After insurance pays its share, what's left is patient responsibility. The Patient Balances page shows those balances and lets you collect them with secure payment requests sent by text message.
Your payments account
Patient payments are deposited directly to your practice's bank account. The panel at the top shows your connected payments account, payout bank, and payout status; Stripe dashboard opens the underlying account for payout detail.
Balance statuses
The tabs split balances by where they are in collection:
Ready to request — insurance has finished; the patient owes this and no request has been sent yet.
Requested — a payment request has been sent and is awaiting payment.
Paid — the patient has paid.
Suppressed — balances you've chosen not to pursue.
Collecting a balance
Review the row: patient, amount owed, date of service, payer, and when the patient was last contacted.
Click Review iMessage to see a summary of what will go out: the clinic contact card followed by two iMessages — a brief account notice and a secure payment link for the balance.
Click Confirm and send. When you confirm, Taiga verifies the patient's contact details, their text consent, and the live balance before anything is sent.
Track it: the status moves to Requested, and to Paid once the patient pays.
If you'd rather deliver the link yourself — over the phone, in person, or from your own email — use Copy payment link in the More actions menu to get the same secure link without sending a message.
Automatic outreach
When patient messaging is set up for your practice, Taiga also works balances automatically so nothing sits idle: it sends the initial payment request by iMessage once a balance is ready, follows up with a reminder a few days later, and about a week after the first message sends a final request by email. Every automatic send runs the same checks — contact details, consent, and the live balance — and suppressing a balance or patient stops all automatic outreach to them.
History and exceptions
Use View history and log contact on any row to see every touch on the balance — requests sent, payment links created, payments received — and to record calls, texts, emails, or in-person conversations you've had outside Taiga, along with the outcome.
The More actions menu covers the exceptions:
Don't request this balance — suppress this one balance without affecting the patient's other visits.
Never contact this patient — stop all payment requests to this patient.
View claim — jump to the claim behind the balance.