VSP Question?
For those of you who are VSP, NVA, GVA, Eyemed, ect. providers. Is it a normal occurrence that a patient leave the office after exam and picking out frames & lenses to NOT know how much they are going to be charged for overages?.. Where I work an "insurance woman" might take days or even a week to figure out overages and then call the pt. I then take the heat in the lab when work is late. Just curious if this happens elsewhere? We in the lab are required though,to do Davis on the spot.
No, you pay upfront....especially with insurance. If the person who sells the glasses doesn't know how to charge, then they need to learn....fast!
unfortunatly the people selling glasses are not permitted to learn this. Only Davis and Vision One. I thought that this practice was not normal.
Figuring the vsp is really easy! We let our pats. know how much they are going to owe when they leave. All of us are suppose to be able to figure the price before the pat leaves. We also tell pats 7 to 10 working days on vsp. We tell them that we are not incontrol of the labs their insurance picks. We use DBL and are usualy pleased with turn around
karenrp1956:drop:
ps, if they get oakleys and want oakley to do job, they pay full price and let vsp refund them the difference. but ALL should know how to figure insurance
karenrp1956:drop:
Why are the people that sell the glasses not trained to know this? Actually it's really easy to do through eyefinity's website. Type in what they're getting and calculate and you can print a summary of their out of pocket charges.
I'm sure it is easy. The office manager and od does not want us to learn. The only "EASY" job in the office is dispensing, edging, frame selection ect. If you get what I mean!!
That's totally bizarre. If I told patients that I didn't know how much they'd owe, I'd expect them to walk out. And from a customer standpoint, if I went someplace where I was going to order something as expensive and completely individualized as glasses, and they couldn't even give me a ballpark figure of the cost, I'd walk out, too.
I would too, it's wierd how things are operating in your office, I've never heard of such a thing.
How long have you taken VSP? Do you know if VSP has ever audited your office? Sounds like the owner and bookkeeper may face some questions when VSP comes to audit. And audit they will!!
In every case the exact cost should be calculated before the patient leaves. However it's not unusual to see occasional mistakes since the process can be a little tricky especially when one is rushed. I have the optician figure it out and the check out clerk reconfirm the charges just as a double check. When the VSP statements come back we scour each one for errors and still find a 1-5% error rate. I am currently working on a handheld PDA system and that will give instant rates for any lens and frame option so as to speed up the process.
[QUOTE=ilanh]In every case the exact cost should be calculated before the patient leaves. However it's not unusual to see occasional mistakes since the process can be a little tricky especially when one is rushed. I have the optician figure it out and the check out clerk reconfirm the charges just as a double check. When the VSP statements come back we scour each one for errors and still find a 1-5% error rate. I am currently working on a handheld PDA system and that will give instant rates for any lens and frame option so as to speed up the process.[/QUOTE]
Wow ! :cheers:
"I just love the smell of Optidirt in the morning.
Smells like------Victory." -- Uncle Fester :p
Wow- what system is that? My office might be very interested. VSP runs rapid here.Originally Posted by ilanh
karenrp1956:drop:
I am stating something a little different.
I do the VSP billing, we are always busy and I dont have time usually to sit there and bill the jobs on the fly. I usually bill them at the end of the day.
So what I am saying is this. Can i give the patient a very close estimate what they will owe? YES
Can I tell them exactly what they owe after I am done? Not usually. I use the VSP calculator and glasses have to be billed before you get to that last wellness vision statement.
I tell them appproximately based on the "patient record information" tab.
If i have time i bill it right away, if i dont I tell the patient I will call them this evening if it is not in line with the close estimate i gave them.
I have not had one person ever complain or walk out. :drop:
wow... we can give the cost of services with VSP at time of service to the patient. We have all the pricing schemes built into the computer system and the only things we might have to check the pricing guides on is what class a lens might fall under (like Ziess Gradal Tops fall under PAL-J)... but I think even that is actually in the systems. The only problems I have with VSP is that we have to enter the products and services in through eyefinity (which is time consuming at the least), and the savings statements that we have to fill out for each VSP transaction.
It's pretty complicated to learn (I've been with my new job a month and I still haven't figured it all out), but for some people it's the only way they can afford to get a quality exam and eyeglasses instead of going to some doc-in-a-box chain store.
On Eyefinity, you can download the VSP options charge pages, which give you pricing for virtually any conceivable option.
We have a binder in all our dispensing tables with these pages (two for Signature, one for Value), along with all the other price lists and whatever handy manuals we're likely to need. It takes maybe 15 extra seconds to compute the two totals (cash and VSP), and we have an exact figure for the patient. Most of the prices we all know off the tops of our heads--quick, progressive F in poly!--and for what we don't, it takes no time at all to check. Easy - the patient knows exactly what they owe, we can collect payment then and there, and no tedious followup calls at the end of the day when we're hustling to get out.
As far as billing, it doesn't take more than two or three minutes once you're familiar with the Eyefinity setup, as long as your Internet connection is reasonably quick.
The eyefinity website is very fast. Although I don't bill the glasses right away while the patient is here, I always give them an itemized summary of all charges. I guess I've been doing it long enough that I pretty much have all the out of pocket surcharges memorized so the patient always know what their responsible for before leaving the office.
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