We want to start by thanking you for the opportunity to serve you during 2020. We are proud that during 2020, CMD continued to deliver on our commitments to create value for our clients, our people, and our partners. And at one of the most challenging times in history, we have emerged even stronger. We wanted to take a moment to review some of the major changes we have made to our software in 2020 to better service you.

10 Major 2020 Enhancements.

1. Unapplied Copay Credits: We know that collecting patient copays is an integral part of your revenue cycle. So in 2020, we wanted to help you streamline and organize the patient payments your office collects so that the correct amount is always posted to the corresponding claim. When posting co-payments you can now set the Date of Service (DOS) the payment is for. This association ensures the payment will be automatically posted towards the right claim. Please reference our Unapplied CoPay Credits Help Articles for more information.
   
   

2. Report Permissions: We have heard your suggestions (thank you), and have implemented which reports your users can access and run. We updated our reports permissions to give you full control on deciding which reports a user can access. Do they only need to access one report? No problem! Do they need to access and edit many different reports? Say less. For more information on report permissions, please reference our Edit User Access to Reports Help Article.  
   
   

3. Collection Agencies: At CollaborateMD we understand how important it is to track debt collection within your office. The Collection Agencies section allows you to add information regarding your specified collection agencies, assign charges/claims to that agency, and accurately report on what charges are there along with any payments they have collected. Want to learn more? Take a look at our Collection Agencies Help Articles.
   
   

4. Scheduler Eligibility Notification: Your time is important, so we wanted to help make things simpler and easier. Real-time Eligibility allows you to check if a patient is eligible for services in seconds, avoiding possible loss of payment. Eligibility is truly the first step to a clean claim. Wouldn’t it be great to see a Patient Eligibility status directly from the appointments in the scheduler? We thought you might think so. You can view a patient’s eligibility results without having to leave the scheduler. For more info regarding Eligibility visit our Viewing Eligibility from the Scheduler Help Article.
   
   

5. Separate Statements per Claim: Patient statements help you reduce your cost and save time by billing your patients quickly and efficiently. Sending clear, easy to read, well-designed statements to patients on an established cycle increases the efficiency of receiving payments and captures self-pay revenue while improving the patient's financial experience. In 2020 we gave you more options to configure your statements, one of which, gave you the option to send separate statements per claim. For more information, visit our Statements Help Articles.
   
   

6. Task Control: We have created a new feature to better allow you to manage your tasks. The new Task Control allows you to create, assign, reassign, or change multiple tasks at once and across all of your customers. We have also updated the Claim Follow Up Screen so you can easily track the status of outstanding claim follow up tasks. Want to try it out for yourself? Stop by our Tasks Help Articles for detailed steps.
   
   

7. Message Links & Attachments: Having good communication is critical to the success of any business. With that in mind, we wanted to make CMD messaging an effective tool to help your teams stay up to date and aware of any assignments. So in 2020, we added the ability to attach records or links to your CMD messages. Want to try out or CMD messages? Take a look at our Messages Help Articles for a detailed guide.
   
   

8. Updated Alerts: Sometimes an alert needs a little more to make it “POP” or help it “Stand Out”. In 2020 we updated our Alerts feature to support Rich Text editing. You can now change the font, color, size, and more to make your alerts more noticeable or to draw a reader’s eye to a specific point. Want to learn how to manage and view your alerts? Give our Alert Control Help Article a view.
   
   

9. Automatic Duplicate Patient Check: While creating a new patient record, the system will now check if there are any existing patient records with the same name, DOB or SSN number. An on-screen alert will warn you if there are duplicate patient records, to save you time and keep you from creating another entry. Reference our Add a New Patient Help Article for more information.
   
   

10. Sorting Notes: To make it easier for you to manage your notes, we have added a toggle that will control if your notes will display oldest to newest, or newest to oldest. Reference our Notes Help Article for more information.

Additional 2020 Enhancements

Why stop at just 10 enchantments, here are an additional 25 more improvements we have added to CollaborateMD in 2020.

1. Custom Patient Comment on Automated Statements: We have extended the ability to include a custom comment for a specific patient to statements sent through the automated process.  A new field has been added to the Patient screen within the Billing Info tab as well as a new option within the Statements screen when editing the template for a practice to use the patient comment (if it exists) in place of the important message on the statement. To learn more about this feature, please review our Edit Statement Automation Templates help article.
   
   

2. Mark Interfaces Messages as Fixed in a Batch: Within the Interface Tracker screen, users are now able to select multiple messages with errors and/or warnings and mark all selections as fixed in one batch action. To learn more about this feature, please review our Mark Interface Messages as Fixed help article.
   
   

3. See Patient Reference ID in Recently Opened List: A new column has been added to the recently opened patient table to show the patient’s reference ID.  The new column is not visible by default but can be enabled by right-clicking in the table header and choosing the “Select Columns” option.
   
   

4. New Report Fields (Revenue Codes): This update added new report fields related to revenue codes including code, description, and active/inactive status.  These fields can be used to add more information to your charge based reports or to report on revenue codes entered within your customer(s).  For more information regarding our report fields, take a look at our Report Field Reference Guide.
   
   

5. Patient Activity Update: We have made it easier to track patient payments that were posted to multiple charges. The Payment History Area of the activity report now shows the actual patient payment amount when the payment was applied across multiple charges. To learn more about the patient activity, please review our Patient Activity help article.
   
   

6. Create an Account Credit when Moving Patient Payments: In this update, we have made it easier to convert a patient payment into a payment credit. When “Moving A Payment” within the Manage Account Screen, any unapplied payment amount will be converted into a patient credit. For more information, please reference our Move a Patient Payment help article.
   
   

7. Viewing Your Invoice Details: We made some changes to make it easier for you to review your CMD invoice. From within the invoice section of the application, clicking on the invoice number will pull up the invoice details. For more information regarding invoices, take a look at our Invoices Help Articles.
   
   

8. Adding Diagnosis Codes from Claim: In this update, we added a new right-click option to the diagnosis code field within a claim that allows you to immediately add a new code to your local list. For more information regarding claims, take a look at our Add Professional Claims or Add Institutional Claims help articles.
   
   

9. Updated Auth Rep Report Permissions: Auth Reps now have access to run, view, and edit all custom reports within their account by default. To learn more about our different user types, take a look at our Understanding User Types help article.
   
   

10. User Print Settings Changes: There is now a new option that allows you to customize which charge status(es) to include on your user printed statements.
    
    

11. Edit Payment Update: Need to edit a patient payment? With this new update, you now have the ability to change the Provider or Office location for patient payments within the Manage Account screen. Log in and check it out for yourself. Be sure to reference our Edit a Payment Help Article for more information.
    
    

12. Collection Payments: Posting a collections payment? We wanted to help you save some time, so we added in a way to automatically post payments towards charges at collections. Take a look at our Apply Automatically Help Article for detailed steps.
    
    

13. Copy Charge Lines: You asked, and we listened. From within a claim, you can now copy one charge row. Doing so will copy all information on that charge, such as the codes, modifiers, points, and other info. Visit our Add Diagnosis and CPT codes Help article for more information.
    
    

14. Payment Type Automation: Automation can go a long way. We added a new user payment setting that allows a payment to default to “Check” when text is entered into the check # field. Reference the User Payment Settings and Post Patient and Insurance Payments Help Articles for step by step instructions.
    
    

15. Switch Customers via Reports: We love helping you multitask, so we’ve added a new report feature that allows you to switch between your different customer accounts. Clicking on an ID link within a report that belongs to another customer will now ask you if you want to log into that customer. Save those extra clicks! Reference our Running Reports Help Article to learn how to run a report.
    
    

16. Patient Activity Print Filters: We know that there are many different uses for printing the patient’s info sheet and ledger. So we made it a little easier to print the data you want. You now have the option to save and load specific filter selections. With this you can create filters to quickly print the patient’s claims for a specific date range, view the patient’s past payments, or any other data you need quickly. To learn how to use these time-saving filters, reference our Patient Info Sheet & Filters Help Article. 
    
    

17. Insurance Payment Setting Update: Are you adding multiple claims from the same patient to your insurance checks? If you are, we have made it easier for you to add those claims by updating the patient recently opened list whenever you add patient claims to an insurance check. Enable the Add patient to the recently opened list when adding claims to insurance checks  User payment Setting to try it out.
    
    

18. View all Appointments Button: We made it easier to view all of a patient’s appointments. We added a View all Appointments button to the patient record screen. Take a look at our View All Appointments Help Article for more info.
    
    

19. Undelete CMD Messages: Did you accidentally delete a message within CollaborateMD? No worries, it is not gone forever, we got your back. You can now undelete a message that was previously deleted. Please review our Un-Delete a Message Help Article for step by step instructions.
    
    

20. Credits and the Payment Portal Update: We have updated our payment portal to allow patients to make payments towards balances even if they have account credits. Don’t let credits stand in the way of your patients making payments. Reference our Configure the Payment Portal Help Article to learn how to enable this setting.
    
    

21. Copy Co-display: We made building new co- displays in Report Builder more efficient so you can find and show the data you need in a simple, and easy-to-create format. Instead of starting a new co-display from scratch, you can copy and edit an existing co-display from the report. To learn how to use this new feature, take a look at our Co-Display Help Article.
    
    

22. Copy Provider Billing Options: You can copy the configuration of one provider to other payers so you can save valuable time, and reduce manual entry. Want to learn more? Visit our Provider Billing Options Tab Help Article.
    
    

23. Alert Control Columns: We have added the new columns to the Alert Control screen. You can now track who deleted an alert along with the last user to update the alert. For more information, please reference the Alert Control Help Articles.
    
    

24. Switch Customer Improvements: Who doesn’t like a good time-saving shortcut? You now have the option when switching customers to open the claim or patient. This will take you right to the claim or patient you used to search the customer by. Learn more by visiting the Switch between Customers Help Article
    
    

25. New Report Field (Appointment Data > Last Modified User): This update also added a new field that can be used within the report builder. This field can be located within the appointment data folder, and when used, will display the last user who modified an appointment when added as a column. When added as a filter, you will be able to search for appointments based on the user who last modified the appointment.  For more information regarding our report fields, take a look at our Report Field Reference Guide.