November 2013 – HEALTHCARE BEAT

Medical Identity Theft

Fraudulent Healthcare is on the rise! Make sure your information is safely guarded; ask your providers what precautions they take with your information. Where are your medical records stored?

Amazingly, and shockingly, the Federal Trade Commission estimates medical identity theft happening to as many as 9 million people every year. There are many victims to this growing theft and you or someone you love could be next. Statistics show a 20 percent increase in 2012 of said medical identity theft. This is estimated to have cost consumers $12 billion dollars. In fact, according to a recent survey by the Ponemon Institute, there were 1.84 million victims in 2012 to this personally invasive crime.

Maybe you have wondered why the hospital or physician’s office needs so much personal information. Criminals are trying to steal your identity to secure their own healthcare, and experts predict that it is only going to get worse because of the rising cost associated with healthcare.

Until the federal healthcare site is secure, it is recommended to phone your request in directly so you are not at risk for medical identity theft.

Be aware of scammers who will use your personal identification and information to seek drugs! They will most certainly try to gain this information to scam the pharmacies and acquire pharmaceuticals, in addition to office visits and even surgeries.

”Examine your insurer’s explanation of benefits, received after you pay for medical services. The document can reveal red flags of medical-identity theft, such as types of procedures and exams for which you are billed but that you did not receive.

Do not share your personal identification with family members or someone you know so they can obtain treatment, health-care products, or pharmaceuticals.” Read more…

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, EHR technology, and REAL-TIME solutions. We provide efficient, accurate, affordable quality services for hospitals, clinics, and facilities of all sizes. Call 866-777-7264 today, or visit our website for more information.

ICD-10 requires greater specificity of documentation in the health record and an efficient revenue cycle management system.

“For over 22 years MDS has delivered a variety of medical document services, including medical transcription, editing, EHR technologies, and education programs throughout the Midwest. “The merging of advanced technology has created new demands on physicians. We offer REAL-TIME solutions while helping to improve cash flow, margins and efficiency,” says Donella Aubuchon, CEO of MDS.

MDS chose to partner with Azalea Health to offer a full range of healthcare billing services and EHR solutions to its clients. Aubuchon explains, ” This significantly impacts the administrative and financial side of a practice.” Azalea’s cloud-based software suite comes with a quality support team and a fully-integrated billing and claims management module which boasts an increase in billing accuracy and aids practices in earning up to 15% more in reimbursements. In addition to accuracy, Azalea provides a secure portal for users to both record and transmit sensitive data.”

http://www.prweb.com/releases/MDSofKansas/AzaleaHealth/prweb11319500.htm

MDS is excited to be a game-changer in the RCM industry!

The time is right! Let us help reduce the stress incurred by claims denials and lost profits. We focus on your practice’s non-medical, business aspects giving you time to focus on practicing medicine. EHR and RCM should work together and that is why we are offering the most competitive billing services in the industry! Cash-flow is the lifeline of your practice and there is no reason to pay upwards of 12% on receivables. This is damaging to your bottom line.

The burden cost of on-site billing can be more than costly; it can be quite straining to the company creating weighted overhead. Because time, money and resources are valuable assets, MDS’ RCM Services provide the right solution. We have certified, expert billing and coding staff to handle all operations of a patient encounter, securely and accurately. Our software dashboard(s) provide a process and visibility in real time, at the point of care.

Our staff and software support team have a combined 20+ years in billing service analysis, RCM, and business operations and review. Our experience in healthcare documentation with state-specific billing rules and regulations set us apart from others in the industry. We KNOW our business.

Clinical Documentation Trends – Must READ

I know you will want to read this over carefully. There are some VERY interesting points made in this study by the Health Business Group on healthcare documentation trends for the next several years. Please take time and read, as it is well worth it … (my medical transcription and healthcare documentation friends)!

Clinical_Documentation_Trends_2013_2016

“CLINICAL DOCUMENTATION TODAY
• Medical transcription is the most common form of documentation in the acute care market and is also utilized, though to a lesser extent, in the ambulatory space.
• About half of medical transcription is performed by provider organizations using their own staff; half is outsourced to Medical Transcription Service Organizations (MTSOs).
• Acute care providers frequently use both in-house and outsourced resources; ambulatory practices tend to use one or the other but not both.
• Most provider organizations type their transcription directly from audio files.
• A substantial portion of documentation is done using the electronic health record (EHR), especially in the ambulatory market.
• Despite increasing EHR penetration, health care providers express some uncertainty about the ability of EHRs to meet clinical documentation needs and to tell the complete patient story.
• A significant share of clinical documentation is still handwritten.

CLINICAL DOCUMENTATION IN 2016
• The clinical documentation market will undergo substantial change between 2013 and 2016.
• Documentation volume will continue to grow at approximately 2 to 3 percent per year.
• The use of EHRs for documentation will increase, especially in ambulatory settings.
• The use of front-end speech recognition to enter data into EHRs will grow faster than the use of keyboard and mouse.
• Integrated delivery networks (IDNs) will increasingly determine the method of clinical documentation for affiliated practices.
• Documentation on paper will vanish almost completely.
• Transcription will remain an important documentation method, but more of the market will be outsourced.
• There will be increasing use of back-end technology among those who continue to perform transcription in-house.
• New technologies such as Clinical Language Understanding (CLU) will enter the mainstream.
• The introduction of ICD-10 may increase the need for high-quality clinical documentation and Computer-Assisted Coding.”

Aging population, Obamacare causes increase demand in doctors by 2025

Aging population, Obamacare causes increase demand in doctors by 2025.

Are Medical Scribes Worth the Investment?

“Are scribes really worth it? It’s a question that has likely come up for many a hospital administrator. Now a study gauging the cost/benefit ratio of medical scribes has been completed. The landmark project, which actually was titled “Are Scribes Worth It?,” concluded that scribe programs can greatly assist higher acuity emergency departments that are struggling with long patient stays, a high percent of patients leaving without treatment and challenging electronic medical record systems. Some medical scribe programs, according to the study, actually more than pay for themselves.

The study was produced by Tanveer Gaibi, MD, medical director for Northwest Hospital in Randallstown, Md., Michael Hochberg, MD, medical director for Saint Peter’s University Hospital in New Brunswick, N.J., Daria Starosta, MD, EmCare director of practice improvement, and Mark Switaj, MBA, an EmCare client administrator.

“We wanted to determine whether medical scribes are truly worth the investment,” says Dr. Starosta. “We focused on determining improvements in overall productivity and quality in the emergency departments and the financial return on investment of medical scribes.” read more ….

Continue reading “Are Medical Scribes Worth the Investment?”