Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Top 5 Strategies to Improve OTC Payment Performance With Electronic Medical Billing Software

For many practices, the proportion of over-the-counter (OTC) payments has recently grown from an average of 15% to as high as 75% of total payments. Systematic OTC collections, including measurable process that emphasizes upfront collections, often yield double-digit billing performance improvement. Most importantly, a disciplined and transparent collections process improves provider-patient communications, while early payment collections are also quicker and easier. Better communications and happier patients mean better health and more profitable practice.

OTC payments include copays, fees for non-covered elective services or retail products, and any outstanding balances. Successful collections of OTC payments require measurable collections process, specialized information technology infrastructure, adequate personnel training, and discipline.

OTC payment collection performance and costs greatly depend on elapsed time between service and payment. Collections performance dependence on collections timing stems from the dynamic nature of price-value relation: initially, perception of value received is high in the patient's mind. Similarly, correlation between value and price is also high. However, OTC payment collections grows more difficult in step with fading memory of service benefit.

Systematic measurement of OTC payment quality is critical for its performance improvement. Vericle's OTC payment quality metrics include the percent of accounts receivable beyond 120 days and the time spent on collecting on old account balances. While the national average of the first metric hovers around 18%, some practices have accumulated as much as 50% of their accounts receivable beyond 120 days. The second metric measures the front-office collections efficiency and it too varies widely between few hours per month to double digit hours per week spent by front office personnel chasing unpaid OTC invoices.

According to Vericle experience, the following systematic and measurable payment collections process leverages electronic medical billing software and establishes the discipline required for double-digit billing collections improvement:

  1. Publish your payment collections policy and standard responses to typical patient's objections.

  2. Clarify patient statement generated by your electronic medical billing software:
    1. Make outstanding balance easily identifiable.
    2. Add specific statement about the time period expected for balance payment (typically upon service or product delivery).
    3. Include phone number to call for patient questions.

  3. Use electronic medical billing software to
    1. Test patient's eligibility and coverage. The results of such a test define patient's copay prior to her arrival to the clinic.
    2. Generate front office alerts about impending patient visit with unpaid OTC balance.

  4. Train clinic physicians to direct patients to front-office staff to review financial statements.

  5. Train your front office to collect OTC payments:
    1. Hold your front office staff accountable by setting up specific and personal collection goals.
    2. Use electronic medical billing software to track individual front staff collections performance.
    3. Establish personal awards for accomplishing collections goals and periodically review personal collections performance.
    4. Train your office staff to receive electronic medical billing software alerts.
    5. Develop a payment collections script and rehearse it with front office staff to improve front-office staff-patient communications.

Successful OTC payment collections help patient relationship management and improve practice profitability. They require measurable collections process, specialized information technology infrastructure, and adequate personnel training and discipline.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net Billing Technologies and Services. Vericle? unites hundreds of billing services across the nation. Its electronic medical billing software tracks payer performance from a single point of control and shares compliance rules globally. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com.

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Monday, May 19, 2008

Medical Billing Software


Billing software is an application that can make the billing process a breeze at any medical office. Billing software and its use guarantees the practice proficient billing practices with less manual labor involved in handling the process of billing. In fact, software can help the office keep organized and make tax time a hassle free time for the office that takes advantage of such an application.

There are numerous software applications designed for the specific needs of the community. Billing software applications are engineered for family practitioners, clinics, billing service specialists, hospitals, psychologists, physical therapy offices, chiropractic offices, dental practices, and there are even medical software applications suitable for equipment companies. The software applications that have been engineered for medical office management are diverse, providing users with a variety of functions as well. Current software allows users to bill patients, report overdue bills to collection agencies; make patient appointments; handle scheduling; easily submit claims to insurance companies and software serves as an electronic database of patients records.

Clearly, software is something no practice or office should be without. The functionality of the program alone makes the software an imperative tool in every medical office. Current medical billing software applications have been designed to meet with the standards imposed by HIPPA and the fact that any claims made to insurance companies are electronic and not paper means that the office will receive payment that much faster.

There are numerous medical billing software applications designed for the specific needs of the medical community. Billing software applications are engineered for family practitioners, medical clinics, medical billing service specialists, hospitals, psychologists, physical therapy offices, chiropractic offices, dental practices, and there are even medical billing software applications suitable for medical equipment companies. The software applications that have been engineered for office management are diverse, providing users with a variety of functions as well. Current software allows users to bill patients, report overdue bills to collection agencies; make patient appointments; handle scheduling; easily submit claims to insurance companies and billing software serves as an electronic database of patients records.

Medical billing software will undoubtedly help you in your quest to establish more organized business practices. Most doctors and medical billing professionals find that medical billing software helps them execute their billing in a more organized and efficient way. No longer will you have files and piles of information that could be better organized. Your medical billing software will help you index information in a better manner so that you can pull up bills for clients, send them out in an efficient amount of time, and simply keep good records.

Medical Billing Management is an informative Medical Billing site that looks into all aspects of Medical Billing from Software to Management. To find out more visit Medical Billing

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Friday, May 16, 2008

Medical Billing - Software System Reports

In the land of medical billing, we get so caught up in the day-to-day operations of getting the bills out, we completely forget about checking to see if our software system is operating the way it should. Needless to say, as problems become noticeable, it is usually because of neglect in keeping an eye on things. In this review, we'll go over some basic system reports that you should be running just to make sure that your software is performing the way it should.

The first report that you should be running is an error report. All software packages track any kind of errors that occur during processing. This could be any kind of processing from submitting claims, to printing forms to running other reports. This error report should be run on a daily basis. The number of errors that occur should be minimal to say the least. If you find a gradual increase in the number of daily errors, this could be an indication that there are problems with the software. The most common of these are corrupted databases. If you suspect this, run a utility to check the integrity of your various databases.

The next report you should run is what is called a failed request report. This usually has to be run on the server unless the software package itself has this capability. Most high end DME software packages do produce a limited failed request report. But if you really want to get a full blown report with all the details that you're going to need. The usual cause of failed request is a bad network connection. If this is what you suspect, have your network administrator run diagnostics on the network. Also have him check all the wiring and network cards in all the computers. Usually the failed requests will come from one particular computer which narrows down your search for the culprit.

You're also probably going to want to run a report on network activity and system resources. For the most part, unless you have a massive billing department, the activity on the server should be minimal. Memory usage shouldn't even register a blip. However, if you find that there are spikes in memory usage, you might want to look at the times of the day that this is occurring. Find out from the billing department when their heaviest periods are as far as billing and other activities. See if there is a correlation between the two.

Finally, you're going to want to run a report to see the rate at which your databases are increasing in size. If you are a large medical billing company, your databases are going to grow at an alarming rate. While your server capacity may be in the gigabytes, it doesn't take long before you find that your medical billing software is hogging up 50% of your disk space. Once you see this happening, you're going to need to make plans to either add another drive or upgrade the one you have.

Medical billing is more than just sending out bills. If your system isn't functioning properly, you could be out of business before you even know what happened.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Medical Billing

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Sunday, May 11, 2008

Medical Billing - Picking Your Software

In the many previous installments of medical billing that we have been through, we have discussed just about everything there is to discuss about medical billing software, such as what it can do, how to find problems and how to use it. But one thing we haven't covered, which is probably the most important thing of all, is how to choose your medical billing software. There are many brands out there. So how do you know which is the best one for your needs? Hopefully, after reading this installment, you'll have a decent idea of how to pick out your medical billing software if you haven't already done so.

The first thing you have to do is look at the size of your company and your computer setup. This is important for several reasons.

For starters, not all software packages run on all platforms. So if you're running a network on Mac computers, don't buy a software package that is made for Windows platforms. If you're running a peer to peer network, don't buy a software package that specifically says that it is for star based networks or similar client server networks.

As for the size of your network, if you have a company of 100 users, don't buy a software package that is limited to 50 user licenses. Conversely, if you only have five users in your company, it is wasteful to buy a software package that is specifically designed for companies with hundreds of users. You won't need all that power.

The next thing you have to look at is what your actual billing needs are. If you are a DME billing company, you're not going to have need for software that also does dental claims. You'll be paying for functionality that you don't need. Conversely, if you plan to bill all kinds of medical claims, then you better make sure that you get a software package that is going to handle all those claims. Adding on to a package at a later date is not always an easy thing to do.

The next thing that you want to look at is what extras the software company is going to provide for you, such as forms. Forms are a very big part of medical billing and there are a ton of them. If the software company will also provide you these forms at a reduced cost, then it might be worth it to go with them even if the software is not 100% what you're looking for, as long as it is close enough. Conversely, if another company will offer you forms and the one you're looking at won't, it may be wiser to go with the other company, if the software is at least close enough to what you want.

The next thing you need to look at is price and what you can afford. If your perfect software is way above your means, especially if you're a small company, then you might want to go for something that is a step down. You don't need all the bells and whistles to do this job.

Finally, you need to look at the support record of the company. Find out if there have been any complaints against them. You can do this through the BBB.

If you do all of the above, you have a good chance of coming away with the medical billing software that is just right for you.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Medical Billing

 

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Wednesday, May 7, 2008

Medical Billing - Getting Your Software To You

Medical billing agencies take a lot of things for granted. They purchase a piece of DME software in order to do their daily billing and they expect everything to run perfectly. Well, in the real world, it isn't quite that simple. There is a lot of work that goes into putting out a piece of medical billing software. While we're not going to attempt to dive into this process in great detail, we're going to try to give you a decent idea of what goes into getting your DME software to you. In future installments, we'll cover this in more detail.

The first step in the process is actually deciding what is going to go into the software itself. This is usually determined by the owners of the company, but frequently, the programmers have a big say in the final product because they may know what is and what isn't possible. Just because management wants something doesn't mean it's going to be done.

The next step is to actually begin the design of the software itself. This involves specifications that are general as well as detailed. The software needs to be given an overall look to go along with the individual bells and whistles that it comes with.

After the software is designed, piece by piece, each section is given to a QA person to test. It is their job to make sure that the section of the software that they are testing works the way it is supposed to, whether it be billing, printing forms, updating prices or whatever. Because medical billing software is so complex, a team of QA people are usually assigned to test it.

If any bugs are found in the software through testing, the QA people send the software back to the programmers. This process continues until the software is found to be bug free.

The software is then given to the support people to learn. The reason for this is because they are the ones who are going to be taking calls from customers who have problems. So it is their responsibility to learn every inch of the software that they can.

Finally, after everything is completed, the manuals are written by the QA people or tech writers, depending on how the company is structured. These are the manuals that are distributed to the medical billing companies who buy the software.

When all of that is done, the software is then packaged in a nice neat and pretty box. This box is made by the graphic artists team. If you don't think presentation is important, think again. Presentation is almost everything in the business world.

After the software is packaged, it is then given to the sales people to distribute. These people usually have leads to companies looking for medical billing software. That's where they start.

It's a very long process from start to finish. So when you finally do get your DME software, try to understand that a lot of hard work went into getting it to you.

Michael Russell Your Independent guide to Medical Billing

 

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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

Dental Billing Software

Dental billing software is an essential part of the medical billing industry. Dental offices either take care of their own dental billing or hire a medical billing specialist to take care of it. Either way, the need for dental billing software that is fast, effective, and inexpensive, is a prevalent one. Do you need to purchase dental billing software? Here is some advice that will help you.

Your first step in purchasing dental billing software is to do your research. Which dental billing software programs are considered the best? Which ones have the best prices? Find reviews of the software in magazines and on websites. Ask other dental billing specialists which software they use. The more information you can find, the easier it will be to make a wise purchase decision.

After you do your research, you will need to purchase the dental billing software. Once you have a particular software package in mind, you can start comparison shopping on the price. Check online, in stores, and in catalogs. Make sure you understand the warranty information and the return policy. When all the factors meet your approval, you can make the purchase with confidence.

Good dental billing software has a few functions. It helps manage patient accounting. It issues bills and invoices. It also manages patients? insurance and helps make the process of submitting a claim much easier. It is also important for the software to be easy to learn and easy to use.

When it comes time to purchase dental billing software, there are a few things to keep in mind. First, do research to find the best product. Search for information online, in magazines, and ask other billing specialists. Once you are confident you found a good product, you can start to compare prices. Keep in mind that you want the software to be easy to use.

Billing Software provides detailed information on Billing Software, VoIP Billing Software, Chiropractic Billing Software, Free Billing Software and more. Billing Software is affiliated with HIPAA Complaint Medical Billing Software.

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Monday, February 4, 2008

5-Step Lockbox Selection for Outsourced Electronic Medical Billing Software and Service

Lockbox helps medical practices streamline HIPAA-compliant mail processing and same-day check deposits. Electronic access to scanned documents, including EOBs, simplifies key office and billing processes and achieves multiple benefits:

  • Reliability Better revenue cycle reliability via elimination of dependency on staff or on billing service for handling checks
  • Transparency Lockbox allows bi-directional verification of check deposit between the bank and billing service. Doctor can personally verify deposit 24 x7 via secure Internet connection. No lost checks.
  • Billing Efficiency Faster and better controlled submission of secondary claims
  • Patient Service Efficiency Simpler and faster resolution of patient account inquiries and disputes
  • Added Interest Revenue Automated or semi-automated posting of insurance and patient payments. Check deposit upon arrival. Automated investment of deposit in a Money Market account earning interest (Automatic Sweep). The doctor's money is never idle.

Operation

  1. Practice mail arrives directly to the lockbox service
  2. Lockbox service
    1. Opens all mail and archives it in a document management system including scanning and indexing for future retrieval,
    2. Makes images available to practice or Billing Service via a secure, encrypted Web site;
    3. Deposits all checks received that day
  3. Practice administrative staff has direct access to web-driven interfaces for mail and check queries and reports

Implementation

Lockbox service is typically offered by two kinds of providers:

  • Large-scale Vericle-like billing service vendor as part of service
  • Specialized financial institution, e.g., bank

Lockbox Selection

  1. HIPAA Compliance - Can the service guarantee access only on the "need to know basis" and only to qualified staff? Are all required privacy and security measures in place? Is there a solid disaster recovery capability and process?
  2. Quality Assurance Process - What measures are taken to ensure timely error identification, correction, and tracking? Is there sufficient QA process transparency to allow the practice owner complete control of mail and checks?
  3. Intuitive User Interface - How many steps are required to find a letter, EOB, or a check? What are mail and check indexing parameters?
  4. Batch Interfaces - Is there a convenient way to download all or partial content of the document management system for upload in other systems, such as a billing system, or in alternative lockbox provider facility?
  5. Timeframes - How long does it take to open mail, scan it into a document management system, and deposit a check? What is the time horizon for archived image storage? What is the time period for storage of original paper before shredding?

Complexities

Lockbox

  • Must be fully implemented - a partial implementation only increases management complexity.
  • Adds headache with payers - all payers need to change mailing address, adding error likelihood during transition period.
Lockbox services lower administrative costs, increase staff productivity, and close collection cycles faster. A more efficiently run practice and happier staff mean more satisfied patients.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAPCare Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com

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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Electronic Straight Through Billing Service and Software Methodology for Medical Practice

Medical billing complexity and massive volumes of daily claims render manual claims processes incapable of protecting both the provider and the payer from underpayments, overpayments, and billing compliance violations. Straight Through Billing addresses complexity and volume processing problems by automating the majority of the claim flow and focusing the billing follow-up specialists to exceptions only. A Straight Through Billing process flags problems, routes them for follow up, and enables online correction and resubmission. Straight Through Billing methodology implements billing service transparency and focuses management on strategic process improvement opportunities.

Straight Through Billing (STB) integrates billing process within the practice management workflow, automates vast majority of transactions, focuses manual labor on exceptions, and establishes a process for continuous improvement.

First, integrated practice management and billing workflow connects patient scheduling, medical record management, and billing into a single flow. Every participant of the practice management workflow receives a unified and coherent picture of practice workload, patient and provider location, resource availability, and cash flow.

Next, transaction automation streamlines and expedites billing process by automating claim validation, payer message reconciliation, and billing workflow management:

 

  • Automated claim validation eliminates errors downstream and reduces processing time because it flags errors before submitting the claim to payer.
  • Automated claim-message reconciliation eliminates costly search for the original claim and standardizes message communication, further eliminating the need to decipher the (often cryptic) payer's message.
  • Billing workflow management drives the followup discipline required for resolution of claim denial and underpayment incidents and establishes high degree of process transparency for all billing process participants, resulting in full and timely payments.

 

Third, focusing manual labor to exceptions requires timely exception identification, routing to followup personnel, online error correction, and rigorous followup tracking. Again, process transparency, as implemented in vericle-like systems, enables tracking exception followup.

Finally, a process for continuous improvement requires continuous observability of every process attribute and a modification methodology for both automated claim processing and manual exception followup tracking.

STB implements billing transparency by design because billing transparency is an integral attribute of every component of STB process.

Straight Through Billing Architecture

Straight Through Billing systems architecture mirrors the architecture of general Straight Through Processing (STP) systems developed for the financial services industry. Such systems require effective workflow management, knowledge base validation system, connectivity to all process participants, including on-line data reconciliation, and tracking of problem resolution. Therefore, a typical vericle-like STB system has a three-tier architecture:

 

  • Back-end processing engine designed for high-volume transaction processing environment
  • Middle-tier uses Java Servlet technology
  • Front-end is an HTML-JavaScript zero-footprint client

 

An STB system (e.g., Vericle) following the methodology outlined above implements rich functionality, which allows automated

 

  • Computer aided preferential patient scheduling
  • Integrated electronic medical records
  • On-line computer aided coding
  • Real-time claim validation and patient eligibility testing
  • Electronic claim submission
  • Payment posting, reconciliation, and verification of meeting contractual obligations
  • Monitoring of audit risk and billing compliance
  • Tracking of denial appeal process

 

Quantitative STB Management

STB methodology allows for quantitative management as the likelihood of failure of the entire process can be estimated as the product of such items for each individual workflow steps. A vericle-like STB system tracks the percent of clean claims (claims paid without any manual intervention in full and within the allocated timeframe) and focuses the management on those process aspects that yield the greatest potential improvement. Thus STB methodology focuses on exceptions both at tactical and strategic management levels.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk (Affinity Billing) and Mission Critical Systems Management (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com

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Monday, January 28, 2008

Chiropractic Office Billing Software And Patient Relationship Management - 9 Criteria For Best SaaS

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) pushes the limits of outsourcing and reduces the exorbitant costs of specialized practice management software. SaaS model is available for all aspects of chiropractic clinic management, including scheduling, billing, and SOAP note documentation, which are mission-critical for high quality health care, practice building, and regulatory compliance.

What is Software-as-a-Service?

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a logical step in the progression from build to buy to subscribe and a manifestation of a major software trend towards Service Oriented Architecture (SOA). SaaS is the software industry term for delivery of software product and services over a network (typically the Internet) under subscription business model.

The increasing reliability of the Internet coupled with availability of completely integrated practice management and billing software, create supportive conditions to pay-as-you-go business model. SaaS liberates the users in two significant ways:

 

  1. SaaS requires no large upfront investment in hardware and software licenses on the part of the user
  2. SaaS shifts the onus of systems management from the user to the SaaS vendor, including
    1. Internet connectivity, bandwidth, and routers
    2. Servers for Web server software, email, firewalls
    3. Capacity management
    4. Redundancy management
    5. Application upgrade management

       

       

     

     

 

In financial management terms, SaaS proposition is equivalent to turning capital expense into operating expense, which translates into

 

  1. Better balance sheets
  2. Lower risk, especially during the period of rapid technology innovation on one hand and practice-building stages on the other hand

     

     

 

SaaS differs from Applications Service Providers (ASP) in two ways, namely, domain expertise and software development skills. While ASP vendors developed primarily hardware and systems expertise and offered foreign business applications, SaaS vendors are experts in the specific application domain.

SaaS Vendor Selection

For the manager of chiropractic clinic, the main challenge could be the integration of newer applications with the subscribed SaaS application. SaaS Integration Platforms (SIP) is a popular way to handle the integration challenge. A SIP, such as Vericle, offers a suite of integrated applications, such as Patient Relationship Management, Patient Scheduling, SOAP notes, and Billing.

Chiropractic clinic in search of SaaS vendor must focus on the following topics:

 

  1. Functionality: Does the application deliver required functionality?
  2. Training: Will the vendor provide sufficient application training?
  3. Third-Party Application Interface: Does the application work with existing applications already deployed in the office? What requirements must be satisfied if you decide to purchase another application later?
  4. Performance: How do you measure application performance? Are formal performance metrics available continuously?
  5. HIPAA Compliance: What controls are in place to enable access only on a "need to see" basis? Is every access instance logged using secure mechanism?
  6. Service Level Agreement: What minimum service levels the vendor guarantees to the client? What are the penalties for violating SLA?
  7. Data Ownership: Who owns the data?
  8. Disaster Recovery: How long would it take to recover from a disaster? Is a secondary data center available 24 x 7?
  9. Disengagement Procedures: How long is data available upon severing the relationship? Who is responsible for data transfer to the new vendor?

    Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of "Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk" (Affinity Billing) and "Mission Critical Systems Management" (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com

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Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Chiropractic Office Billing and Patient Relationship Management Software

Return patients generate approximately 80 percent of clinic's revenue. Patient Relationship Management (PRM, also known as CRM, for Customer Relationship Management outside of healthcare) can enhance financial performance of the clinic by helping retain current and attract new patients. Effective PRM uses integrated data using patient travel card (SOAP notes), frequency recommendations (care plan), and billing (charges, payments, and balance).

PRM is a data-driven and patient-focused methodology to strategic practice building and effective patient relationship development. PRM helps identifying new service needs and then designing care programs and office and billing processes to meet the needs.

PRM also helps providing timely, patient centered, and efficient care, emphasizing preventive instead of reactive care. A basic PRM system captures patient information during entire period of the care plan in terms of functional health improvement, care plan implementation, and billing.

Patient Relationship Management Principle

PRM includes a travel card (TC), treatment frequency measures, and billing balance. PRM system tracks changes in the travel card, in Frequency Recommendation summary, and in billing balance, and generates reports to alert office management about lists of patients reaching important thresholds. The office manager or the doctor can review such reports and respond according to practice development strategy, using call centers, Internet, direct mail, or personal conversations during office visits.

Electronic Travel Card

An electronic equivalent of a paper travel card (Electronic Travel Card, or ETC) contains complete information about patient's health and care history. It is similar to electronic medical record and subject to same HIPAA compliance regulations. ETC includes:

 

  • Numbers and dates of visits
  • SOAP notes for each visit
  • ICD-9 and CPT codes
  • Care frequency recommendation summary
  • X-rays and posture images

Frequency Recommendation

Frequency recommendation summary presents an interpretation of patient's compliance with doctor's recommendation in concise form and allows specification of PRM thresholds. Specifically, it has four parts:

 

  • Weekly treatment frequency recommendation, typically a single digit between 1 and 3
  • The number if weeks when the patient complied with the recommendation
  • The total number of weeks for a given recommendation
  • Care plan start date
  • Number of missed appointments along with documented reasons for missing an appointment

For instance, a frequency recommendation summary [3X: 3/13] means that treatment is recommended three times per week for thirteen weeks, and the patient complied three weeks out of thirteen.

A treatment plan then is a list of such frequency recommendation summaries, for instance, [3X: 3/13], [2X: 15/15], [1X: 4/12].

In summary, Patient Relationship Management (PRM) can become a major differentiating factor in building successful and competitive chiropractic clinics. It requires integrated systems combining data about patient's health, care plans, and billing.

Yuval Lirov, PhD, author of Practicing Profitability - Network Effect for Revenue Cycle Control in Healthcare Clinic and Chiropractic Office: Scheduling, SOAP Notes, Care Plans, Coding, Billing, Collections, and Audit Risk (Affinity Billing) and Mission Critical Systems Management (Prentice Hall), inventor of patents in Artificial Intelligence and Computer Security, and CEO of Vericle.net - Distributed Billing and Practice Management Technologies. Yuval invites you to register to the next webinar on audit risk at BillingPrecision.com

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