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.

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.

Medical Billing Software Concept

What is medical billing software More than ten years ago medical billing records were committed on paper. The advent of computers and the introduction of reliable medical billing software have largely phased out the paper system of keeping medical billing records.

Today's healthcare providers have realized medical billing software ensures their reimbursement claims are facilitated in a secure and efficient manner. It also tracks each patient's medical and insurance billing and accounting, all to the benefit of patients.

Here are three benefits inherent in the use of medical billing software as compared to the paper based systems.

1. Medical billing software improves staff productivity, as easy to use medical billing software improves efficiency.

2. Installing medical billing software in your office increases patient satisfaction. This is because a majority of medical billing software offers flexibility in scheduling and better access to personal information.

3. Fewer errors are committed in billing and insurance. When this happens, the medical billing software can easily correct these mistakes and the claims resubmitted in days rather than weeks. Medical Billing Training. With the complexity of today's health care and insurance system, medical billing has become an industry of its own. In order to manage the thousands upon thousands of patient, insurance company, and HMO accounts, doctors and hospitals rely on sophisticated medical billing systems. Far from having the time to run these systems themselves, large dedicated administrative staffs specialize in managing these systems and interacting with the account holders on a daily basis.

Medical Billing Training. With the complexity of today's health care and insurance system, medical billing has become an industry of its own. In order to manage the thousands upon thousands of patient, insurance company, and HMO accounts, doctors and hospitals rely on sophisticated medical billing systems. Far from having the time to run these systems themselves, large dedicated administrative staffs specialize in managing these systems and interacting with the account holders on a daily basis.

I maintain site http://www.popular-softwares.com having info on most popular softwares.

3 Benefits of Web-Based Electronic Medical Billing Software

When you decide to opt for Web-based medical billing software you will find many great benefits. These include but are not limited to, reduced install and maintenance costs, security from natural disasters, anytime access.

Anytime Access

A major benefit of a Web-based medical billing solution is that you can access the information anytime. Whether you are at home, or in the office, you only need an Internet connection and you will be able to access all the information you need. Late at night or early in the morning or during the day you will be able to access the information for your practice.

Reduced Install and Maintenance costs

Another benefit of the software being Web-based is that there are much lower installation costs. You will see this benefit right up front as it will be the first step that you go through. Another benefit is the reduced maintenance cost. Many server based technologies need to be upgraded and constantly monitored. This can sometimes lead to unexpected costs to help maintain your current system. With Web-based technologies these maintenance costs are much, much, much lower.

Accidents unfortunately happen

As much as we like to think that accidents never happen to us, there is a chance that they just may. Many people use insurance to cover them incase of these major accidents. But many people do not think about what is going to happen to their information in an accident. With Web-based electronic medical billing software there is greater satisfaction in knowing that if an accident where to go through a horrific accident, you would be not lose all of your records. If there were a fire, earthquake, flood and your servers were hit, you would lose all of your client information. But if you had a Web-based software solution, even though your office may be damaged, your records wouldn?t be. You would be able to be up and running in almost no time.

So when deciding between Web-based and server side software remember these major benefits of Web-based medical billing software.

Alex Hachtman is a Marketing Specialist for AdvancedMD Software in Draper, Utah. For more information about medical billing software, please feel free to contact an AdvancedMD representative.

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

Medical Billing - Software Capacity

The one thing they haven't quite figured out yet in the world of medical billing software is how to make a package big enough in terms of capacity to handle any size company. In this article, we're going to take a look at the problem and just why it's a problem, along with some possible solutions.

Years ago, many years ago, if you had a meg of memory in your computer, you could do just about anything at all. Today, half a gig can just about get your operating system started. As systems and programs get larger, the requirements for these programs grow. But this isn't so much the issue here. Certainly today's PCs have enough memory and disk space to be able to handle starting up an operating system and a piece of software. The issue has more to do with the actual software itself and the mega businesses that use it.

Today, we have corporations involved in the medical billing business that are so massive, it isn't unusual for them to be billing hundreds of thousands of patients. Suddenly, a software package that used to run on a single PC is no longer able to do the job. So networks are built with the software running on individual workstations. The servers running this software are massive. The memory and disk space used by these servers are light years ahead of what they used to be. And yet, with all of this processing power, the software itself can only handle so much. Why?

One of the reasons is the platform on which the software is built. Unfortunately, most software companies build their products on databases that have serious limitations. For example. Some of the most popular DME software packages is built on the database known as Btrieve. While a good database, it has its limitations. One of them is the size it can grow to before you start seeing corruption problems in the database itself. When companies started getting large enough to poke holes in this database, the first solution was to break the database up into multiple companies. But this quickly lead to legal problems and other issues such as being able to get meaningful reports from multiple companies.

Another problem the software packages started running into was the actual processing of the data stored in the database once a solid platform was found. Many users began to notice that running a sales report for a company with 100,000 patients was taking a day to run and tying up all the resources of the server, thus slowing down the work of everyone else. So new network architectures had to be configured to make it so that the reports being run would not have any effect on other users of the system. This was easier said than done with a shared database. So the next solution was to duplicate the database using a RAID system and run the reports off the other drive.

And these problems are only the tip of the iceberg. The unavoidable truth is, as long as companies continue to grow and more and more data is needed, these companies will continue to outgrow the software that is being used. That's why there are constant updates for all these packages.

Michael Russell

Your Independent guide to Medical Billing

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