Searching Within the Patient Ledger

Your long time patients can have a ledger that is literally years long.

You have to scroll through the Patient Ledger just to see what is most recent.

Here are a few tips that will help make that ledger more manageable.


#1 Sort the Ledger

The column headers of the ledger are all sortable.

Click on the header once and the ledger is sorted lower to higher. Click again, and the ledger is sorted in reverse order.

Every column of the Patient Ledger is sortable.


#2 Use the Finance tab to view Open Invoices only

Click the TRACE OPEN button when the Finance tab is selected.

This opens an interactive window called the Ledger Register, where open invoices and their associated payments, and adjustments are all grouped together so you can see which credits were applied to which invoices.

Click here for a little refresher on how to navigate the Finance screen.


#3 Use the Ledger's new Find commands (KIP version 12.3)

Whether you are using the Patient Ledger or the Ledger Register (see above), you can search the description field using the hidden FIND command (option-command-F).

When you hit the keys option-command-F while viewing the Patient Ledger or the Ledger Register, you can search for information on the description field of the ledger.

Hit the hidden FIND AGAIN command (option-command-G) to search further down in the Ledger.

Both of these commands work on the Patient Ledger and Ledger Register (opened when clicking the TRACE OPEN or TRACE ALL buttons when the Finance tab is selected).

This command works well when you are trying to find out how long ago a patient was billed a certain code.


A real life example:

Let's say a patient's insurance company only allows you to bill the code 93922 every 6 months. You need to find out the last time you billed 93922 for this patient.

First, click the Date column header twice so that the ledger is sorted in reverse date order. We do this because the Ledger is always searched from top to bottom, so if we sort the ledger in reverse date order, the first thing we find will be the most recent.

Then, hit the keys option-command-F.

Enter 93922 and then click the OK button.

Instantly, you will see the last time this code was billed.

This should be a real time saver and will end slowly hunting through the ledger to find a code.