The Charge Importer allows you to upload charges in bulk to create individual patient invoices or route charges to employer invoices. If your staff manually enters charges from your EMR or another system into Hint today, using this feature will save them a good deal of time.
Uploading Charges Using the Charge Importer
To use the Charge Importer, follow these steps:
Head to the main 'Patients' tab in your Hint account
Click the cloud icon with the arrow pointing upwards:
Select 'Charges' as the data type:
Click 'Choose File' and select the file from your computer
The file must be a .csv file
The file should include the following exact headers (note: required fields are listed in bold):
First Name
Last Name
Date of Birth
Price
Note: this should be the total price of the service or charge item. We apply any coverage plan discount on top of this value, if applicable.
Charge Item Name
Note: The charge item does not need to be a pre-existing charge item in your Hint account. If the system does not find an exact name match within your existing charge items, it will create a 'custom' charge as long as the price for the charge is included in the file.
Charge Category
Note: the category listed in your file must be an exact name match to an existing charge category in Hint.
Service Date
Note: this is the date of the charge, not the invoice date.
Order Number
Note: This is the service event ID. The ID must be unique by patient and event.
For example, a CPT code could not function as an order number, as CPT codes are unique per service but not unique by patient event.
Including order numbers in your .csv allows you to upload the same file twice without creating duplicate charges; if a previously uploaded file did not contain order numbers, re-uploading the same file would create duplicate charges.
Blank example template for reference:
Exporting Upload Results
The file processing results can be exported to a .csv file that includes both successful rows and failed rows.
Successful rows will include a column with a link to the invoice the charge was routed to.
Errored rows will display an error message explaining why the row failed to import.
If you would like to re-upload the charges that failed to import, simply upload those specific charges in a separate .csv file after you have corrected the errors.
Preventing Duplicate Charge Imports
Including order numbers in your .csv file allows you to upload the same file twice without creating duplicate charges. The 'order number' is the service event ID; this ID must be unique by patient and event. For example, a CPT code could not function as an order number, as CPT codes are unique per service but not unique by patient event.
If you previously uploaded a file that did not contain order numbers, re-uploading the same file would create duplicate charges.
If you would like to re-upload a file that did not contain order numbers, please reach out to support@hint.com for assistance.
If you would like to re-upload the charges that failed to import in a previous upload, simply upload those specific charges in a separate .csv file after you have corrected the errors.
The Charge Importer & Coverage Plans
Our Charge Importer automatically applies your coverage plan rules, if applicable, and will mimic the behavior of the Global Charge Modal. This means that the Charge Importer will use your coverage plan(s)' preset defaults for adjudicated price and payer when importing and routing a charge from a file.
If your practice does not utilize coverage plans, charges will always be routed to the patient.
Flat Amount + Surcharge Rules
Because the Importer allows price discrepancies between the charge item in your .csv file and the stored charge item in Hint, the system will override coverage plans' flat amount and surcharge rules when the price in the uploaded file differs from the price in Hint and quantity can't be inferred.
For example, if a CBC in your stored charge items list costs $5 and there is a flat amount rule in your coverage plan that prices CBCs at $3, but a CBC in the .csv file costs $9, we will charge $9 and will not apply the flat amount rule.
However, if the CBC in the file costs $10 in this scenario, the system would set a quantity of 2 and apply the flat amount rule for a final price of $6.
Item Quantity
'Quantity' is not an included field in the Charge Importer in order to prevent importing 'per pill' quantities from dispense systems.
For example, a charge item might be named '30 day supply of Amoxicillin', yet appear on a file from an Rx system as a quantity of 30 instead of a quantity of 1.
Instead, the Charge Importer infers the quantity of an item based on price:
When the system finds a charge item name in your .csv file that matches the name of a stored charge item in Hint, but the price of the item in the file is different than the price in Hint, the system will determine the quantity based on price.
For example, if a CBC in Hint costs $5 and there is a CBC with a price of $10 in your .csv file, the system will infer that the quantity is 2.
If the quantity can't be inferred, the system will set a quantity of 1.
If you would like quantity included in your upload, please contact support@hint.com to provide this feedback.