Best Practice Guidelines: Medical | Dental | Allieds

The Age Analysis Report displays all the Outstanding balances of the Debtors on the system and the Age of the outstanding balance as per the information selected from the Report set-up.

The Age Analysis Report indicates all the outstanding accounts for both Medical Aid and Private Patient outstanding accounts. 

The Age Analysis Report assists in following up with the Medical Aid or the Patient on outstanding amounts. It can also assist in limiting Bad Debts if the amounts are followed up and collected regularly before 60 days of Age. 

Zero accounts can also be displayed on the full age analysis but can be filtered out. These are the accounts that have no amounts due. 

A debtor age analysis is divided into the following:

• Total outstanding amount
• Medical aid outstanding
• Private patient outstanding
• Current outstanding
• 30 days outstanding
• 60 days outstanding 
• 90 days outstanding
• 120 days outstanding
• 150 days outstanding
• 180 + days outstanding

The columns from current until and including 180 + will be added together to make up the total outstanding per line or per account. The totals at the bottom of each column indicate the sum for each column.

It is noteworthy that negative amounts (credit amounts) are deducted and will decrease the total.

Outstanding accounts

The best practice is to have no outstanding private patient accounts on 90 days and older, and to have no outstanding medical aid patient accounts on 60 days and older.

Use the age analysis to identify accounts that need to be followed up: a regular process should be put in place nominating which week to use for following up on outstanding accounts. For example, the first week of each month can be used to follow up on all 30 days outstanding accounts, the second week of the month to follow up on all 60 days outstanding accounts, etc. 

Remember to make notes in the notebook when following up on each account.

Credit accounts

Credit amounts on the age analysis mean that those accounts are in credit and that the practice owes money to those medical aids or patients.

When the credit amount is on the patient's part, a refund should be arranged with the patient.

When the credit amount is on the medical aid part, the credit should be kept until the medical aid pulls the amount back on the following payment from the medical aid.