Wednesday, May 21, 2008

Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan Heads April's Chiropractic Office Billing Software Precision Index

Chiropractic Office Billing Software Performance Index (BPI) in April 2007 outperformed its March value by 4.3%, bringing the index from 18.9 up to 14.6, ahead of the national average of 17.7%, while replacing four of BPI participants in March on the list of top ten performers. BPI guides chiropractic office managers and helps the development of both chiropractic billing software and billing performance standards. This article describes a rule-based chiropractic billing index, including its coverage definition, update cycle, volume weighting, and provided information.

BPI = 14.6 means that the average of ten top performing payers working with Billing Precision clients have 14.6% of Accounts Receivable beyond 120 days. BPI is a key billing performance characteristic, as it is a proxy of the claims that are never paid. Obviously, the lower is the index the better is billing performance. The table below also lists the top ten performing payers and their relative index as recorded in the Billing Precision's system.

  • Billing Precision Index 14.6
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan 3.2
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Colorado 6.8
  • Humana 7.9
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois 11.1 (down from 11.2 in March)
  • United Health Care 13.9 (up from 23.2 in March)
  • Cigna 15 (down from 12.9 in March)
  • Medicare New Jersey 16.4 (up from 20.5 in March)
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas 20 (down from 15.2 in March)
  • Great West 22
  • Aetna 22.1 (down from 20.9 in March)

April BPI dropped four participants since March:

  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Pennsylvania
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Alabama
  • Medicare Pennsylvania
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield New Jersey

Three payers improved their index since March:

  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Illinois 11.1 (down from 11.2 in March)
  • United Health Care 13.9 (up from 23.2 in March)
  • Medicare New Jersey 16.4 (up from 20.5 in March)

Three participants lowered their indexes with respect to March BPI:

  • Cigna 15 (down from 12.9 in March)
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Texas 20 (down from 15.2 in March)
  • Aetna 22.1 (down from 20.9 in March)

April BPI added four new participants since March:

  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Michigan 3.2
  • Blue Cross Blue Shield Colorado 6.8
  • Humana 7.9
  • Great West 22

Coverage

BPI is rule-based, i.e., payer participation in the index is defined by dynamically rules at the time of computation and not by a static listing of specific payers. Therefore, any specific payer may start or discontinue participation in the index, dependent on satisfaction of rule's conditions.

Current selection of payers for participation in the BPI is based on fifty top-volume providers across all United States that have received Billing Precision services for more than six months and have more than two hundred claims in their current Accounts Receivable.

Update Cycle

BillingPrecision.com updates BPI on a monthly basis.

Volume Weighting

BPI is volume weighted, which is important to accommodate future growth of provided information, index combinations, and sensitivity across multiple indices.

Information Provided

BPI computes the percent of Accounts Receivable beyond 120 days. Note that national average across all medical specialties of percent of accounts receivable beyond 120 days is 17.7%.

Summary

Chiropractic Office Billing Software Performance Index helps the development of both chiropractic office billing software and billing performance standards. Chiropractic office managers can use the index to benchmark their billing performance and guide its improvement over time. Rule-based index definition allows for automated inclusion and exclusion of payers in the index based on payer attributes, such as numbers of processed claims, accounts receivable distribution, certain mix of CPT codes, or patient demographics.

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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Thursday, May 15, 2008

Billing Software, Free and Open this Time


Billing is one important area of all small and big businesses. Billing software market is crowded that choice of one becomes so difficult for a start up business owner. The question is will billing software survives the flood of software suits or packages offered by small and big software developing companies.

It should. The problem open software community today faces is the lack of skills or interest to learn the basics of programming and working of programs.

People also seek comfort zones all the time. We all live in an age of instant gratification and we are hardly programmed to wait or try hard to get something. This is the general trend and they will go for easily available packaged solutions, instead of trying to learn what it is about the working behind the things they see.

Needless to say a billing cum accounting system will, to a great extent take the load of learning accounting from your shoulders. With Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) the modern mantra, it is quite understandable if a few companies have taken the initiative to make major inroads into the field of free open source billing software.

It is necessary for the user to have a basic coding and programming knowledge to tweak the pieces of software to a workable suite. Then again the attempts in that direction should be recognized.

When introducing an open-source billing software, it is sure to be met with much skepticism and prejudices. No open source software is an exception. The whole hearted attempts from skilful people keep the trend alive.

A recent addition to free software, specifically billing software is JBilling, located at http://www.jbilling.com/. The open source software works with all major operating systems and supports My SQL, Postgre SQL and Hypersonic. It runs on JBOSS. It is thus a 100% free open source billing system that supports recurring billing, automatic payment processing using credit cards etc. It also handles web-based interface directly with end customers.

The software thus easily becomes an alternative to proprietary billing systems.

You can find more about Jbilling at {a rel="nofollow" href=" http://jbilling.com/"} http://jbilling.com/

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Tuesday, May 13, 2008

Medical Insurance Billing Software

Working in a medical office can be hectic. However, medical insurance billing software can make your work day much more organized and easier. The days of hand writing all your patient's records are long gone. Using powerful software for organizing your patient's insurance information will make a big difference.

Having all of this information handled by a good medical insurance billing software means that you can automatically manage all insurance claims. This greatly decreases the amount of time you will need to spend sorting through past claims. Once all of this information is fed into the software, handling all this information becomes an easy task.

Medical insurance billing software can also notify you of any specific past due balances. With the click of a button you can send this notice to the proper place and have the patient notified of this balance. You can even have the system notify you of all patient's who have a bill due and take actions from there.

Privacy is a big concern with everyone and rightfully so. Medical insurance billing software gives you the option to encrypt patient's records. This greatly reduces the risk of having someone having his or her records falsely changed. No one will be able to view this information unless they have been given the proper rights to do so. Having this feature alone makes medical insurance billing software much better than a hand written file.

Another great feature offered by medical insurance billing software is that you will be instantly notified when a patient needs to make a co-payment. No longer do you need to make phone calls to the insurance company to verify this information. Everything will be automatically updated on your computer screen, and you will know exactly how much the patient is required to pay.

Streamlining your current office situation can be as easy as implementing a powerful medical insurance billing software. While they may take some time to get used to, it is definitely time worth spent. Training for these types of programs is even being offered in many medical schools around the world as this is the most effective way to manage this important information.

Read More About Medical Insurance Billing Software

Lee Leong is the owner of Cheap Software which specializes in providing 100% free software information and resources for everyone

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Friday, May 9, 2008

What Is Billing Or Time Tracking Software?

Any business needs to be clear about their transactions to ensure smooth functioning. But often, it is found that the off invoice has gone missing or that there is no record of it. Most of the times, it is a simple case of the record aligning itself in the wrong place. Not much you think, but identifying this itself can be quite a headache eating into precious man-hours and not to mention the anxiety it can cause.

A full-fledged billing software suite can save you from these and many other hassles. Billing software that is rich in features can often help you ensure that you do not miss out on any details in invoicing. Take taxes for instance? you did not intentionally leave out one of the tax charges for your client, but who?s going to explain that to the taxman? What it also means is that you have to fork out this money from your pocket for the time being at least! Not a nice scenario, eh?

While the above processes may be streamlined in case of a large corporations where they have full-time finance departments that are paid to ensure all billings are done correctly, in case of smaller companies and more so in the case of a start-up, this could be a troublesome area. Why burden yourself with something that is not your job? Find a good package and just enter all the right data. The rest will take care of itself.

Another advantage most time tracking software offer is the ability to configure and make repeat invoicing easier. So for your long-term jobs, you don?t need to remember to make a new invoice every time. Come the time and your invoice will be ready. What?s more is the invoice can also be a custom made one that satisfies your and your client?s needs.

But even before you reach the billing stage, there is the need to know how much to bill. Even if you are working on a project that does not need you to charge by the hour, it would be worthwhile keeping track of how much time you have spent on what just to make sure you are working optimally. Using a proper time tracking software can help you do just that. In fact, there is some software that sits in your Outlook and can help you optimize the time spent on a particular client by syncing up with your appointments. So by the end of the month, you know exactly how much time you have spent on which client and how much to charge them.

Remember that your time is valuable and also your only tool to prove to your client the effort you have put in. No matter how passionate you are about your work, there is satisfaction in knowing that you have been compensated correctly and there is peace of mind in knowing that your books are up to scratch.

Aaron Reed writes technical write-up for AECTek - Offshore Software Outsourcing Company. AECTek is based in India and also provides Billing and Time Tracking Software solutions

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Monday, February 25, 2008

Chiropractic Office Billing Software and Personal Injury Protection (PIP) in New Jersey (Interview

Barry Fredson has been practicing law for nearly four decades. His office specializes in collecting Personal Injury Protection Benefits (PIP) for medical providers in the State of New Jersey. Last week, we had a chance to speak with him.

Question: What is Personal Injury Protection?

Barry Fredson: The system as established in New Jersey requires that providers of medical benefits to those injured in automobile accidents are paid promptly and according to a fee schedule. The concept is excellent however, insurance companies tend to delay and deny payments.

Question: Is it difficult to get paid?

Barry Fredson: Insurance companies are in the actuarial business. Accordingly, the longer they keep the provider’s payment, or the more obstacles they create to avoid full payment, the better it works for the insurance company. To counter these tactics medical providers need the assistance of counsel who understands insurance company procedures and can efficiently resolve medical provider’s claims.

Question: Is it better to not treat accident victims and avoid these problems?

Barry Fredson: Definitely not. My office processes thousands of these claims for dozens of medical providers in the State of New Jersey. The claims are processed efficiently and promptly taking full advantage of shared distributed computing platform.

Question: Will using the services of your law firm increase any provider’s costs?

Barry Fredson: No. The Personal Injury Protection Law is structured so that when medical providers are not paid within 60 days of submission of their bill, the insurance carrier who has denied/delayed payment is required to pay the attorney’s fee. There is never an additional charge to the medical providers.

Question: What makes Personal Injury Protection Benefits different from other claims?

Barry Fredson: From the provider’s point of view, there is no difference. The legislature has created a formal arbitration system for PIP claims. Although this a technical area of the law, and the insurance companies have highly trained lawyers and claims adjusters who look for minor errors or non-complete submissions, we use a combination of doctor’s notes, supplemental documentation and certifications to eliminate insurance company objections and prevail in this lucrative but complex area of medical reimbursement.

Question: Do I need any particular volume of claims or any particular specialty to take advantage of this lucrative area?

Barry Fredson: No. Many providers of services to accident victims from small chiropractic offices to hospitals, diagnostic facilities, surgery centers, orthopedists, neurologist, chiropractors, physical therapist, pharmacists, and other providers, all can take advantage of this lucrative area of reimbursement.

Question: How do I take advantage of your service?

Barry Fredson: By using Vericle—Billing Precision’s unique integrated revenue cycle management platform with built in controls and accountability, you are on the way. Our staff would interface directly with Vericle and you would be kept notified in the usual efficient manner used by Billing Precision’s services.

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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Monday, January 28, 2008

4 Step Denial Management To Improve Performance Of Electronic Medical Billing Software And Service

Partial denials cause the average medical practice lose as much as 11% of its revenue. Denial management is difficult because of complexity of denial causes, payer variety, and claim volume. Systematic denial management requires measurement, early claim validation, comprehensive monitoring, and custom appeal process tracking.

In a high-volume clinic, the only practical way to manage denials is to use computer technology and follow a four-step procedure:

 

  1. Prevent mistakes during claim submission. This can be accomplished with a built-in claim validation procedure including payer-specific tests. Such tests ("pre-submission scrubbing") compare every claim with Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) regulations, diligently review modifiers used to differentiate between procedures on the same claim, and compare charged amount with allowed amount according to previous experience or contract to avoid undercharging.

     

     

  2. Identify underpayments. Underpayment identification involves comparison of payment with allowed amount, identification of zero-paid items, and evaluation of payment timeliness. The results of this stage should be displayed in a comprehensive underpayment report sorted by payer, provider, claim identification, and the amount of underpayment.

     

     

  3. Appeal denials. Appeal management includes appeal prioritization, preparation of arguments and documentation, tracking, and escalation. Note that CCI spells out bundling standards but the number of standard interpretations grows in step with number of payers. Therefore, CCI provides justification basis for an appeal and every appeal must be argued on its own merits, including medical notes. Denial appeal process is typically managed with a custom process tracking system, such as TrackLogix.

     

     

  4. Measure denial rates. "You cannot manage what you do not measure." By measuring denial rates and observing payment trends, you can see if your process requires modifications.

     

     

 

Denial risk is not uniform across all claims. Certain classes of claims run significantly higher denial risk, depending on claim complexity, temporary constraints, and payer idiosyncrasies:

 

  1. Claim complexity
    1. Modifiers
    2. Multiple line items

     

     

  2. Temporary constraints
    1. Patient Constraint, e.g., claim submission during global periods
    2. Payer Constraint, e.g., claim submission timing proximity to fiscal year start
    3. Procedure Constraint, e.g., experimental services

     

     

  3. Payer idiosyncrasies
    1. Bundled services
    2. Disputed medical necessity

     

     

 

First, for complex claims, most payers pay full amount for one line item but only a percentage of the remaining items. This payment approach creates two opportunities for underpayment:

 

  1. The order of paid items
  2. Payment percentage of remaining items

     

     

 

Next, temporary constraints often cause payment errors because misapplication of constraints. For instance, claims submitted during the global period for services unrelated to global period are often denied. Similar mistakes may occur at the start of the fiscal year because of misapplication of rules for deductibles or outdated fee schedules.

Finally, payers often vary in their interpretations of Correct Coding Initiative (CCI) bundling rules or coverage of certain services. Developing sensitivity to such idiosyncrasies is key for full and timely payments.

Powerful Vericle-like technology helps manage denial appeals nationwide and stay current until complete problem resolution. Every time one billing problem is solved, the newly gained knowledge is encoded for recycling. Sharing billing expertise in a central billing knowledge base expedites future problem resolution.

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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Wednesday, January 23, 2008

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.

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Tuesday, January 22, 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 "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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Sunday, December 30, 2007

3 Reasons Why Medical Billing Software is Leading the Way

Since technology changes so quickly, it is hard to begin by saying “in the old days . . . ,” but that seems to fit the best. In the old days, medical companies, service providers, and almost any other business which used automated billing enjoyed the convenience of logging on to a database (or several, they the company had multiple offices) and processing their billing statements. This “old way” required IT and servers, and is actually still the current way for most businesses.

Somewhere along the way, medical billing software was developed to process billing without logging on to multiple databases, without having IT, and without crowding the server. This medical billing software is not only cutting edge, but it is also a miracle because it comes without a large set-up and usage expense. Soon, all companies will be marching to the beat of the new medical billing software drummer.

Let’s explore the differences between the “old way” and the new by looking at the 3 reasons why medical billing software is leading the way in corporate software.

 

Connection

 

The “old way” was convenient for its time, but that time may soon be gone. It consisted of a different database for each office, which meant that if your business had 3 offices, you would have had to log on to 3 different databases to process your billing statements and close at the end of each day.

Using only a broadband connection, “the new” way connects you to an unlimited number of databases at once, allowing you to manage all of your accounts with clients, providers, etc., all in one connection.

In addition, with the same technology now available with medical billing software, you can connect to a secure server from anywhere with a broadband internet connection. You can work from home, the hotel, or anywhere else on a secure account that can only be accessed by those whom you authorize.

 

Capacity

 

The “old way” was to have separate applications for every function your business needed to perform. For example, records of clients, customers, providers, or patients, would each be kept in separate files in multiple databases. Then, to track appointments and schedules, your business would probably have had to open a whole new application.

Now medical billing software has one system for all of the functions your business needs to perform, not just to process medical billing statements. Log on; track your provider records and schedules, your client records and schedules, and your own financial records and schedules, all in one place.

 

Security

 

The question that runs through the minds of every thoughtful business when a new technology that claims to guard so many important and sensitive documents is, “Is this secure software?”

The answer is “yes,” because this advanced medical billing software backs-up, protects, and secures all data on HIPAA-compliant servers, which are accessible only to those whom you authorize.

New medical billing software is also a pioneer in financial security because the software does not require large start-up costs; it is billed the same way it is used: month to month.

Businesses can benefit from the technology medical billing software now has to offer. It has been said that the greatest breakthroughs come at the intersection of two different disciplines. Medical billing software has made a breakthrough in combining business skills with medical practice and providing medical billing software that not only meets medical billing needs but also provides a template for software that any business could benefit from

Joe Miller is specialist in online advertising. For more information on medical billing software, please visit AdvancedMD.com.

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