Home Forums Discussions General Discussion Updox Upgrade

I just received information from Updox about their upgrade for 25 dollars per month, which includes the following. I am wondering if anyone has signed up for this - I'd like to view a screen shot of the online scheduling. Thanks.


For $25 additional, Updox customers can upgrade their portal to include any or all of the following services:
? Online Scheduling including automatic email appointment reminders
? Online Demographic Updates for patients to update their contact, personal and insurance information
? New patient registration capturing contact, personal and insurance information
? Online Bill Payment for patients to submit payments online (transactional fees apply, see below)

Braintree is our partner that allows us to offer online bill pay, and Updox customers have the option to either partner with Braintree exclusively, or in tandem with their current merchant. It is generally a decision based on the per transaction rates your current merchant provides. Here is the fee structure outlined:

Partnering with current merchant: $.35 Updox per transaction fee in addition to existing merchant fees
Partnering exclusively with Braintree: $.35 Updox per transaction fee + Braintree fee (2.8% + $.20)

Online bill payment has been very successful. Online scheduling less so... Too many permutations to not involve a human. NB ... My daughter's pediatrician also has an online appointment option which is limited to well kid checks and sports physicals, and that's about where we ended uo, with CDL exams and other defined visits. Online demographics, etc do get used, worth having.

I have this service primarily for the ability to store a patient's credit card and automatically charge them when they have a balance due. Our accounts receivable has dropped precipitously. yay!

Appointment reminders are good to. We have it activated, but don't actually schedule on it since due to a couple of features/lack of features. But it does basically work well and gives a close to real-time update to AC (its bi-directional too).

For patient demographics, I read what the patient wrote, and type it into AC myself because the patients tend to misunderstand things and it can mess you up. it is still useful for getting the updated information though.

Wayne: how do you get them to allow automatic charging of a card?
I have continued now with a few weeks of patient access to scheduling. I have had only a few patients schedule themselves an appointment online, even despite promoting it through patient broadcast and in other ways. I am looking for more ways to move patients to using the portal for scheduling.

We are confirming appointments tomorrow, as usual, by calling the patients. Patients have the option of confirming by email, but most are not taking advantage. To add to the confusion, all the appointment slots in the system started off as green, for confirmed, when we activated the feature. Now they are turning mostly yellow as they have not been confirmed by patients. I would hope we could get to a point where they mostly confirm by email and we only have to call a few. Any input on moving in this direction would be appreciated.

We had that issue in the beginning, front staff is the strongest point of instruction, but change your individual messages ( we have a reminder to go out a week before, and a second the day before)
Don't phrase the messages too closely: but tell the patients that they need to confirm once, or the appointment slot may be given to another patient.
That can get their attention.
As in anything new, it will take time, and often double the work(calling patients to remind/confirm appointments... and casually reminding them that you have a cutoff date for this to occur)
If your patient base is a little reluctant to utilize the internet, you will end up calling to make some reminders in any case, should you wish to keep your schedule accurate.

I assume by "them" you mean the patients. We REQUIRE it. Other doctors do this (not All Others, but many do), at least in major metro areas.

Did you go through the process to register Braintree with your merchant account? You have to do this before it will store credit cards. Once that process is started, I'd recommend that you begin telling patients that come in on the upcoming policy change that will begin in about 30 days. Once your begin date begins, you should email a consent form/agreement to patients who schedule appointments. Be sure to provide fairly specific circumstance when it would ever be used (EOB says patient responsibility, no-show fee, etc.) and put a written limit (say, $110) on the maximum amount that would ever be charged at a single time. Also provide examples of other times when people already leave a card on file (rent a car, rent a hotel room, sometimes online shopping, etc.)so they understand they probably have done this someplace before.

We have lost some patients due to this, but really not that many. In NYC, you can't really tell what's going on sometimes between personal references, internet gossip, etc. So I only count people who specifically say they don't want to do it, or who cancel their appointments right after I email them the registration and policy forms which include the agreement as a separate attachment. I want them to see it as soon as possible, not at the last minute. If an established patient comes in without it (sometimes a same-day appt. and I didn't send it to them) and they say they do not wish to do it, AND we have had no collections issues with them, I'll tell them we can see them today but to think about it because we will not be able to see them in the future. New patients who refuse of course have their appointments cancelled. Sometimes, if there is time, I'll discuss things further with an established patient concerning why we started doing it. I've had some established patients happily agree agree after this 2 min discussion, when at first we they want to.

Thanks for the info Wayne. I can just imagine that many of my patients will say they do not have a card, will not give it out, or will give us a maxed out card. It is a good idea though, and I admire it. Do you guys think the fees on Braintree are worth it?

definitley. Now, we do not use it as the primary CC system. It would cost too much. These 3rd party guys want to suck the life out of your practice via enabling credit card processing. What you should do, if you do not already accept cards, is look around for who would be good to work with. The price should be low. Start with your bank. We use a company named ZirMed to do it. Costs $20/month. Its very easy to use, you have the online records for 2 years, some other stuff. But these other companies, and Updox is one of them, will hit you with a fee per transaction. This is in addition the transaction fee you pay on your merchant account. Its usually .35 or more per transaction. It can add up quickly if most patients are paying their copays by card. And there is no upper limit...the more you do the more you owe.

Wayne,

Can you explain a bit more about ZirMed? Which part of their service are you using?

It is hard to believe we would pay 35 cents on top of the already inflated merchant processing fees. What work did Visa do to justify 3% of the patient visit: my biller only asks for 6%!

I used SQUARE at both my offices. 2.75% flat with NO OTHER FEES.

No yearly PCI charge.
No per swipe fee.
No monthly membership fee.

After calculating the fees with my previous merchant processor, the 1.8% they quoted was often 4-6%

Can you tell me how you use square? I understand you have to hook it up to an iphone? Did you get a phone just for this?

Square is easy...the rates are great

We just use them to interface with the card processor. You may try your bank first. They do offer other services, but we don't use them.

It has a little devise that the give away that you plug into the headphone jack of an android or iPhone. You download the software and the phone is set.

Setting up the account was easy. You can set up others to accept payments on your behalf, my receptionists use their own phones, I get an email the the payment was received by them. The money is usually in the account w/in 2 days.

First you open the app, unlock it the put in the amount. You swipe the card and it goes through. The person signs with their finger and you email or text them a receipt.

More complicated to describe than use. I am very pleased.

Thanks, Wendell. Do you print receipts for patients?

Hi Serene- we use the Square on a very old ipod touch taken from my daughter when we upgraded her device. (if you use an ipod touch you must have WIFI access) After the patient signs on the screen, he or she chooses whether to get a receipt by email or text. You can't print from the device directly. You can go on line to your Square account and request a receipt be re-sent. However, for security I do not allow front desk staff access to the online account-that is how you control what bank account the money goes to.
Two caveats:
1. If you forget what pt account a charge goes to, you will never be able to find out! Staff must record elsewhere which patient each deposit belongs to. Your online account will not show you patient names. We had this happen once when a patient called in with a phone charge and staff could not later recall who it was.
2. Order a back-up square device (they are free) as sometimes they stop working.

I agree with the above. We were early adopters of the Square and found it quite useful. Unfortunately it was a bit buggy, and more importantly did not give us the ability to easily search through old transactions. So, for example, when a patient called and said "I paid my copay 3 months ago but now you are billing me for it"... it was nearly impossible to determine if they were charged or not. Also keep in mind that the 2.75% is not for keyed in charges (it is only for swiped). The rate goes up for those.
Also, support was nearly non-existent.
Not trying to trash them; Square does have it's place- but we have gone to a web-based company that is an AC partner (whatever that means).

These are reasons we did not adopt it. We wanted to easily be able to check old transactions. There is also the rare need to refund/void transactions. Our system also records cash payments so we no longer have a receipt book for cash payments.

As Arty said, we just email or text a payment. We have always done paper receipts (yup, we haven't quite gotten entirely paperless) but do not usually give the patient a paper copy, it is for tracking purposes and put the co-pay in AC, so we doe not have the issues that Jon was concerned.

Dear Jon

What is the name of your web based credit card company and what grade are you being charged?
Thanks in advance