If you want to create a provincial bill for a patient without an appointment or an encounter (for example, for hospital visits), you can create a bill from the Insured Billing area of the patient's chart. Or you can quickly create it from the billing dashboard without having to first open the patient's chart. For more information, refer to Quick billing from the Billing dashboard.

📌 Note: If the patient has an appointment booked, you should bill from the encounter (providers), or from the Visits dashboard (staff or providers). This links the bill to the appointment - making it easier to confirm that all appointments are billed.

⚠️ Important: Before you can bill AHCIP through the CHR, the provider's user account must be integrated with H-Link. See Integrating your CHR account with H-Link.

1. From a patient's chart, click Start/Open > Insured Billing. The Insured Payments area opens.

💡 Tip: To modify insured billing settings, click the gear icon next to +New Payment. See Customising your insured billing settings for more information.

2. Perform one of the following actions:

The New Insured Payment window appears.

3. If needed, modify the Billing Practitioner, Service Date or other bill details. See Modifying a provincial (AHCIP) bill's billing practitioner, location and other bill details.

💡 Tip: You can use billing templates to speed up your billing process. For more information, refer to Using billing templates.

⚠️ Important: The Service Date at the top of the bill is not submitted as part of the claim to AHCIP. Only the service date on the individual billing items (next step) is submitted.

4. To add a billing item (service code) to the bill, click +Add Fee Item and, in the Edit Alberta HLink Billing Item window, complete the applicable fields. See Adding and modifying billing items (service codes) for AHCIP bills (Alberta).

⚠️ Important: The Service Date in the above window is submitted to H-Link as part of the claim. Make sure this date is correct.

📌 Note: Certain service codes must be billed with a diagnosis code. A warning appears when you try to save the bill in the Ready to Submit status without including a required diagnosis code.

💡 Tip: You can quickly bill service codes that have been previously billed for the patient by clicking the clock icon next to +Add Fee Item.

5. To save the billing item, click outside the Edit Alberta HLink Billing Item window. The service code is added to the bill.

6. To add additional service codes, click +Add Fee Item.

7. To edit a billing item, click it and make the required changes.

8. To delete a billing item, click it and click the trash can icon in the top-right corner.

9. To add internal only notes to the bill (for example, to add notes for a billing clerk who reviews your bills before they're sent), in the Internal Notes field, type your notes.

📌 Note: These notes are not included in the submitted claim.

10. To submit the bill to H-Link, at the top of the window, in the Status drop-down, select Ready to Submit. Otherwise, select Draft.

💡 Tip: You can set the default status for new bills. See Setting the default billing item status for your account for more information.

11. Click Save.

If the bill's Status is Ready to Submit and there are no errors with the bill, the claim is submitted to H-Link at 11 a.m. or 3:30 p.m. The claim status updates to Submitted.

If a bill is missing key information, such as a Billing Practitioner, an error appears and the bill is not saved or submitted. Fix the issue and attempt to save it again.

If the bill is missing information, such as a Service Code or PHN, it can be saved as Draft or you can enable Soft Validation. Soft Validation checks the bill against the provincial insurer instead of the local CHR validation, and allows you to save the bill to fix later. For more information see Soft billing validation for insured payments.