Patent ID: 7110955

Claim:
A method of automating the billing process for a physician using an electronic handheld processing device, the method comprising: coupling the handheld device to a server and transferring patient information specific to the physician and billing codes and associated guidelines specific to the physician to the handheld device; while the handheld device is decoupled from the server: displaying a patient list of multiple patients specific to the physician, the list displaying patient locations in the hospital, and displaying an indication of whether each patient has been seen that day, the patient list being sorted by the patient locations in the hospital; displaying patient demographic information on a screen of the handheld device; displaying billing information for individual patients on the screen of the handheld processing device; entering patient and billing code information for a patient once the patient has been examined; and displaying guidelines associated with the billing codes; and coupling the handheld device to the server and outputting patient and billing code data to the server for distributing the billing code data to information systems for further processing to generate medical bills.