When a statement is generated for a current balance, there should not be old line items dropping when they are completed, zeroed out. I recently had a patient contact me because she receive a statement for her 2022 charges, but the statement had listed all of her 2016/2017 service dates as well, even though they were a zero balance. She was very upset because she thought she was being billed for something from then.
I dislike this too! If you go in to their chart and mark "collection complete" for old cases, it does take care of the problem. But, it's a lot of extra work, when I don't understand why past lines would bill anyway!
Every month when I run patient statements, I have to fix multiple statements and then reprint them. I would hate to send 6 pages of claims to a patient when they owe for one claim line. And you're right, it causes tremendous confusion for the patient.