Method and apparatus for identifying patients overdue for an appointment using standard healthcare billing data
First Claim
1. A computerized method for automatically identifying, using a computer running a medical or dental office practice management system and having a memory containing an office practice management system computer database and running a patient reactivation system and having a memory containing a patient reactivation system computer database, patients who are due for care so that those patients can be personally contacted by staff at a health care facility, comprising:
- automatically querying a computerized medical or dental office practice management system database for standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data associated with past patient visits;
automatically identifying, using the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes, patients with medical conditions requiring regular care and storing data corresponding to the identified patients and their medical conditions in the patient reactivation system;
automatically determining a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from one of the computer databases;
automatically identifying patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since the most recent date of treatment, and storing identifying data for the patients who are due for care in a contact list of the patient reactivation system;
automatically identifying patients who already have appointments or who will receive reminders to call for an appointment and automatically removing these patients from the contact list;
automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved by comparing the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and automatically removing patients whose conditions have been resolved from the contact list;
displaying using a display on a computer screen patient identifying information to an operator, the patient information including at least an identified patient'"'"'s name, telephone number, and reason why the identified patient is due for care;
contacting the identified patients by telephone call by the operator; and
scheduling by the operator an appointment for healthcare while the patient is on the telephone.
1 Assignment
0 Petitions
Accused Products
Abstract
A method and apparatus for identifying overdue patients using standard billing or other office management data, so that patients can be contacted and invited to make an appointment. The invention begins by querying the diagnosis codes for each visit from the billing or other encounter tables, and matching these with a set of target medical conditions requiring regular care. Procedure codes and encounter dates for past visits are queried for these patients, to determine when each patient was last seen, and what was done. These procedure codes are matched against a set of exam codes to determine last medical examination dates, and against a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition. Each condition requiring regular care is matched against any resolving procedures, leaving a set of untreated conditions requiring regular care. Based on the date of the last exam or treatment and accepted standards of care or office policies, a due date is calculated for each patient. The management system is queried for each overdue patient to determine whether they already have an appointment scheduled in the future, or a recall notice recently sent or yet to be sent. Additional filtering based on administrative settings may also be done. Overdue patients requiring contact are then placed on the contact list.
46 Citations
23 Claims
-
1. A computerized method for automatically identifying, using a computer running a medical or dental office practice management system and having a memory containing an office practice management system computer database and running a patient reactivation system and having a memory containing a patient reactivation system computer database, patients who are due for care so that those patients can be personally contacted by staff at a health care facility, comprising:
-
automatically querying a computerized medical or dental office practice management system database for standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data associated with past patient visits; automatically identifying, using the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes, patients with medical conditions requiring regular care and storing data corresponding to the identified patients and their medical conditions in the patient reactivation system; automatically determining a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from one of the computer databases; automatically identifying patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since the most recent date of treatment, and storing identifying data for the patients who are due for care in a contact list of the patient reactivation system; automatically identifying patients who already have appointments or who will receive reminders to call for an appointment and automatically removing these patients from the contact list; automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved by comparing the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and automatically removing patients whose conditions have been resolved from the contact list; displaying using a display on a computer screen patient identifying information to an operator, the patient information including at least an identified patient'"'"'s name, telephone number, and reason why the identified patient is due for care; contacting the identified patients by telephone call by the operator; and scheduling by the operator an appointment for healthcare while the patient is on the telephone. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4)
-
-
5. A computerized method for automatically identifying, using a computer running a medical or dental office practice management system and having a memory containing an office practice management system computer database and running a patient reactivation system and having a memory containing a patient reactivation system computer database, patients who are due for care so that those patients can be personally contacted by staff at a health care facility, comprising:
-
automatically querying a computerized medical or dental office practice management system database for standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data associated with past patient visits; automatically identifying, using the standardized billing or diagnostic codes, patients with medical conditions requiring regular care and storing data corresponding to the identified patients and their medical conditions in the patient reactivation system; automatically determining a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from one of the computer databases; automatically identifying patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since the most recent date of treatment, and storing identifying data for the patients who are due for care in a contact list of the patient reactivation system; automatically identifying patients who already have appointments or who will receive reminders to call for an appointment and automatically removing these patients from the contact list; automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved by comparing the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and automatically removing patients whose conditions have been resolved from the contact list; displaying using a display on a computer screen patient identifying information to an operator, the patient information including at least the identified patient'"'"'s name, telephone number, and reason why the patient is due for care; attempting to contact the identified patient by the operator; entering results of the attempted contact in a computer; and automatically determining from the entered results whether to schedule a follow-up contact. - View Dependent Claims (6, 7, 8)
-
-
9. A computerized method for automatically identifying, using a computer running a medical practice management system having a computer database and a patient reactivation system having a computer database, and attempting to contact patients who are due for care, comprising:
-
automatically causing a computer to query a computerized medical or dental office practice management system database for standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data associated with past patient visits; automatically causing a computer to identify, using the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes, patients with medical conditions requiring regular care and storing data corresponding to the identified patients and their medical conditions in the patient reactivation system; automatically causing a computer to determine a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from the computer database; automatically causing a computer to identify patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since the most recent date of treatment, and storing identifying data for the patients who are due for care in a contact list of the patient reactivation system; automatically causing a computer to identify patients who already have appointments or who are scheduled to receive reminders to call for an appointment and automatically removing these patients from the contact list; automatically causing a computer to identify patients whose conditions have been resolved by comparing the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and automatically removing the patients whose conditions have been resolved from the contact list; and attempting to contact patients on the contact list by an operator. - View Dependent Claims (10, 11, 12, 13, 14)
-
-
15. A non-transitory, computer-readable media having encoded thereon computer-readable instructions that, when executed by a computer, cause the computer to perform the steps of:
-
automatically querying a computerized medical or dental office practice management system database for standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data associated with past patient visits; automatically identifying, using the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes, patients with medical conditions requiring regular care and storing data corresponding to the identified patients and their medical conditions in the patient reactivation system; automatically determining a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from the database; automatically identifying patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since the most recent date of treatment, and storing identifying data for the patients who are due for care in a contact list of the patient reactivation system; automatically identifying patients who already have appointments or who will receive a reminder to call for an appointment and automatically removing these patients from the contact list; and automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved by comparing the standardized procedure or diagnostic codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and automatically removing the patients whose conditions have been resolved from the contact list.
-
-
16. A computerized method for identifying patients who are due for care in an office that schedules appointments for the office using a computer running an office practice management system, comprising the steps of:
-
causing a computer to identify patients with conditions requiring regular care using billing data from the practice management system; causing a computer to identify patients whose conditions have been resolved using billing data from the practice management system, wherein procedure codes from the billing data are compared to a set of procedure codes known to resolve each condition; causing a computer to determine a most recent date of treatment for unresolved conditions using billing data from the management system; causing a computer to identify a first group of patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since last treatment, and storing identifying information of the identified patients from the first group of patients in a contact list; and causing a computer to identify a second group of patients whose conditions have been resolved, who already have appointments, or who will receive reminders to call for an appointment and removing identifying information of the identified patients from the second group of patients from the contact list. - View Dependent Claims (17, 18, 19, 20, 21)
-
-
22. An apparatus for identifying patients who are due for care in an office that schedules appointments for the office using a practice management system, the apparatus comprising a computer programmed with computer instructions for carrying out the following steps:
-
automatically identifying, using standardized procedure or diagnostic codes in billing or other encounter data from a computerized medical practice management system, patients with conditions requiring regular care; automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved using billing data from the practice management system, wherein procedure codes from the billing data are compared to a set of procedure codes known to resolve each condition; automatically determining a most recent date of treatment using billing or other encounter data from a database of the office management system; automatically identifying patients who are due for care by comparing expected visit intervals for each condition with a time interval since last treatment, and storing patient information related to those identified patients in a contact list; automatically identifying patients whose conditions have been resolved, who already have appointments, or who will receive reminders to call for an appointment and removing patient information related to those identified patients from the contact list.
-
-
23. A computerized method for automatically identifying, using a computer running a medical or dental office practice management system and having a memory containing an office practice management system computer database and running a patient reactivation system and having a memory containing a patient reactivation system computer database, patients who are due for care so that those patients can be personally contacted by staff at a health care facility, comprising:
-
automatically querying diagnostic codes for past patient visits from billing or other encounter tables in a practice management system database associated with a medical or dental practice; automatically matching the diagnostic codes with a set of target codes for medical conditions requiring regular care and, for each matching diagnostic code, storing data in a patient-diagnosis table of a patient reactivation system database, the data at least identifying a patient and a diagnosis corresponding to the matching diagnostic code; automatically querying procedure codes and encounter dates from billing or other encounter tables in the practice management system for each entry in the patient-diagnosis table identifying a patient and a diagnosis corresponding to the matching diagnostic code to determine when each patient was last seen and what procedures were performed; automatically matching the procedure codes with a set of procedures known to resolve each medical condition and removing any entries in the patient-diagnosis table identifying a patient and a diagnosis corresponding to the matching diagnostic code for which a procedure has already been performed to resolve the diagnosis; automatically matching the procedure codes with a set of exam codes to determine a most recent exam date and storing the most recent exam date for each entry in the patient-diagnosis table identifying a patient and a diagnosis corresponding to the matching diagnostic code; automatically determining which entries in the patient-diagnosis table are overdue for care based on accepted standards of care or office policies and the most recent exam date for each entries in the patient-diagnosis table and storing in a contact list patient identifying data for each entry in the patient-diagnosis table identifying a patient and a diagnosis corresponding to the matching diagnostic code that is overdue for care; automatically querying the practice management system database do determine which patients in the contact list have appointments scheduled, pending recall notices, or an administrative flag and removing these patients from the contact list; and displaying the contact list to a user so that the user can contact one or more patients in the contact list to schedule an appointment for care.
-
Specification