CureMD HealthTech Insights Hub

Medical billing is a necessity if your practice wants to get reimbursed for services provided. If you’re a small practice with only a few physicians, and having trouble deciding how to go about your practice’s billing, here’s some tips to help you decide if outsourcing medical billing is the right option for you. Your options First, you need to know who you can outsource to.  Some of the most common outsourcing options are professional medical billing companies, your Electronic Health Record (EHR) and practice management vendor, at-home specialists and practice management companies. Focus on the practice A small healthcare setting such as your practice cannot afford to keep a large medial office staff at its disposal. Your limited staff is probably overworked as it is. Even if they aren’t, it might still be extremely difficult for them to divert all their efforts towards billing, and moreover, they might not have the necessary know how and skill to optimally manage this s

Electronic Health Record (EHR) solutions are designed in such a way as optimize efficiency and to decrease costs for providers. There are numerous different, customizable EHRs to cater to practice-specific needs. The Endocrinology EHR is one such option, which allows endocrinologists to simplify and enhance their practice’s functioning. These customizable EHR’s provide simple solutions including those to accelerate the documentation process, track reports and facilitate online prescriptions. There are numerous benefits of these EHR for both physicians and patients. The system amalgamates the complete healthcare care delivery process, consequently boosting the healthcare experience for both parties. Customizable templates and single screen information: Several pre-defined and customizable templates including those for performing physical exams and entering patient information will allow your practice to get to the workflow right away and also for faster data entry.

You need to make sure that you have everything ready if your practice is trying to implement EHR software. If you have issues in communicating with your current EHR software vendor, you need to make sure that there is one specific person in the organization who is overseeing the implementation and hence knows about each and every little detail about the software. Before it is actually supposed to go live at the practice, make sure that you test the EHR software beforehand. Before the actual starting date, initiate the use of EHR software throughout the office a couple of months. Analyze the occurred problems in the first place and take control of your previous problems caused by paper-based records. It is crucial to keep asking relevant questions from the vendor about issues that you feel you might have to face with the software, and get answers on how they think these issues should be resolved. Putting in place someone who will coordinate with the vendors and so

Health IT adoption continues to grow at a rapid rate but with that, the costs are on their way up too. A recent data from the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA), medical practices’ annual expenditures for every full-time physician on IT costs have increased from $15,211 in 2008 to $19,439 in 2012, showing an increase of 27.8%. However, health IT is largely benefiting from the power of cloud to move beyond client-based technologies. Thankfully, cloud-based EHR , practice management and medical billing services are helping physicians mitigate the rising costs of health IT in these ways. Low start-up costs Instead of spending a huge sum of money up-front on expensive hardware or software in the server-based model, the cloud-based solutions require virtually no start-up costs because of their ability to use any current system with a browser and a working internet connection. No IT staff required With the server-based model, hardware and software are housed in you

Practice Management systems provide numerous benefits to medical practices. They help improve revenue cycles with features such as payer rules intelligence, streamline operations and promote engagement through patient portals. The true power Practice Management systems reside in their ability to report well. Generating reports on practice operations can reveal performance trends and show areas that need improvement. However, when it comes to reporting, not all PM systems are equal. Here are four characteristics that your PM must contain if you would like to generate reports that help you stay on top of your finances. Customizable: Every PM software has its own set of reports which you should be able to access in a matter of a few clicks. However, the best PM systems allow users to create customized reports that show what you want to see. Some of the performance metrics that you would want to track are: ·          Gap between date-of-service and date billed ·     

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is looking to recover all the improper payments made through its Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) and the Electronic Prescribing Incentive (eRx) Program. This was revealed in a notice published in the Federal Register. Problems such as data integrity, rejected and improper payments are the main cause of this step by the CMS. It plans a four-year project to skim through its records and will look for ways to avoid such issues in the future as well. “Data submission, processing and reporting will be analyzed for potential errors, inconsistencies and gaps that are related to data handling, program requirements, and clinical quality measure specifications,” the notice reads. CMS plans to survey 400 group practices, registries and vendors every year and interview a select number about the programs. Since the publication of the notice, there will be a 60-day comment period that will end on May 16. e-Prescribing h

Did you know? The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is offering several Accountable Care Organization (ACO) programs. They include:        Medicare Shared Savings Program  – For fee-for-service beneficiaries         Advance Payment ACO Model  – For certain eligible providers already in or interested in the Medicare Shared Savings Program        Pioneer ACO Model  – Health care organizations and providers already experienced in coordinating care for patients across care settings Are you participating in any of the Accountable care organization models offered by the CMS? If not, then you should start as soon as possible because it will help you bring down the cost of care delivered and improve the quality. Learn how you can benefit being an ACO with CureMD.

Switching practice management systems can be cumbersome and result in many issues if not implemented properly. Overseeing the entire implementation process in order to ensure a smooth transition is important. Here are a few tips. Keep notes It is important you keep a track of why you are purchasing the new system. List all important functionalities required during implementation and what you may require in the future. This will help in keeping a track of immediate items, task deadlines and items requiring investigation. Make sure you update your list continually in order to stay ahead of your deadlines. During implementation of a practice management system, routines can become hectic and forgetting important tasks becomes easy. Stay updated It is important you subscribe to newsletters and/or regular updates from your practice management vendor. These work as a good resource in keeping you informed of everything that is happening at your vendor’s end and what you can