Optometric Billing: Why I Hate Officemate, Part 4

In part 4 of this mini-series we will look at Officemate's Automatic Insurance Payment Posting System. The bottom line...IT IS BROKEN and has been since the first generation of the software.

Take a look at the below screen shot:

In the above example, the user imported a remittance advice file into office mate and auto-posted it. It clearly shows that the patient paid their $25.00 co-pay but still transferred a $25.00 copay to the patient's responsibility! As usual, I approached office mate tech support with the issue and they told me what they always tell me : "Works as designed, no plans to fix".  Can you believe that?!?!

What this means to your practice:
Quite literally, this means that if you are using auto-post, you will never be able to trust the system when it applies payments to patients' balances. The problem goes deeper as financial errors always snowball (think back to that missing check # in your check book that you can't reconcile for the life of you). If you don't check the work, which literally defeats the purpose of auto-posting, you will not be able to keep accurate financial records or send accurate statements and invoices to patients. This will not only mean that any financial reports you run out of officemate will NEVER be accurate (which again, defeats the purpose of having automated office management software), but you will also cause your patients to either over-pay you or get extremely upset at you causing you to loose customers and receive negative reviews in the community that you serve....all because you chose officemate. I can tell you from experience, having an patient call you due to an officemate-generated statement you sent them is NEVER pleasant experience.

There is good news. There are tons of software solutions you can choose and opticXpress can help you find the right one...

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Optometric Billing-Why I HATE Office Mate- Part 3

The Problem:

In Part 3 of this "mini-series" on reasons not to purchase office mate, or get rid of it if you already have it, we are going to explore Ledger Balances.

In Office Mate, ledger balances are often incorrect, as seen below. (HINT: The picture is quite large so you will need to click on it in order to get a better view. )

What this means to your practice:

This is kind of a no-brainer. As has been my mantra with Office Mate, and ALL Eyefinity produced software for that matter, you purchase office management software to help you MANAGE YOUR PRACTICE which means that you are entrusting it to provide you with accurate financial information. As seen in the example above, however, Office Mate provides you with a balance for the patient, "Alexa" of $54.89 but if you click on the detail you will find that the ACTUAL ACCOUNT BALANCE is zero!!! These in-accurate balances are found throughout the patient ledger in office mate and usually occur after legitimate write offs have been posted to patient accounts. Basically, your staff is writing off these charges but a balance remains. Often, these erroneous balances are left to age and generally end up being billed to patients on statements! To Office Mate's credit, they have created a separate program you can download to "TRY" and fix some of these errors (this program is called "iBal" and will be explored in a subsequent post) but the program does not always work and you have to ask for it if you want it. It is not offered to you by Office Mate when you purchase the program nor can it be found in the Office Mate download center. 

As with every other error I have posted about and will post about in the future, Office Mate does not deny the existence of this costly bug and has deemed it to be part of the program "as designed" which means they have no immediate intention of fixing it. When you buy Office Mate, regardless of what price you pay for it, YOU ARE BUYING SOFTWARE THAT DOES NOT WORK PROPERLY AND YOU PAY A YEARLY MAINTENANCE FEE OF UP TO $2,000.00 TO SUPPORT THIS BROKEN SOFTWARE!

Did I mention that not only are these ledger errors reflected on patient statements but on the reports you and your staff generate using Office Mate as well? It's true! This means that if you run an "open balance" report or an "aging report" YOU CAN'T TRUST THE NUMBERS THE SYSTEM IS GIVING YOU WHICH EFFECTIVELY MEANS THAT YOU WILL NEVER HAVE A TRULY BALANCED ACCOUNTING WHEN USING OFFICE MATE! This is truly a COSTLY shame.

For recommendations on the best software for your practice, contact opticXpress today by clicking here. We can point you in the right direction and help you get the best, most cost-effective software for your practice.

Optometric Billing-Why I HATE Office Mate-Part 1

I have been meaning to write this for a long time but for some reason, all I have done is just collect evidence on the subject without actually pulling the trigger on the situation. Hell, I even sent the software designers some of the screen shots that I am going to share with you in an effort to get them to fix these important mistakes BEFORE releasing a new version of the software....it didn't work. So, I am here today to begin my attack on Office Mate.

Office Mate is by far, the worst piece of crap that has ever been sold to the optometric community. I can go into a million reasons as to why but for the purpose of these posts, I am only going to highlight the issues that I can explain to you visually. That is, I have photo documented proof of why you shouldn't spend your money on this piece of Sh88, and if you did these photos prove that you should not only stop using office mate, you should fight tooth and nail to get your money back.

Lastly, before I begin, I want to point out that after speaking to various high level technicians and programmers at office mate ( or eyefinity or who ever the hell owns these people), every single one of the issues that I am going to share with you has been acknowledged by office mate as "known of for quite sometime, program works as designed. No Immediate plans to fix." Did you hear that in your mind as you read that last sentence? OFFICE MATE DESIGNED THIS TO WORK WRONG AND HAS NO PLANS TO FIX IT!

Now, without further adue:

PROBLEM #1: FEE SLIPS DON'T CORRECTLY CARRY OVER TO CLAIMS

In the above image, this patient's exam was coded using  Exam Writer and each diagnosis code was correctly pointed to the respective procedure codes as the Dr. here wanted them submitted to the insurance company. However, when the exam was carried over to the fee slip by our secretary, only #2 diagnosis code appeared on the fee slip for her to choose from. When I received the claim in "3rd party processing" at the end of the day, the above is what I got. The Dr. had actually pointed 1,2,3,4 to proc code 1 when she charted that day and used #2 for the PQRS codes, yet how is it that the claim in the picture above was generated? 

WHAT DOES THIS PROBLEM MEAN TO THE AVERAGE OFFICE MATE USER?

The average optometry practice does not have a billing department and may not have an actual biller. The job of batching claims and submitting to the insurance company is usually left to a secretary, office manager, another un-qualified individual in the office or the doctor. None of these named individuals have the time, desire and in many cases, knowledge to properly research and correct the error above on a daily basis. In fact, most offices don't even batch and submit on a daily basis, many do it weekly. What if you had to fix EVERY CLAIM for 10,20,30 or even 50 patients at the end of a long week? The issue above is a primary reason why claims generated by office mate can't be trusted. 

CRAP CLAIMS LIKE THE ONE ABOVE LEAD TO A LOSS OF PRECIOUS REVENUE IN MANY PRACTICES IN THE UNITED STATES.