The training and help systems provide overview as well as details of how to use CILe. As is the case with any complex software program, though, there are many more subtle capabilities that will make your life much easier if you only knew they were there. What I offer here are some of those tips and tricks that I have included in CILe to simply make my life easier. You may find they do that for you as well. Let me know if you find them useful, or if you have any of your own tips or tricks you'd like to include here.

Tip #1: Calculate Visits Left

Off of the Fiscal Menu, the very first item is "Calculate Visits Left." If you have been putting your clients' authorizations in CILe(1), click on this link to get a listing of your clients, comparing the number of visits they has been authorized with the number of visits they've actually kept. It shows you how many visits you have left of those that have been authorized. If they have three or less visits remaining, it will turn red. Also, if the expiration date of the authorization is within the next three weeks, it will also turn red.

What I do is check this each week to 1) see if I need to submit any requests for more visits for my active clients, and 2) turn off electronic claim submission for those clients for whom I have not yet received authorization (e.g., 'visits left' is in the negative). I've found that if you don't have authorization yet, the claim will be rejected, and then when you resubmit the claim after you've received the authorization, sometimes they will reject it a second time even though you now have authorization because they've already processed it once and denied it already. You can usually get them to resubmit it again with a note saying it's been authorized, but you have to go into the black zone and get on the phone with them to get it done. If you are alerted that you've run out of visits and turn off the electronic claim box on the Fiscal Face Sheet until you get the authorization, then you avoid that nightmare. Anything I can do to avoid getting on the phone with them is a good thing.

Notes:

(1) To put their authorizations in CILe, go to the Fiscal Face Sheet and click the "Authorizations" button. Or you can go to the client pop-up menu and click "Authorizations" toward the bottom.

If you're using the "Insurance Payment Maintenance" feature off of the Fiscal Menu, you can sort them by the date that the original claim was submitted by clicking on the "E-transferred Date" or "Paper HCFA Printed" button on the tops of those columns. That way, if you have a couple of minutes to make a phone call to an insurance company, you can see which claims have been outstanding the longest and prioritize your precious phone-call minutes.

1) Go to the Client Popup menu and select "Claim Stop or Resubmit"

2) In the "Force Claim Resubmission" column, check the box of the claim you want to submit on paper. Remember to pay attention to whether it's the Primary or Secondary insurance company you want to submit this claim to.

3) Go back to the Client Popup menu and select "HCFA Claim Form."

4) If you don't have any other claims outstanding for this client, then you can just leave the dates as they are and click the "Go" button. If you have other outstanding claims but you only want this specific session(s) on the claim, then specify the dates in the boxes and click the "Go" button.

5) Print it on the color HCFA form. (Click here for information as to how to order official CMS-1500 forms)

6) Exit out of the HCFA report screen. It will ask you if you want to mark these sessions as "printed." Click "Yes" if this is a legitimate claim submission and you intend to mail the claim.

7) Go to the "Insurance Payment Maintenance" form and you will see this claim as an open claim with today's date under the "Paper HCFA Printed" sort button column so you can track the payment.

CAUTION: When your insurance company receives the claim, it will put it onto a machine where the red disappears and only the text is visible in the proper locations on the computer monitor. If the text doesn't line up fairly close inside the boxes, then the clerk will not be able to read your claim. If you feel this is a problem because of the way your printer prints onto the claim form, then you may need to hand-scribe the form onto a blank HCFA 1500 form. However, going through this process, even if you have to do the claim by hand in the end, will still allow CILe to track the outstanding claim.

If you will look at the Fiscal Face Sheet, you will find a small text input box called "Date UTP Mailed." If you will plug in the date you either mailed or faxed the most recent UTP to the insurance company, then, when you run the "Calculate Visits Left (UTP Due)" report, you will see that date show up on the listing, and even if that listing shows that client as being out of visits, you will see by the date that you have already submitted the request, so you don't have to do it again. You can call the authorization company and tell them what date you faxed/mailed it, and ask them what the status of the authorization is.

Go to the 'Administrative Menu' and click 'To Do List.' It's just a text box that you add text to and delete from when you've accomplished the task.

Go to the 'Administrative Menu' and click 'Address Book.' The first page shows you the name and primary phone number of the entry. Double-click on the name, and it will pop you to a full address, additional phone numbers, and points of contact for the entry.

Note that at the bottom of the session note, there is a small white input box with a button next to it. If you put in a date of a note and click the button, you will jump immediately to the session note for that date. You can then arrow forward or backward from there.

On the "Insurance Payment Maintenance" screens, you are allowed to enter in the check number of the insurance payment. You are not required to do so, but if you do, you can click the "Verify Check Number" button once you have all of the EOB items entered. It will display the total of all of the dollar amounts of all of the sessions you've documented as "paid" with this EOB, and ensure that the total entered into CILe matches the total of the check. That way you won't accidentally skip an EOB entry which will make it seem like you haven't been paid for a session when in reality you have. This will keep your books accurate, and will save you from calling the insurance company only to find out that you really have been paid.

Sometimes when I terminate with a client, if they seem reluctant but I believe they're ready, I tell them I will leave them open for a while in case they need to come back in for a session or two down the road. This gives them an emotional "safety-net." If I haven't heard from them in several months, I will go ahead and close them.

To help me do this, there is a listing in CILe of all clients sorted by the last time they came in. To get this listing, go to the "Therapy" menu and click "Clients last appt" toward the bottom of the menu. The ones on the top may be candidates for closing out.

When you go to the client listing, the "Client ID" has a 'sort' button at the top of the column. If you click it twice, it will sort them with the most recent Client IDs at the top, so you can quickly see who your most recent client additions are. I use it if I've forgotten what a new client's last name is and need to find them quickly.