Responsible Party Records

The Responsible Party tab of a patient folder contains information about the patient's billing parties and guardians. When you create a new patient folder, ViewPoint automatically creates one responsible party record. When a patient has multiple billing parties or guardians, you may create additional responsible party records as needed.

How to Get Here

Open Responsible Party Tab - Patient folder > Responsible tab. (See "Open Patient Folders with Fast Find" for details about accessing patient folders.) You can also use Quick Search to locate the record to work with.

Use This Feature

Multiple Responsible Parties - When you create a patient folder, ViewPoint automatically creates a responsible party record for that patient. However, when the patient has multiple billing parties or guardians, you can create additional responsible party records as needed. The Responsible tab at the top of the patient folder window indicates the number of responsible parties assigned to the patient.

Create a New Record - With the patient folder open, click New on the ViewPoint toolbar, or select Folder > New from the shortcut menu, and select the Responsible Party option. Or, press Ctrl-N on your keyboard from nearly any ViewPoint window. If a patient record is already active, that patient's information will be loaded automatically. Otherwise, you use Fast Find (either typing information or swiping a registered reward card) to search for the patient to work with. See "Open Patient Folders with Fast Find" for details. You can then enter the details for the record as needed, described below.

When you create a patient folder from a non-patient family member record with the Make Patient feature, you can copy responsible party and / or insurance detail records to the new folder. See "Patient Folder Family Tab" for details.

Select the Record to Work With - When a patient has multiple responsible party records, use the <<Previous and Next >> buttons at the bottom of the window to move among the records.

Name & Address Fields - Enter the responsible party greeting, name and address as you would like them to appear in mail merge documents. When you click a name or address field, you can edit any of the related fields.

Update Linked Records - When you edit the address or contact details for a patient or responsible party, you have the opportunity to change linked records to match. In some cases, you must refresh the record before the update records dialog appears. Click for details...

Greeting - Enter the greeting name as you would like it to appear in mail merge documents. If you leave this field blank, ViewPoint combines the title or first name field with the last name field to use as the greeting name.

Print Quick Label - Click the QLbutton beside the name field to print a Quick Label for this party. See "Responsible Party Labels" for details.

Misc. Charge Late Fee - Select the late fee policy to apply to miscellaneous charges posted to this responsible party. The policy may be the same as, or different from, the policy assigned to contract fees.

When you create a patient folder from a non-patient family member record with the Make Patient tool, late fee policies default to the policy assigned to the responsible parties you copy to the new folder. Otherwise, the default policy comes from your New Patient Defaults. See "Set Up Patient Folder Default Responses" for details.

Send Bill - Select when to generate statements for this responsible party. On request generates a statement whenever the contract fits the subgroup you are using; Always generates a statement whenever you print a group of statements, regardless of the account's financial standing; Never prevents statements from printing for this responsible party.

Payment Day - Select the day of the month you expect payment from this responsible party, from 1 to 28. If you leave this field blank, ViewPoint will print your default payment date (defined as you generate statements) as the due date for this party.

Employer - Select the responsible party's employer, if any. This field is not linked to the employer field on the Insurance tab of the patient folder. If the employer is not in your list, select (new) to go to the Employer table where you can create a new record. You can click the G button beside the name field to open the record for editing. (See "Employer Records" for details.)

Summary & Account Aging - The financial summary shows the totals for all this responsible party's contracts, including expected insurance. To view the account aging, click the 30-60-90 button. When you click this button from the Responsible Party tab, you see the aging summary of all contracts assigned to this billing party; when you click the button from the Patient tab, you see the aging summary of all contracts for the patient; when you click the button from the ledger, you see the aging of the currently selected contract.

Relationship - Choose how this responsible party is related to the patient. or type a unique answer if needed. This field is not linked to the relationship field on the Insurance tab of the patient folder. See "Set Up Relationship Table" for details.

Social Security Number - The social security number is required for filing electronic insurance claims.

Phone Numbers & Email Addresses - You may enter several types of contact information for each responsible party. Although these fields are independent of the information you have in the Patient tab of the patient folder, you have the opportunity to update linked records whenever a party's contact information is changed.

Home / Work Phone - Enter the home and work phone numbers in the respective fields. Enter phone numbers as either 7 or 10 digits, and ViewPoint will supply area code parentheses and hyphens to facilitate viewing the number. If you enter any other number of digits, ViewPoint does not recognize the value as a phone number, and the visual indicators will not be added.

Additional Contact Details - ViewPoint can store several phone numbers and email addresses in the contact field. Use your Contact Category table to create the types of contact information you want to store for your patients and responsible parties. See "Set Up Contact Categories" for details.

View Contact Details - Click the [V] button beside the contact field caption to view additional contact details. This button appears green when multiple contact fields have information in them.

Select Contact Type to Display - Click the box beside the contact type you want to display on your screen.

Dynamic Formats - You may type web site and email addresses into contact fields and user-defined fields. Then, if your computer is connected to the Internet, you can double-click the field to open the web site, or initiate an email message.

Send Quick Message - (Available only if you use VP Reminder.) Click QM beside the contact field to initiate a quick email message for this party. See "Quick Message" for details.

Send Text - (Available only if you use Edge Reminders.) Click Text beside the contact field to review text message conversations, or send a new text message to this party. See "Send Text Messages to Patients & Responsible Parties" for details.

Electronic Correspondence Option - Enable / disable the electronic correspondence option of the Responsible tab of your patient folders to choose whether to send appointment cards and payment receipts to the responsible party's Email1 address, rather than printing them.

When you change this option, you have the opportunity to change linked records to match. In some cases, you must refresh the record before the update dialog appears. Click for details...

If you enable the electronic correspondence option for a patient or responsible party, you can always override the email, and choose to print an appointment card or receipt instead: When you generate a payment receipt by right-clicking a transaction in the patient ledger, you can choose to print or email the form. Or when you generate a receipt or appointment card from the ViewPoint Forms menu, you can check the Disable Electronic Submit option to override the electronic correspondence setting, and print the form on paper.

You can set up your system so that patients earn Patient Reward points when they opt into electronic correspondence. See "Patient Reward Trigger Editor" for details.

Activate Contacts for Edge Reminders / VP Reminder - Select the icon beside the Contact field, then enable each phone number and/or email address you want to use for the delivery of Edge Reminders or VP Reminder messages.

If you flag multiple contact types, the party will receive a message in each of the selected formats; if you do not flag any contact types, the party will not receive any messages, even when they fit the subgroup you select. (However, if the patient and responsible party contact information matches, ViewPoint will recognize the duplicate, and send only one message in that format.)

Patient Tab Option - When you enable the Patient Tab option on the Responsible tab of the patient folder, the responsible party name and relationship are entered into one of the Unassigned fields on the Patient tab of the patient folder. In addition, if the responsible party and patient addresses match, a house icon ( ) indicates that the patient lives with this party. If you later disable the Patient Tab option, the name and relationship are removed and the field is renamed Unassigned.

Credit Card Information - For security purposes, only partial credit card details appear on the responsible party window.

If a responsible party does not yet have credit card information on file, you can click S, then swipe the card and add the details. You can also click X to remove credit card details from both your ViewPoint database and the credit card processing system (i.e. Vanco or X-Charge). Or, click U to update the expiration date of a stored credit card. You can also add credit card information as you post a payment to the account with VP Credit Card by enabling the Store Credit Card Info option that appears after you swipe the card. Before the data is saved in the responsible party record, the transaction must be properly completed.

User-Defined Fields - The Patient and Responsible Party tabs of your patient folders each provide for two fields that you can use for any purpose. One field requires that you select the response from the Patient Custom or Responsible Party Custom table. The other field can be used for unique responses. Define the names for both fields with either the Patient Folder Captions tab of your Patient Folder Properties or the User Defined Fields table. These fields support hyperlinks: You can enter Internet web site or email addresses into these fields, then double-click to follow the hyperlink.

WebAccess Password - Click this button to review and change the WebAccess Client Password for this party. You can also edit passwords from within WebAccess.

Audit Record - Click the Audit button at the bottom of the window to review the date, time the record was first created, and the operator that was logged into ViewPoint at that time.

More Information

Identify Primary Record - From the ViewPoint shortcut menu, select Actions then Order Folder Pages, Then use the arrows to re-order which responsible party and/or insurance record will appear first when you open that tab of the patient folder.

Select Actions then Order Folder Pages from the ViewPoint shortcut menu. (Or, press Alt+A on your keyboard to open the Actions menu options.)
Use the arrows to re-order the records as needed.

Go to Previous / Next Patient - While viewing any tab of a patient folder, you can click <-- Previous and -->Next on the ViewPoint toolbar to navigate to the prior or next patient, alphabetically by last name.

Simultaneous Access - You may open multiple patient folders simultaneously, and multiple users may open the same patient folder simultaneously. However, multiple users cannot change the same field in the same patient folder at the same time.

Resize the Window - Hover your cursor at a corner of the window, then click and drag to the desired size. ViewPoint remembers you preferred size, even after you exit and re-enter.

Create Patient From Responsible Party Record - Click a responsible party name on the Family tab of a patient folder, then click Make Patient to create a patient folder for that responsible party, automatically assigned to the same family. You can then select which additional responsible parties and / or insurance detail records to copy to the new folder. See "Patient Folder Family Tab" for details.

Print Quick Label - Click the QLbutton beside the name field to print a Quick Label for this party.

Send Quick Email Message - (Available only if you use VP Reminder.) Click the QM button beside the Contact field to initiate a Quick Message for this party. See "Quick Message" for details.

Update Via online forms - If you ask your patients to complete Online Forms, your patient folders can be updated with new data automatically. See "Use Online Forms " for details.