Background 

Release 369 transformed Ascend to meet GAAP financial auditing requirements by providing higher visibility into patient ledgers for any changed or deleted transactions, and maintaining past period reporting. These patient ledger and reporting changes rippled throughout the entire program and caused a temporary problem with the consistent accuracy of the financial power reports. (Note that patient ledger data remained accurate.) With Release 382, all power reports should display accurate representations of these transaction records.  

Recommendations 

During the time financial power reports were not to be used, we recommended using the built-in Provider A/R Totals report. Now that financial power reports are fixed, you can continue to use the Provider A/R Totals report; but if you prefer additional detail, you can use the Provider Production and Applied Collection power reports, which each will match the Provider A/R Totals (as long as the filters are the same).  

It’s important to note that with release 369, we added improved tracking for changes and deletions in the patient ledger called Revisions, so you can easily see transaction history. We also added a new date field to power reports: Modified Date. All three of the above reports use the modified or applied date (which is why they match). Using the modified date for production reports is our recommended best practice. The modified date and revisions in these reports capture all activity during the date range and allow for past period financial reports to remain consistent.  For an example of how this works: 

• July – A patient comes in for fillings; a claim is created and submitted to the carrier for Provider A. 
  • • The end-of-month July reports will show production from those procedures for Provider A. 
• August – During your end-of-month review, you discover that the July fillings actually were completed by Provider B, so the insurance manager edits the patient ledger to change to the correct provider. 
  • The end-of-month August reports will show production from those updated procedures for Provider B and will show reduced production (in the form of a revision) for Provider A. 
  • When you re-run the end of month July reports using the modified date, it will show the exact same production for Provider A as shown originally. 

Provider Short Name Update

Another update we released recently was a change to our provider fields - many large groups had created duplicate short provider names (6 character max) and this was causing confusion in power reports. We have added new provider fields that allow for duplicate short names, making it easier on your teams to identify the correct providers. For any saved reports, you will need to replace the obsolete provider fields, and replace with the new ones.

Validation Instructions 

If you have been following our recommendation to use the Provider A/R Totals report and you would now like to provide additional confidence to your providers, here are the steps: 

If you pay providers on net production, validate power reports using these steps: 

1. Run the Provider A/R Totals report for the month. The Production Total is net production. 
2. Run the Provider Production power report for the same month. (Go to the Insights dashboard and click on Provider Production in the top right box to make sure you have this built on Modified Date.) The Grand Total is net production.
3. These two numbers should match for each provider. 

Additional tips for reconciling against past periods 

If you have saved exported power reports from past periods that have specific filters, you can compare those against the current power reports. You can then identify any discrepancies that may require adjustments in your provider compensation amounts.  

• If preferred, add additional fields, such as Guarantor or Patient, to the Provider Production report. 
• Add any desired filters or exclusions for procedure codes or adjustment types. 
• Any previously saved reports should be updated to verify they are built using the modified date and the same measures as the pre-built power report. 
• For reconciling for past periods, run using this new report and compare to any saved reports from past periods to identify any discrepancies.   

If you pay providers on applied collection, validate power reports using these steps: 

1. Run the Provider A/R Totals report for the month. The Collection Total is applied collection.
2. Run the Applied Collection report for the same month. The Total Collection is applied collection.
3. These two numbers should match for each provider. 

Additional tips for reconciling against past periods 

If you have saved reports from past periods that have specific filters, you can compare those against the current reports to identify any discrepancies that may require adjustments in your provider compensation amounts. 

• If preferred, add additional fields, such as Primary Guarantor, to the Applied Collection report. 
• Add any desired filters or exclusions for procedure codes or adjustment types. 
• Previously saved exported reports for collections using the applied date do not need to be updated.  
• For reconciling for past periods, run using this new report and compare to any saved reports from past periods to identify any discrepancies.   

Filtering and Field Considerations 

Some provider compensation agreements are customized, for example: 

• If Providers do not receive credit for specific procedures (such as x-rays or Invisalign), these procedures need to be filtered out of the compensation reports. 
• If the office has recently converted and has entered adjustments for initial balance forward or initial credit balance forward, the office may want to exclude these adjustments from provider production or collection compensation. 
• Other types of procedure code or adjustment code filters may be needed (products, sales tax, etc.). 
• Any saved production reports that use the transaction date, which was our recommended option for production prior to release 369, will need to be updated to use modified date to be in line with best practices. If you want to retain the previous functionality in power reports you can add the revision history includes current filter to continue using transaction date reports. 
• Any saved collection reports that use transaction date should be updated to use the applied date to be in line with best practices. This has been our recommendation even before release 369. To continue using transaction date with the previous functionality for power reports, add the revision history includes current filter. 
• Any saved power reports with a provider field will need to be updated - remove the obsolete provider and replace with one of the active provider fields.
• Our interim recommendation to use Provider A/R Totals did not include the ability to filter the report for these past periods based on specific procedure codes or adjustment types. To see what these filtered reports reflect, you can run the Provider Production and Applied Collection reports back to release 369 and then compare to the Provider A/R Totals to find any differences.