHER controls passwords, whether the data base is for a solo or a group practice, margins, how lists display, and other useful choices. In the Utilities Menu, EXPORT and IMPORT transfer information between databases. PURGE removes old activities (usually at year end). REVIEW is especially useful for reviewing activity types, to make sure their rates are set correctly. UPDATE is used to make changes to a lot of records at once. The Help Menu accesses the on-line Help system as previously described. And the edit menu or the standard keyboard editing commands can be used to copy and paste any text between SumTime fields and with other applications. Setting Up Your Own Database Now that you¹ve explored the system, it¹s time to set up your own database. Choose OPEN on the SumTime File Menu and open ST database (in your SumTime Demo folder). The Preliminary Setup Screen will appear. Read the information on the screen and choose SINGLE or GROUP. This will launch a series of screens that hold information about you and your practice. Anything you fill in now can be changed later. There are two kinds of screens you will be prompted to fill in: Doctor and Activity Type. A title bar along the top will tell you which type of screen you are currently in. On the Doctor Screen, you should enter the information about yourself (the doctor) or about the group (if a group practice). This information can be printed at the top of your bills and statements and on the HCFA form. You must fill in at least the name now. You can go back later and change any information. On each Activity Type Screen, the most important information you need to enter is your standard rate for this type of activity. This information is entered in the Units & Rate box. Rates can be per hour, per month, or per activity. Click to select HOUR, MONTH, or ACTIVITY. (Ignore % PER YEAR for now.) To enter your rate, click either the RATE # button or the SPECIAL button in the Units & Rate box. If the activity is charged at your standard hourly rate, click the RATE # button. On the Rate Card enter your standard hourly rate in Rate Class 1 and select the RATE CLASS 1 check button. Then click OK to return to the Activity Type Screen. (Note: The rate in Rate Class 1 will apply to all Activity types in Rate Class 1.) For any other type of activity, click the SPECIAL button in the Units & Rate box and enter your rate for this type of activity. The Special rate will apply only to this one activity type. You have just defined a simple rate structure. The rate mechanism can accommodate much more complex structures, with different rates for some or all doctors in a group practice, different rates for different insurance companies, and special rates for individual patients. For a full explanation, see the Help topic ³Rates.² After entering the rate information and reviewing the Activity Type Screen, click OK to go on to the next activity type. Additional activity types are supplied with the full system. If you need activity types which are not included in the full system, you can add your own. On the SumTime File menu, PREFERENCES allows you to select a number of options, including these: PASSWORDS: SumTime contains two levels of optional password protection. The Master password allows access to everything in your database. The No-Notes password allows access to the database, but not to your patient and session notes. VERBOSITY: You can control which messages, questions, and reminders SumTime will show you. For example, you can tell SumTime to remind you of patients with a particular flag, or not to remind you of patient birthdays. Also, on most alert and question messages there is a Hide button. Use this to suppress the message or question. ADJUST MARGINS: If you should have printing problems, you can enter margin adjustments (for example, if your printer does not fill in the HCFA-1500 form correctly). Margin adjustments may be positive or negative. For more information, print the report called MARGIN TEST. Entering Data and Printing Reports Here is a step-by-step description of how to enter your patients and their activities, and to print your reports: To enter a patient into the system: 1. Click on the Patient icon on the Main Screen and, on the Patient List, click NEW. A new Patient Screen will appear. 2. Fill in the fields of information about the patient. In general, SumTime presets fields to reasonable values, so you can leave many fields alone. When in doubt, leave the field as SumTime sets it. 3. Unless this patient has a special hourly rate you do not need to use the RATES button. 4. Click the REPORT SELECTOR button and check the settings. If in doubt, click the ALL button to check all the report type boxes. 5. If you wish, click the MORE button and fill in the patient¹s birth date and other information. If you want birthday reminders, you need to fill in the birth date. 6. If you will be submitting HCFA-1500 forms for this patient, click on the MORE button and fill in the dates and other information needed, then click on the 1st INSURANCE button and fill in the insurance information. Note that before entering referrers, consultants, insurance companies, etc., you must fill in the information on Insurance Co. and/or Others screens. Feeling overwhelmed? Cheer up. If you¹re not following along on your computer, you might try entering a couple of patients now. It can be confusing the first time through, but soon you¹ll be breezing through it. And once it¹s done for a patient, its done! 7. When finished, click OK. Now you¹re back on the patient list, where you can enter another patient or click DONE to return to the main screen. NOTE: To ease the chore of entering data, you can select DEFAULT on the patient list and enter basic, stock information in the Default Patient Screen. What you enter there will be copied automatically to each new Patient Screen. Enter information which usually doesn¹t change from one listing to the next, such as your city and state, the account most frequently used, the report selector most frequently used, and so on. This can save you a lot of repetition when entering new patients into the data base. To enter an activity for a patient: 1. Select the patient by clicking the Patient/EXPENSES field above the calendar on the Main Screen. 2. Select the year and month using the pop-up lists on the calendar. 3. On the calendar, click on the date of the activity and select [New Activity]. A new Activity Screen will appear. 4. On the Activity Screen, if the type is blank or wrong, click on the TYPE field and select the Activity Type. (It will be blank if you have not previously selected a Default Activity Type for the patient.) 5. Enter payments, if there are any. 6. The other information should be already filled in by SumTime. Check the screen to see that it is correct. For an hourly or part-hour visit/activity, make sure the number of hours or parts is correct. (Enter fractional hours in decimal form; a half-hour is 0.5, etc.). 7. Click the OK button. To print a report or bill: 1. Enter the desired (start) year and month on the calendar. If the report or bill is to be for one patient, select the patient on the calendar also. 2. Click on the PRINT icon on the Main Screen and select the desired report. Click SELECT to open the Print screen. 3. Select the desired Patient, or [ALL]. 4. Make sure the activity dates in the From and To fields are what you want. If not, fill in the correct values. 5. You can limit a report to one or more selected doctors and patients, to patients with or without a particular flag (e.g., to active patients), to marked activities, to activities with a charge, to activities that have not been billed yet, to a particular account, etc. You can click the MORE CONTENTS button to see more of the contents selection options. 6. Click the VIEW button to preview the report, or the PRINT button to print it. To Post a Payment from a Pending Bill: 1. Click the PEND. BILL button, select the bill that was paid, and click OPEN. 2. Enter the payment date. 3. Either enter the total amount of the payment, or, for each activity on the bill, enter the amount paid to that activity. 4. Click OK to post the payment as a payList activity on the patient¹s calendar. And There¹s More! In fact, there¹s a lot more to SumTime than we could include in this manual. Since the demonstration incorporates the complete system, you can use your intuition and SumTime¹s on-screen Help to explore the program¹s extraordinary depths. You¹re limited only by the small number of patients, activities, and other records the demonstration system allows. If this manual and our on-screen Help fail to meet your needs, or to satisfy your curiosity, please contact us. We are eager to help. Our telephone numbers and addresses are: tech support/office: (707) 967-8581 fax: (707) 967-9291 web: http://www.sumtime.com e-mail: sumtime@sumtime.com order line: (888) 821-0771 (toll free) U. S. Mail: SumTime Software 995 Vintage Ave., Suite 102 St. Helena, CA 94574 How To Order SumTime SumTime comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee and 3 months support. You can extend support to a full year at low cost. The support includes access to help via e-mail, fax, or phone. Call us or check our web page at http://www.sumtime.com for current prices. You can pay by VISA, MasterCard, money order or cashier's check. (Other checks are subject to a ten-day delay.) Call the order line at 1-888-821-0771. P.S. We give 10% of all our profits to Human Rights and AIDS-related causes. SumTime is a registered trademark of Rudd, Inc. Copyright © 1994-1998 Rudd, Inc. All rights reserved.