About the Different User Accounts

All users of Pracsoft fall into one of two basic categories; ‘User’ accounts and ‘Practitioner’ accounts.

A User account refers to any user of Pracsoft who does not intend to bill patients for services. This is usually the Practice’s administrative employees

A Practitioner account refers to any user of Pracsoft who intends to bill patients for services, or who is otherwise a non-billing clinician.

 

Practitioner accounts are then divided into two groups; ‘Inactive’ and ‘Active’. An inactive practitioner is a clinician who does not intend to bill patients for services. For example, you may have a clinician who is registered in Clinical, but who will never bill patients for services in Pracsoft. This would be an unusual case, but Pracsoft provides for this type of user, regardless.

Active practitioners on the other hand do bill patients for services. In order to bill for services, an active practitioner must supply at least a location description, which is recorded in Pracsoft. Most active practitioners must also record their Provider Number(s). A Provider Number is required for billing.

Active practitioners are further sub-divided into ‘entities’ and ‘clinicians’;

An entity is generally a non-human, administrative account with which you bill patients for services. For example, your Practice may wish to bill patients for vitamins bought over the counter, at your Practice. Such sundries are 'administered' by the Practice as opposed to a specific practitioner. If you intend to bill patients in this manner, you need to create a user account for the Practice itself. An entity account does not need to have a Provider Number recorded against its record because it cannot conduct online claiming. However, it does need to have a location recorded for it.

A clinician must record a Provider Number for any billing, and it is possible for one clinician to have multiple Provider Numbers – one for each location at which they practise. They must record each Location into Pracsoft.

Locations, Provider Numbers, and Minor IDs

In Pracsoft there are two definitions for ‘location’;

The physical address of your Practice, as registered with Medicare. Medicare requires that a practitioner use a different Provider Number for each different location (different physical address) at which he practises.

The location field in the practitioner’s record. Typically you would simply record the name of your Practice in this field. However you can also use this field to differentiate between two locations within the same Practice (e.g. ‘Room 1’ and ‘Room 2’) or to differentiate between visits at the Practice and visits at a Nursing Home for example.

A Minor ID is required by Medicare (assigned to your Practice by MedicalDirector) to differentiate it from other Practices, and is required for online claiming. Therefore, provided your Practice has one ABN, it could operate from multiple physical locations (different Practice branches), with both branches even sharing the same patient database. In this instance, you would inform Medicare of this arrangement and of which practitioners intend to work at both locations. For each different location, Medicare would assign each practitioner a different Provider Number.

Account Examples

Example One

Anna wishes to use Pracsoft. Therefore, she must have an account created for her.

Anna is the Practice Manager, and will never need to bill patients. Therefore her account type will be that of ‘User’.

Example Two

Doctor Smith wishes to use Pracsoft. He is a clinician who intends to bill patients for services. Therefore his account type will be that of ‘Practitioner’.

Because he intends to bill patients for services, and conduct online claiming, he must record a Provider Number. He only has one Provider Number, because he only works for one Practice. He creates an ‘active practitioner’ account in Pracsoft in which to record this information.

He will only ever be working on-site at the Surgery, so this is what he records in the Location field in his record.

Example Three

Doctor Gahan is a practitioner who works for a Practice that has a single branch – a single location. Because the Practice has a single location, Dr. Gahan has one Provider number.

However, he also does home visits, and the Practices need to keep a record of these consultations separate to those conducted at the Practice itself. Therefore, Doctor Gahan creates two ‘registered practitioner’ accounts in Pracsoft; one with a location field of ‘Practice’ and one with a location field of ‘HomeVisits’. Both accounts use the same Provider Number.

Example Four

Doctor Jones works for a Practice that has two branches. Each branch is located in a different suburb (and therefore, different physical locations). Although the Practice has two different locations, each shares the same ABN, and the same patient database.

Because Doctor Jones will be working at two different addresses (despite them being for the same Practice), Medicare assigns her two different Provider Numbers. She sets up two different ‘active practitioner’ accounts in Pracsoft – one for each Provider Number. And in the Location field for each record, she records the name of the branch it relates to.

 

Managing User Accounts

Users are managed via Admin > User List.

From this window you can:

Add new Users, Practitioners and Specialists to MedicalDirector Pracsoft.

Edit basic User and Practitioner settings and Security Levels.

Show Users and Practitioner records that have previously been made inactive.

To edit detailed Practitioner information, see Managing Registered Practitioners.