Here’s our idea of a good new year’s resolution if you are a provider-start getting paid for your online visits!
First of all if your are a provider, we need to of course have an account set up with Practice Mate at Office Ally and that goes 
for any of our services and secondly, providers need to also join Patient Ally,our free PHR. When signing up for Practice Mate be sure to check “allow EVisit” to get started and that is found under the “manage office” area of the site.
The next step is to have patients enroll for free with Patient Ally as they need to have an account set up to be able to communicate with providers. All this sounds a bit basic but just worth repeating to get started. 
Once enrolled, patients will also have the choice of other physicians in the Patient Ally network.
eVisits are an option for patients to receive diagnosis and health care
consultation without visiting the provider’s office, via the Patient Ally
communication channel. An eVisit prompts the patient to answer clinically derived
questions based upon the general symptoms and/or conditions they may
be experiencing.
The eVisit begins when an enrolled patient logs into his or her secure Patient
Ally account and selects a non-urgent problem to report to their physician. A
series of targeted questions survey the essential information, much as a
physician would during a live office visit, and the patient’s responses are sent
securely to the physician’s message center. The physician responds with a
course of action or schedules an office appointment.
EVisits can be paid for on a “cash” basis aka self pay or if the insurance carrier is an Office Ally payer who covers EVisits, then the carrier pays. As a provider, you set the fee for your services and Office Ally will collect the fee from the patient via credit card or electronic check. Funds are remitted to the provider in no more than 45 days maximum if not sooner.
The fees for the visits are nominal and if you work with TransEngen, the fee goes from $1 for the visit to $.50 and with the second option funds are deposited directly to the provider’s bank account at the time of processing. 
The patient pays when they receive a reply from the provider.
If you need to more information on how to set set up to take credit cards you can read more at the blog-link below and there’s additional information at the website along with a form to apply or give us a call.
From Practice Mate you can set up templates to be used for your responses as a provider. Be sure you have selected “allow Evisit” so the tab will appear when you manage the office. 
Here’s how it works, the patient will request an EVisit via Patient Ally with the link on the site and select a provider and select “Start Interview”. The next is pretty common to what is seen 
on the web today with accepting the terms of agreement for the patient.
A reason for the visit is the next area to where the patient can select from a drop down list or type in a complaint.
The patient interview is an algorithm used by the Mayo Clinic and many other medical records programs with asking a series of questions, and some free text can be added by the patient to further explain their issues or questions.
A sample question might be something along this line: How long have you experienced this back pain with a series of time
elements to check or they can skip the question all together. Before hitting the send button the patient will get to review their questions and answers.
The provider receives an email to notify of the pending request. To view and access the EVisit go to the Patient Portal , log in and click on view to see and respond to the message.
The message is in a format familiar to any provider with the Chief Complaint at the top and other additional items below with the patient answers in bold text.
Just like a face to face visit, the ICD9 code will need to be entered and again as mentioned above providers can customize their templates for use. Once the provider enters the information, they hit send to respond to the patient. The patient must pay the established fee or co-pay if their insured covers the visit. There’s an option to check “complete electronic visit” which will disallow the patient from sending a response back. The visit can also be closed to save it and send at a later time or allow the patient to respond.
The next step is to return to Practice Mate to create a visit and a claim. The providers may not being doing this function themselves but rather may have a biller in the office taking care of the function since they are billing all the face to face visits. If you are using a billing service you can print a copy of the visit.
The EVisit link will appear next to the patient name in Practice Mate. The place of service code is 99 and the CPT Code is 99444 and the fee for the visit needs to be inserted. If this is a patient regularly seen in the office, a template may already be in place for billing codes.
If the patient is covered by Blue Shield in California, the visit and claim will be created automatically. If errors are received it’s an indication of missing information so go back and correct and omissions.
If you are using software other than Practice Mate, you will then need to enter the visit into your billing program.
As you can see it may make sense to think about using Practice Mate since all our software modules work together, but it is by no means a requirement. So take a few minutes and sign up today and get paid for your time online and patients like it too.
