Downloadable Billing Software

You run your own business. Do you have a system when it comes to billing? If not, then you could be losing money. Downloadable billing software is a great option when you are looking for something that will make your billing tasks easier. Are you not sure you need to buy downloadable billing software?

There are a lot of benefits for using downloadable billing software for your business. The first is that it will help your business run smoother. When you need to type and print every invoice by hand, this wastes time, especially if you have a lot of work to do.

Downloadable billing software can also help eliminate paper waste by making your business more electronic. Printing extra copies of your business transactions is not necessary, as long as you constantly back up all your customer files. If you only have your files in one location, if something happens, it can spell disaster. Possible ways to back up your files include having an extra hard drive, putting all on a DVD or CD, and putting the information on more than one computer.

Another benefit is that downloadable billing software can do more than just take care of accounting tasks. The extra features are nice, especially if they save you money. Some let you print out labels and create reports and other business documents. You can also have the software automatically generate statements on a specified time period, which is nice if the service you perform for the customer is ongoing, such as a long-term contract project.

Downloadable billing software makes running your business a lot easier. It helps automate your business, keep track of billing and accounting, and generate automated statements. Once you find the software that is best for your business, it will make your business run a lot smoother.

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

Practice Perfect - 10 Criteria For Best Chiropractic Billing Software And Office Management Solution

Information Technology (IT) is a necessary component of a modern chiropractic office," says Dr. Greg Loman, of Trinity Chiropractic and co-founder of Teach The World About Chiropractic. "IT helps maintain patient relationships, control audit risks, and ensure full and timely billing."

Dr. Loman has established one of the most successful chiropractic offices in the world, seeing over sixty thousand patients a year. A world power boat racing champion, Dr. Loman has learned what it takes to be the very best.

Teach the World About Chiropractic, which he co-founded with Dr. Ben Lerner, the author of Body by God, Generation XL, and One-Minute Wellness, helps chiropractors and students across the world. Their clients have the largest, most successful clinics in the profession today.

"Complete practice workflow solution starts with appointment scheduling and includes SOAP notes, and billing," says Dr. Lerner. "Few vendors today offer such integrated packages as they require powerful vericle-like technologies used by trained and skilled personnel implementing rigorous and disciplined service processes."

Chiropractic IT must meet five functional criteria and five technology criteria:

 

1. Clinical Relevance

    

   Technology can only help the healing process if it helps making treatment decisions at the point of care. Therefore, it must be available next to treatment table and it must have intuitive user interface to facilitate simple data entry and helpful online reporting.

    

2. Patient Relationship Management

    

   Successful practice development requires perfectly managed patient relationships, starting with establishing and tracking financial care plans, appointment reminders, balance follow-ups, and avoidance of unbillable appointments.

    

3. Compliant SOAP Notes

    

   SOAP is short for Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan:

   Subjective describes the patient's current condition, including all pertinent and negative symptoms. Document how symptoms impact activities of daily living; Use the Standard SOAP format modified to SOAAP by adding an extra "A" for Activities of Daily Living.

   Objective includes vital signs, findings from physical examinations, and results from laboratory tests. Document functional measurements (e.g., Range of Motion), comparison data, test results, co-morbidities, etc. to paint a picture of what is going on with the patient.

   Assessment is a quick summary of the patient with main symptoms/diagnosis including a differential diagnosis, a list of other possible diagnoses usually in order of most likely to least likely.

   Plan is what the health care provider will do to treat the patient's concerns. This should address each item of the differential diagnosis. Document goals for the patient and establish a reasonable timeline to reach those goals. Update your treatment plan every 30 days or 12 visits or any time there is a significant change in the patient's condition, i.e., exacerbation, new injury, discharge exam. Document the patient's progress toward those goals in the daily SOAAP notes.

    

4. Full and Timely Payments

    

   Revenue cycle management software must help the practice manager to make sure that every service encounter gets paid in full and on time. It must provide full and detailed 24x7 account of all actions on every claim, systematic discovery of denials, patient invoicing, electronic claims submissions to payers, payment posting and reconciliation with charges, HIPAA compliance, built-in tests for medical necessity, and comprehensive online reporting.

    

5. Audit Risk Management

    

   Audit risk management consists of continuous monitoring for potential compliance violations and meticulous management of patient encounter notes.

    

6. Reporting and Transparency

    

   Without transparency billing may not be reliable. To be able to observe every step of the billing process on a continuous 24 x 7 basis, reporting must be available using a secure HIPAA compliant connection over the Internet.

   Vendors that manage their own billing technology typically have better control of reporting capabilities in terms of scope, analysis, frequency, and transparency. At the minimum, the following features must be available:

   Operational Report shows total claims and $ amounts submitted, paid, adjusted, written off, and failed. It allows breakdown by cpt, payer, referral, or a combination of such dimensions.

   Denials Report shows the list of denied claims and a log of followup actions. By sorting it by amount paid, you can tell the smallest payment the billing service will fight for.

   Compliance Report shows the potential for post-payment audit and itemizes compliance violations.

   Reports must allow arbitrary data aggregation and drill-in. Export to Excel spreadsheets for further analysis is a very useful feature.

    

7. Billing Quality Metric

    

   Make a list of metrics available online. Focus on collections completeness and payment delay. Can the system report the differences between payers and between various CPT codes in real time? What is the denial followup success rate?

    

8. Data Entry Protocols

    

   Modern technologies allow the doctor to take over coding and reduce the billing role down to claims processing and followup. Technology-competent vendor will supply your superbill online, along with a separate form for patient and charge entry, EOB posting, and on-line claim editing. Similarly, much of data entry validity, including some of claim scrubbing will be done online at the point of data entry.

    

9. ASP or SaaS Delivery Model

    

   Rapid technology progress results in low return on investment in software licenses, typical of client-server technology. Therefore, monthly leasing arrangements with zero upfront investment, typical of ASP (application service provider) or SaaS (software as a service) delivery models are preferable to license purchase.

    

10. Data Security and Protection

     

    Review data center facilities. Ask for evidence on HIPAA compliance: claims must be viewed only on the "need to know" basis, access to claims and modifications must be thoroughly documented. Data must be protected with redundant disaster recovery measures. Review backup process, backup intervals, and data restore capabilities.

     

 

Summary

Increasing regulatory scrutiny, poor in-house billing performance, and rapid technology progress are key growth drivers in chiropractic information technology. On one hand, thousands of outsourced billing solutions and software vendors ensure continued competitiveness in terms of both service quality and pricing. On the other hand, the lack of standards and uniform metrics among the vendors, combined with their large numbers, frustrates the selection process. Ten effective guidelines streamline outsourced solution selection process and reduce vendor switching costs.

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

Improve Patient Loyalty With Integrated Electronic Medical Billing, Notes, And Scheduling Software

Patient Loyalty

Patient loyalty is key to continued practice success in terms of both recurring and new revenue. As patients keep returning to your practice, it maintains revenue stability and as patients refer their friends and family, your practice billing collections grow. In terms of profitability, new patient acquisition is by an order of magnitude more expensive than loyalty maintenance for an existing patient.

Time delay is a major problem of eroding patient loyalty. By the time you discover that you have a patient loyalty problem, it is typically too late to do anything about the patients who already left. Patients typical desert without saying “good bye,” and your only way to discover patient attrition is by observing lower collections and more free time on your appointment scheduler.

Frequent patient communication is the only effective way to reduce such time delay and increase the likelihood of timely loyalty problem identification and resolution. Such patient communications can revolve around any of the practice management components, starting with patient scheduling, to SOAP notes, to special health care literature, to medical billing, insurance payments, copays, and deductibles.

Patient Identification for Targeted Communications

It's convenient to view targeted communications from the patient visit perspective:

 

• Patients due for scheduled appointment or owe you payments need a reminder.
• Patients that recently had an appointment need results, interpretation, prescriptions, and follow up.
• Patients with prescriptions that are about to expire may need to schedule a visit
• Patients that have not had an appointment for long time need a reminder to schedule a checkup. A screening procedure schedule should be generated using specific combinations of procedures (CPT) and diagnoses (ICD) codes.
• Patients with chronic conditions or permanent injuries need literature about recent progress in treating their conditions
• Patients that have had a long series of appointments need progress reports
• Patients that receive good progress reports need to be solicited for referrals
• Patients with bad progress reports need special literature and special appointments
• Patients waiting in reception area need access to custom information about their specific condition.

 

To generate such lists of patients, your systems must combine scheduling, medical notes, and billing data in a single database.

Patient Communications Venue

While traditional phone and conventional mail systems are still in use, Internet is the most obvious choice for communicating with patients. A custom, HIPAA-compliant patient portal is the least expensive way to allow your patients interact with their doctor outside the clinic at their convenience and privacy. Patients can

• Review reminders and schedule appointments.
• Review visit results.
• Ask you clarifying questions.
• Request prescriptions.
• Read special literature and progress reports you sent them.
• Send you referrals.
• Review medical bills and pay invoices
• Track their medical costs

 

Active patient loyalty management based on selective patient identification for targeted communications at the patient's convenience is one of the most effective way to improve practice profitability.

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.

How to Export Vericle Reports to Excel for Electronic Medical Billing Software Analysis

On May 12, 2003, the president of a family practice clinic, a physician, and a nursing informatics specialist won each first-place in a Microsoft Corp.-sponsored competition to honor innovative healthcare professionals. Entrants were judged by a panel of Microsoft representatives based on the number of features in Office they were using, their productivity gains, and how applicable the featured uses would be in other healthcare settings. All three winners use Excel for financial reporting, data collection, or tracking employee payroll and taxes the number and types of office visits.

However, until recently, the use of Excel for medical billing analysis has been limited because of the difficulty to produce effective ad hoc reports and inability to export data into Excel. Vericle lifts the limitation with its integrated medical billing reporting, Excel export capability, and a standard data import capability into Microsoft Excel.

Vericle's reports include expectations management for both medical billing charges and payments, analysis of accounts receivable, medical billing compliance violations, and SOAP note tracking. To take advantage of Vericle's export of medical billing data to Excel, follow a two-step procedure:

 

 

 

1. In Vericle
   1. Create desired medical billing report in Vericle, sort it and filter according to requirements
   2. Click on Excel icon in the bottom left corner of the window
   3. Select all data in the separate window that has the data (CNTRL-A)
   4. Copy all data into the buffer (CNTRL-C)

    

    

    

2. In the target Excel page,
   1. Place the cursor at a cell where you want the upper left corner of the copied data
   2. Select Edit -> Paste Special -> Unformatted text -> OK
       

      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.

Problem Tracking For Outsourced Electronic Medical Billing Software And Service

Processes involving large volumes of complex billing transactions require effective mechanisms for problem assignment and tracking. Without such mechanisms, billing personnel cannot be held accountable for problem resolution, resulting in loss of revenue and increased compliance risk. While medical billing industry has developed specialized systems and processes for resolution of content problems, little attention has been paid to billing process problem resolution methodology. This article outlines a process and a technology for integrated billing process problem resolution methodology.

Billing Content and Process Problems Require Two Different Tracking Methodologies

Medical billing exceptions can be categorized into content and process problems. Content problems have to do with claim content and patterns of processed claims, such as terminology, medical necessity, patient eligibility, denial followup, and regulatory billing compliance. Process problems have to do with claim formatting, system interfaces, entry of patient demographics, posting of charges and payments, printing and mailing or faxing of required information, provider interaction procedure, systems access, and HIPAA compliance.

While streamlining and transparency are important attributes for resolution of both kinds of problems, the required processes and systems are very different. Content problems tend to be specialized and therefore they lend themselves to a more structured, almost template-driven solution approach. Process problems, in contrast to content problems, tend to cover a wide variety of knowledge domains, precluding specialization.

The difference in solution methodology drives the difference in problem tracking. For content problem resolution methodology the reader is advised to consult companion articles on metrics, straight through billing, and billing transparency. The remainder of this article focuses on process problem tracking.

Billing Process Problem Tracking

A general-purpose tracking system allows opening problem ticket, its assignment to specific team member, its re-assignment or escalation, change of status depending on problem resolution stage, convenient reporting about sets of tickets in different states or assigned to different team members, and continuous notification of everybody involved about change of status. Therefore, such a tracking system (e.g., web-based TrackLogix) is constructed around three basic reports, notification mechanism, and a concept of ticket.

Problem Tracking Reports

The reports show

 

1. Tickets I owe to others
2. Tickets owed to me
3. Status - a summary table of the team participants with statistics of tickets in different states

 

Other reports may show and compare individual productivity and responsiveness.

Problem Notification

For transparency, the members of the team must be continuously aware of every problem resolution status. The simplest way to maintain such awareness is to send an email to every team member about every event of problem ticket status change. Other popular notification media include paging and SMS calls. More sophisticated methods involve selective notification based on nature of event or person assigned to problem resolution.

Problem Ticket

The ticket has the following data elements:

 

1. Subject - short description of problem
2. Owner - name of the employee responsible for issue resolution
3. Requestor - name of the manager that assigned the issue to the employee
4. Date - date the issue was identified and documented
5. Scheduled - date (time) this issue must be resolved
6. Body - a detailed issue description
7. Log - time-and owner-stamped history of all documentation, including
   1. Escalation. Issues may be escalated to upper management via TrackLogix by simply changing the Owner
   2. Priority change
   3. Status change
   4. Date change
   5. Owner change
   6. Specific action taken to resolve the issue
8. Priority - relative issue importance order among other issues on the same workbench.
9. Status
   1. Open for new issue
   2. Pending for resolved and waiting for approval
   3. Closed for resolved and approved

    

    

 

Vericle-like Straight Through Billing (STB) systems automate majority of billing transactions and focus manual followup on exceptions. A formal web-based process problem tracking system, such as TrackLogix, provides accountability, which is based on a precise account of all process problems and their resolution status. With such a tracking system, every process participant has visibility to other problems. An increased level of personal accountability promotes teamwork, increases client satisfaction, and assists in streamlining the process.

For more information about problem resolution transparency and its four attributes, including universality, continuity, ubiquity, and scalability, read our companion article about medical billing transparency.

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

How to Get Free Medical Billing Software

Free medical billing software providers are out there waiting to secure your business. Many software companies, if you qualify, will allow you to download their free demo software in hopes you will eventually add on more expensive options. Still other medical billing software providers will offer to mail out free demo CDs and training tapes. Another important feature that is often available at no cost to you is the care of all software upgrades, backups, data storage, and server maintenance eliminating expensive IT support and pricey upgrades.

One great additional benefit to obtaining free medical billing software is that many companies will help you to evaluate your needs in effort to ensure your future business. Investigating such possibilities is a worthy venture as there is so much competition and there are many new medical billing software services arising every day both locally, in the form of small start-up companies, and the on Internet.

Free services for medical billing abound. Since most companies who offer free medical billing software do not customize their complimentary products you may find that you have to piece together various services through the use of different companies and providers. Don’t be discouraged all you need to get there are a group of decent software packages that track claims management, patient billing, insurance, and scheduling.

And don’t forget to check and make certain that the software you choose is HIPAA ready and includes all finalized aspects of HIPAA to guarantee full compliance with HIPAA standards as they relate to the electronic storage and transfer of protected health information. Further consider carefully how the free medical billing software you acquire and/or assemble will eventually create a seamless workspace in which everything from electronic medical records to healthcare forms is integrated. Luckily you will probably be able to configure all the free medical billing software you get without assistance, quickly and easily so check it out, it might be a great solution for your medical practice.

Medical Billing Software Info provides comprehensive information about medical insurance billing software, HIPAA compliant medical billing software, easy and free medical billing software, and medical billing software prices and reviews. Medical Billing Software Info is the sister site of Medical Billing Web.