2013 Reflections

MDS reflects on the many blessings of 2013.  We have great appreciation for our customers, new and old, our friends, our business alliances and partners, and most of all … our incredible MDS team!  We are confident in what 2014 brings and wish good health, happiness and true peace for all!

AHDI reflects on most read healthcare articles for 2013.  Take a look …

UPMC transcriptionists protest after outsourcing
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
From Nov. 6: Cindy Cromie was a medical transcriptionist working for UPMC Hamot in Erie, Pa., when she, like the rest of the 130 people who provided medical transcriptions for the hospital system, got a call this spring to come to a meeting in Pittsburgh. They gathered in the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic of UPMC, where they were told that their work was being outsourced to Nuance Communications of Burlington, Mass.

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Job changes coming for transcriptionists
Healthcare IT News
From July 17: Nearly 90 percent of medical transcriptionists say that transitioning to documentation roles with electronic health records means that gaps in skills need to be identified and new career paths charted, according to new a study. New speech and language processing technologies have set the stage for a fundamental transformation in the way transcriptionists work, according to the survey – conducted by the American Health Information Management Association and the Association for Healthcare Documentation Integrity — which found that 87 percent of respondents are preparing for new ways of doing things.

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AMA: EHRs create ‘appalling Catch-22’
HealthcareIT News
From May 8: As the healthcare industry moves to EHRs, the medical record has essentially been reduced to a tool for billing, compliance and litigation that also has a sustained negative impact on doctors’ productivity, according to Steven J. Stack, M.D., chair of the American Medical Association’s board of trustees. “Documenting a full clinical encounter in an EHR is pure torment,” Stack said during the CMS Listening Session: Billing and Coding with Electronic Health Records.

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Speech recognition software: Does it help or hinder care workflow?

FierceHealthIT
From Nov. 20: Does front-end speech recognition make for a smooth-running operation, or does it simply complicate documentation and patient care? Doctors and researchers debate this question in the November 2013 issue of health information management magazine For the Record. Gary David, Ph.D., an associate professor of sociology at Bentley University in Waltham, Mass., notes in the article that front-end speech recognition does not always save labor, but it does change workflow.

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Scribes can be beneficial in medical practices
HealthDay News via Doctors Lounge
From Oct. 23: Medical scribes can accurately document physician or independent practitioner dictation and activities, allowing providers to spend more time with patients, according to an article published in Medical Economics. Maxine Lewis, president of Medical Coding & Reimbursement in Cincinnati, discusses the role of scribes in medical practices.

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EHR copy and paste? Better think twice
Healthcare IT News
From Oct. 9: Who would have thought that something so simple as copy and paste could have such serious consequences? Speaking at the MGMA annual conference in San Diego, Diana Warner, director at AHIMA, confirmed the seriousness of inappropriately using copy and paste functions in electronic health records. And the government agrees — it’s no laughing matter.

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Digital health records’ risks emerge as deaths blamed on systems
Bloomberg
From June 26: Electronic health records are supposed to improve medical care by providing physicians quick and easy access to a patient’s history, prescriptions, lab results and other vital data. While the new computerized systems have decreased some kinds of errors, such as those caused by doctors’ illegible prescriptions, the shift away from paper has also created new problems, with sometimes dire consequences.

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Medical scribes boost EHR productivity, streamline workflow
EHR Intelligence
From Sept 25: While EHRs are sold to physicians as a way to increase quality while making documentation more efficient, few providers have seen as much return on that promise as they could like. EHRs can be time consuming to use on a daily basis, and patient interaction can suffer when being forced to peer at a computer screen during consult after consult. The solution, according to one cardiology practice, is to let a professional typist do the typing, and allow the physician to use his skills where they do the most good.

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Updated HIPAA rules posing challenges for healthcare providers
The Wall Street Journal via iHealthBeat
From May 8: Health care providers say they likely will face challenges complying with new rules that expand and update HIPAA provisions. One of the biggest challenges under the new HIPAA rules is a provision allowing patients to request that insurers not be informed of treatments that patients paid for themselves.

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Speech recognition: A work in progress
For The Record
From May 1: While controversy remains within the healthcare community regarding the best approach to using speech recognition technology, there are some points that most industry professionals agree on. Few would dispute that the vendor community has made tremendous strides to advance applications to better meet the needs of the healthcare industry, and innovation continues as developers look for ways to make the technology more intelligent and accurate.

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Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, AzaleaHealth EHR, 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.

 

How Obamacare will creatively destroy primary care as we know it

What do you think about this statement:  “With the exception of the very poor and the very old, people will now need to pay for primary care out of their own pocket. That’s what high deductibles mean.”

This is well worth the read … 

As Obamacare is winding its way through a hellish bureaucratic labyrinth of its own creation, accompanied by cheers and boos from the blood thirsty spectator crowds, confusion, fear, trepidation, despair and exhilaration, are gripping America’s doctors all at once, because whatever else is accomplished in the next decade, medicine will never be the same.

At the confluence of cutting edge technology, great poverty and unimaginable fortunes, a new vision for the practice of medicine is beginning to emerge. Medicine was formed during times when sickness was never far from death. It was devised by old men who went to bed every night thinking that they may never awaken, and it was institutionalized by women who shunned life’s earthly pleasures. They understood the fears of old age, the loneliness of disease, and the comfort and serenity that come with putting your life in the hands of God, when all was said and done. They built houses for the poor and sick and downtrodden, with larger than life doctors as God’s emissaries, and pious sisters as angels of mercy.

Over the last century, science and technology changed hospitals from places of suffering, grief and death, to places of hope and new beginnings; from dreary spartan wards for the dying, to plush private suites for the soon to be healthy; from whispered footsteps in the twilight, to shiny instruments of mechanical shops; from final moaning and groaning, to humming of machines and laughing soundtracks of sitcoms punctuated by shrill alarms and flashing lights.

Dying in a hospital is now considered a failure of sorts, a preventable and costly mistake. There is no place for God in a modern hospital, and there is no place for special emissaries or angels. And when God vacates the premises, big business comes in to take His place.

Today’s technology driven medicine is shaped by young and invincible entrepreneurs, in search of fame and fortune. Masters of their own fate, bursting with self-quantified health, brilliantly educated in the intricacies of computerized logic, armed with stacks of data points, and carefully clad in black turtlenecks, hoodies, tee shirts and designer jeans, these modern knights of the business round table are engaging in the timeless quest of vanquishing death, or at the very least making it less expensive for the rest of us.

So where does all this leave primary care? Primary care is now considered routine care; routine, like changing oil on an automobile. Sticking a needle in your arm so you never, ever die from a plague is no longer a miracle, just like switching the lights on, or flushing the toilet is no longer deserving of thought. Miracles only happen in hospitals now, and not very often either. Primary care doctors are increasingly banned from hospitals, and asked to stick with routine care and leave the complex stuff to their betters. And primary care doctors agreed to this arrangement, mostly voluntarily, and explained (mostly to themselves) that routine care nowadays is pretty complex on its own, and arguably even more complex than the narrowly specialized interventions occurring in hospital settings. Maybe so, but routine complexity is what technology entrepreneurs eat for breakfast. Terminology is important.

When health care reformers say that primary care is foundational to reform, they mean routine care. They mean vaccines given on schedule, screenings done on time, lifestyles assessed and documented, educational materials handed out, and referrals coordinated to completion. They mean managing populations, stratifying risk, conducting outreach, dotting every BP and crossing every A1c.

Welcome to Lake Wobegon primary care where all patients come in correctly diagnosed and ready to be tracked. These things can be automated with the right technology and properly trained teams of workers, supervised by medical professionals providing spot checks and quality assurance. High tech and high deductibles will combine forces to turn routine primary care into the first medical service to become a retail product, with its Med Emporium, Osler 5th Avenue, and eventually, Hello Kitty Diabetes toolkits sold at Amazon.com. The question is no longer how to stop the train; the question is where primary care goes from here.

Let it go!

When primary care physicians became overworked and underpaid, something had to give. Inpatient care, arguably the high end portion of practicing at the top of one’s medical license, was snatched away by hospitals oblivious to their mission statement, and a good portion of complex care had to be offloaded to secondary care, just so primary care can keep up with demand for routine care.

Primary care became literally broken, and with it, the entire system downstream was broken too. In a fool’s errand type of strategy, routine primary care now includes tasks aimed at gluing primary care together again (e.g. transitions of care management, exchange of clinical information across facilities). Furthermore, routine care is being expanded to include things previously in the purview of public health (e.g. health literacy, physical activity, safe sex), stuff that grandma used to do for us (e.g. eat your string beans, keep your hands out of the cookie jar) and new retail oriented things (e.g. online shopping, consumer experience, values and preferences).

Today, in a plot twist worthy of Beckett himself, tech entrepreneurs in concert with non-physician workers are vying for the business at the low end of primary care. The new routine care will be catalogued, standardized, sterilized, automated, delegated, computerized, transformed and reformed. If you hang on to it, it will drag you down to wherever it’s going. Let it go! Let it go to your “team” (read, staff), or (gasp) let it go to Med Emporium.

Insurers, who could not be made to understand the importance of continuous, comprehensive primary care, seem perfectly willing to support the low skilled, electronic strings and duct tape of the new and expanded routine care. If you have an entrepreneurial gene in your DNA, hire staff, promote your office manager to chief quality/compliance officer, your receptionist to care coordination manger, the triage nurse to director of resource allocation, and delegate the bejeebers out of your daily work. Become the CEO, and get a secretary (a.k.a. scribe), so you never have to click another box, or type another embarrassingly misspelled sentence. Double your patient population, and let your NPs see the f/u for diaper rash, sports physicals, strains and sprains, the new wave of statin seekers, and everything that your director of resource allocation deems routine.

Grab the fluctuating 25% or so of patients that are most complex and be their comprehensivist.  Hospitals are routinely inventing specialties, from hospitalists to intensivists to nocturnists, to further fragment continuity of care and increase profits. It’s time to learn from the experts.

Instead of waiting for the system’s other shoe to drop (on your head), proclaim yourself a specialist in the absolutely last remaining piece of what was once primary care. Grab it and hold onto it like dear life, because it will be nibbled on from below and from above incessantly. You will have to compete with the low prices of Med Emporium on one hand and with the natural expansionist tendencies of hospitals on the other. You will have to find a way to get paid for your new specialty services, and just like every other entrepreneur, you will have to take risk; the more complex the patients are, the bigger the risk and the larger the rewards.

Fortunately, the new health care law encourages precisely this type of advanced payment models. Go for it! Spend a leisurely hour with each patient needing comprehensive care, while your routine side of the business is humming along on its own.  With proper planning, you can collect the customary and usual fees for your greatly expanded panel, plus the special fees for comprehensive care, plus any shared savings you can generate from keeping these select folks out of hospitals and emergency rooms. You’ll have to do a bit of marketing and engage in some creative contract negotiations (get a lawyer), but the sky may very well be the limit.

Don’t let it go!

What if you have no entrepreneurial markers in your DNA? What if the previous few paragraphs made you sick, depressed or really angry? Fortunately, Obamacare is on your side.  For all the docs who argued that health insurance destroyed the doctor-patient relationship because it inserted itself in the payment process, and for all those who argued that insurance should not pay for routine oil changes, this is your lucky day, because it doesn’t anymore.

With the exception of the very poor and the very old, people will now need to pay for primary care out of their own pocket. That’s what high deductibles mean. A good portion of these people will become savvy shoppers and choose the technology enabled do-it-yourself method, or go to Med Emporium on an as-needed basis, but there will be more than enough patients (perhaps in higher income brackets), seeking quality over cheapness. The same folks that buy artisan bread and free range eggs from local farmers will bring their family to you, if you promise to provide hand-made wholesome and holistic primary care.

Direct primary care, whether concierge, or ideal or micro, or contracted by employers and even forward thinking insurers, will most likely explode in size during the next decade. There is a huge continuum of service definitions here, and you should be able to find your comfort zone. You can go back to being a country doctor in the midst of a bustling metropolis, and care for multiple generations at home, in clinic, at the hospital, nursing home and eventually hospice. You can dial back a little bit, or a lot, and contract with midsize employers to provide outpatient primary care. You can be a high-tech, electronic-everything doctor, or an old fashioned one, or perhaps a unique combination of both.  Here too, the sky seems to be the limit.

So what’s next for primary care? It seems that for physicians, the door is closing on the treadmill now known as primary care practice, but countless windows are being opened simultaneously. You just have to look up and find yours. Whether you choose to stay in the system, step half way in and half way out, or do it your way all the way, there will always be a need for good doctors. Whether you choose to run the patient mills at Med Emporium, or run your own exquisite Osler 5th Avenue, or start the Hello Kitty Diabetes Company, or care for people slowly and thoroughly, one at a time, from start to finish, primary care may just be the best place to be in right now.

Margalit Gur-Arie is founder, BizMed. She blogs at On Healthcare Technology.

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, AzaleaHealth EHR, 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.

 

 

 

 

 

Meaningful Use 2 – pushed back one year

By Joseph Conn

Posted: December 6, 2013 – 3:30 pm ET
“The CMS is giving providers another year to show they’ve met the Stage 2 criteria of the federal government’s incentive program to encourage the adoption and meaningful use of electronic health records. That means the start of the next phase will be pushed back a year.”
Stage 2 will be extended through 2016 and Stage 3 won’t begin until at least fiscal 2017 for hospitals and calendar year 2017 for physicians and other eligible professionals who have by then completed at least two years at Stage 2.The latest extension parallels what the feds did with Stage 1, which was originally set to last two years but was lengthened by a year when it appeared the industry would be overstretched to build and get acclimated to systems capable of meeting the federal payment program’s more stringent Stage 2 criteria.”

“The goal of this change is twofold,” according to a CMS statement from Robert Tagalicod, director of the Office for E-Health Standards and Services at the CMS, and Dr. Jacob Reider, acting head of the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology at HHS. First, the statement said, its aim is “to allow CMS and ONC to focus efforts on the successful implementation of the enhanced patient engagement, interoperability and health information exchange requirements in Stage 2.” Second, they said, it’s “to utilize data from Stage 2 participation to information policy decisions for Stage 3.”  READ MORE

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Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, AzaleaHealth EHR, 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.

Next-Generation EHR | Comprehensive Cloud Solutions

Clinical documentation has a direct impact on Revenue Cycle Management.  As ICD-10 gets closer and closer, clinics, hospitals and physician offices will need to carefully examine their documentation.  The long-term financial stability can be devastating if not done correctly.  Physicians, coders and healthcare document specialist will need to combine efforts, but most importantly, have the right EHR in place.   Comprehensive Cloud, Next-Generation, EHR is imperative moving forward!  This year, 2013, has been quoted as being the “year to change EHR systems.”  However, the predictions for 2014 do not look any better as dissatisfaction is on the rise for physicians and administrators.  With today’s change in health care, it is more important than ever to have an EHR that meets your needs.

If your EHR  is not meeting your needs, you are not alone.  According to KLAS, 50% of ambulatory practices are looking to switch EHR systems.*  Top reasons to make the change include an inability to achieve Meaningful Use, a lack of support, and unfulfilled promises from the vendor.

“The American Journal of Managed Care has now weighed in on the impact of electronic health records and health IT with a special issue devoted to research on the subject. The issue is highlighted by an introduction by guest editor and former National Coordinator for Health IT Farzad Mostashari, M.D., now a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institute. Mostashari notes that this latest round of health and payment reform is different because of the new tools and data that EHRs and other health IT offer.”  Read More

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Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, AzaleaHealth EHR, 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.

Healthcare – everyone should have it but how to pay for it?

“Everyone should have access to healthcare, the question is how do we pay for it? The ACT has provisions to cut the costs of healthcare, but things like wellness and preventive care, which have the potential to reduce costs, will take years for a return on the investment.”

Are you looking for a practical explanation of the Affordable Care Act?  Many of us are and I believe that Mr. James McGahee, Jr. has done a nice job in this article.  Our friends at AzaleaHealth have many great articles on their blog.

(The Implementation of the ACT began October 1, 2013) 
Authored by: James McGahee, Jr.

The Affordable Care Act requires all eligible Americans to be covered by health insurance. Simultaneously it provides a way for that to happen by providing incentives, penalties, and options to individuals, and small and large employers, including tax exempt employers. As of October 1, 2013, the ACT requires that people who do not have health insurance, regardless of reason, apply for health insurance coverage either through their employer, an insurance company, or through an exchange established by the Federal Government. Coverage for those who apply no later than December 15, 2013 and are approved, will begin January 1, 2014. Open enrollment is available through March 31,2014. Working individuals who do not have insurance and have not enrolled in a health plan by March 31, 2014 will be required to pay a 1% income tax on their adjusted gross income for 2014 and continuing as long as they are non-covered. An individual will be exempted from the 1% tax if their income is below 133% of the Federal Poverty Level which for 2013 is $15,282 for a single person and $31,322 for a family of four. In fact if the individual’s income is below the Federal Poverty Level they will qualify for Medicaid and receive healthcare coverage free.

For individuals who have health insurance coverage as of October 1, 2013, either through an individual policy or an employer’s policy, the Affordable Care Act recommends these individuals compare their plan to the plans being offered through the Governmental Exchanges to verify that their plan meets the essential benefits that are required by the Affordable Care Act. The essential benefits required by the ACT include, coverage for dependent children up to age 26, no denials for pre-existing conditions, no lifetime limit on coverage, no co-pay for prevention and wellness programs. The ACT also recommends that the covered individuals compare the cost of their plans to the costs of the Governmental Exchange Plans. If individuals are covered by Medicare or Medicaid they do not have to do anything. As stated above, if an individual does not have health insurance coverage and does not apply for coverage by March 31, 2014, his or her income, if above 133% of the Federal Poverty Level, will be subject to a 1% income tax penalty. Individuals considering applying for health coverage through the Governmental Exchanges need to compare the premiums, deductibles and co-pays to non-governmental plans and employer plans. The Governmental Exchanges offer 4 different plans. The least expensive plan is called the Bronze plan. It pays 60% of the individual’s healthcare costs. The second plan is called the Silver plan and it pays 70% of the individual’s healthcare costs. It is more expensive than the bronze plan. The third plan is called the Gold plan. It pays 80% of the covered individual’s healthcare costs and is more expensive than the first and second plan. The fourth plan is called the Platinum plan and it pays 90% of the individual’s healthcare costs. It the most expensive plan. The actual costs (premiums) for each of these plans depends on the ages of the covered individuals, the size of the family, the location where they live and their medical history. For Individuals making no more than 400% of the Federal Poverty levels, which for 2013 is $45,960 for an individual and $94,200 for a family of four, the premiums can not exceed 9.5% of their income. As an example, for a person earning $45,960 annually, their premium can not exceed $4336 per year. For an individual earning more than 400% of the annual Federal Poverty Level but less than $200,000 annually the premiums are market based. For Individuals making over $200,000 their premiums are also market based but they have to pay a .9% tax on income above $200,000. These Individuals will also be subject to a 3.8% tax on interest and dividend income, and on capital gains, including any gain exceeding $250,000 on the sale of their home. The .9% tax and the 3.8% tax will be assessed on individuals making over $200,000 beginning in 2013 and thereafter no matter what insurance plan they are covered by.

The Affordable Care Act also includes provisions for small employers and large employers. A small employer is defined as a business with less than fifty employees. A large employer is defined as a business with 50 or more full-time equivalent employees. Only a few provisions of the ACT apply to large employers. Beginning in 2015 large employers must provide affordable heath insurance that provides minimum value to all employees or pay a tax of $2,000 per employee (for all employees except the first 30). Large employers, beginning in 2015, must file a comprehensive report with the IRS verifying, first and foremost, that they are providing health insurance. The employer’s plan must meet the ACT required essential benefits including the affordable care cost formula which sets thresholds on how much the employer can charge the employee for premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Large Employers can opt out of providing health insurance to their employees by allowing them to join a Governmental Exchange. The employer will have to pay the $2,000 per employee tax if they do so! There is no guarantee that the Exchange premiums will be less than the employer’s plan premiums.

As of October 1, 2013, small employers who provide health insurance to their employees, cover at least 50% their full-time employee’s premiums, and have fewer than 25 full-time equivalent employees with average annual wages of less than $50,000 may be eligible for the Small Business Health Care Tax Credit. The credit for 2013 is 35% of premiums paid and is scheduled to increase to 50% in 2014, but in 2014, to qualify for the credit the small employer’s employees must be enrolled in a qualified health plan offered through a Small Business Health Options (SHOP) Exchange. If the small business employer qualifies for the tax credit and has no taxes due, the credit is refundable. Basically small business employers have an incentive to enroll their employees in a SHOP governmental plan by agreeing to pay half their premiums and receiving a tax credit of 50% of the costs of the premium. Between now and March 31, 2014 , the ACT focuses on getting people who do not have health insurance to get coverage. Those that do not, unless exempted by unemployment or Federal Poverty Levels, will pay a tax penalty. Individuals whose incomes are less than 4 times the Federal Poverty Levels will get subsidies or tax credits thus receiving a discounted premium. Those with incomes greater than 4 times the Poverty Levels up to $200,000 of income will pay market rate premiums. Individuals with income exceeding $200,000 will pay market rates plus an additional .9% employment tax, collected by the IRS.

Large business employers can access the Governmental Exchanges for their employees beginning the first of 2015. Large employers who opt to provide health insurance coverage to their employees through non-governmental markets have to be able to prove that their plans meet the Essential Benefits and Affordable Costs requirements of the ACT by the first of 2015 or else be prepared to receive significant penalties and taxes. Amendments and changes to the ACT will likely happen in 2014 but it is unlikely that the ACT will be overturned. The goals of the Affordable Care ACT are to provide health care insurance coverage to every eligible person in America while reducing the total health care costs. The Government is confident the Affordable Care Plans will help them achieve their goals. Looking at the average annual per person health care cost back in 2010 when the ACT was passed, it was $8402 per person in the U.S., according to the Kaiser Foundation. It is the number the Government will have to compare itself to in order to determine if the ACT has successfully reduced the cost of health care in the United States. Most employer plans historically have paid about 60% of the annual per person costs with the employee paying the other 40% through premiums, deductibles, and co-pays. Using these historical numbers, and assuming the average employer plan covers 100 employees, the combined health insurance costs for the employer and employee would be $8402 times 100. This plan would cost $840,200, with the employer paying $504,100 and the employees paying $336,080. If this employer decides to transfer his employees to a governmental plan and no longer offer a health care insurance benefit, the employer will be subject to an annual tax penalty of $2,000 per employee, resulting in a cost of $200,000 to the employer. In other words the bottom line of the employer’s business would increase $304,120. If it is the intent of the Government to hold the employee’s future insurance coverage costs comparable to the employee’s current costs the Government will have to subsidize the total costs of $840,200 minus the employer’s contribution off $200,000 and minus the employees’ costs of $336,080, to the tune of $304,120. Without the subsidy, the total health care costs per person of $8402 will have to be reduced 36%. Without this cost reduction, the Government has only four options. raise the employer’s contribution (penalty), raise the employee’s contribution (premiums, deductibles and co-pays), implement additional employment taxes on the employer and employees, or some combination of all of the above.

Everyone should have access to healthcare, the question is how do we pay for it? The ACT has provisions to cut the costs of healthcare, but things like wellness and preventive care, which have the potential to reduce costs, will take years for a return on the investment. Based on what is buried in the 2,700 page Law (the ACT) it is almost certain that all of the four options mentioned above have already been planned for.

About the Author
James McGahee, Jr. recently retired as Chief Executive Officer of South Georgia Medical Center, is a leader in the community. Mr. McGahee is a past member of the board for Valdosta-Lowndes County Chamber of Commerce, Healthcare Financial Management Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, Georgia Hospital Association, and the American College of Healthcare Executives.

Smiling Physician near New Family

 

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. 

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…

businesswoman reads document

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

ICD_10_MDS_of_Kansas

 

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. 

 

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.

Change Just Ahead Green Road Sign with Dramatic Clouds, Sun Rays and Sky.

 

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. 

 

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.”

 

Doctor Speaking with Patient

 

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. 

 

Aging population, Obamacare causes increase demand in doctors by 2025

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

 

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. 

 

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?”

25th anniversary of the signing of the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 in the United States

October 25th marks the 25th anniversary of the signing of the Women’s Business Ownership Act of 1988 in the United States.

“As a result of HR 5050, women entrepreneurs were provided with long overdue access to capital, education and technical assistance offered in a woman’s voice, access to federal policymaking circles, and the undercounting of the number and economic contributions of women-owned businesses were finally addressed,” said Billie Dragoo, Chair and Interim CEO of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO).

“Women are leading the economic recovery in this country by starting more businesses and growing them faster. If we can spur every woman business owner to add just one employee to her company, we will add millions of new jobs and give this economy the jolt of growth it needs,” said Monica Smiley, publisher and CEO of Enterprising Women.

WIPP’s President and Co-Founder, Barbara Kasoff has been a trailblazer in creating a powerful national voice for women entrepreneurs, and training for a women entrepreneurial growth agenda. She added, “We know all too well that our work is not nearly done; and we know all too well that while women are key drivers of economic growth, we continue to face barriers to economic participation and that gap undermines global economic expansion, an important factor in our growth.  We are creating partnerships, we are energizing our leaders and we are building a new, more inclusive and robust role for women in our nation.”

“Women business owners today are often shocked to hear about the challenges that their predecessors faced only 25 years ago,” according to Virginia Littlejohn, CEO of Quantum Leaps, Inc. “In an era when many states required a male to co-sign a business loan, one witness who was divorced and didn’t have a husband or father who could be a co-signer had to ask her 17-year old son to co-sign for her – when he couldn’t even vote.”

“As important as all of the elements of the Act have been to women’s enterprise development, I’d argue that providing compelling and myth-busting data and statistics have done more than capital, counseling and community to propel the growth of women-owned businesses forward. Indeed, it has proven to be the fuel that has opened eyes, changed hearts and minds, and allowed us to measure progress and point out continued gaps,” stated Julie Weeks, President and CEO of Womenable,

The next generation of women business owners, and even many women business owners today, don’t realize just how far we’ve come in the past 25 years, and what still remains to be accomplished.

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, EHR technology, Medical Scribe education and REAL-TIME solutions – owned and controlled by a WOMAN, WBOC certified!  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. 

MDS is a Certified Academic Partner w/ACMSS

ACMSS

 

Are you looking for industry standards for becoming a Certified Medical Scribe Specialist?  We can help.  Our Medical Scribe program is an approved education program with the American College of Medical Scribe Specialists.

If you want more information, please contact us at info_ed@mdsofkansas.com

 

Onsite, real-time, at-the-point-of-care … healthcare documentation

Medical Scribes, are becoming more and more valuable as physicians transition to Electronic Health Records (EHR).

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, EHR technology, Medical Scribe education 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. 

MDS Crosses State Lines to Partner with Azalea Health

hospital workers

 

Wichita, KS (September 19, 2013) – Wichita-based medical document services company, MDS of Kansas (MDS) joins forces  with Azalea Health (Azalea) to provide clients with a billing service and complete cloud-based electronic health records (EHR) solution, Azalea EHR.

For over 22 years MDS has delivered a variety of medical document services, including transcription, editing, EHR integration, and education programs throughout the Midwest. “The merging of advanced technology with continued emphasis on efficient and accurate healthcare documentation 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, “The specificity of documentation in the health record 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 15% more in reimbursements. In addition to accuracy, Azalea provides a secure portal for users to both record and transmit sensitive data.

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About MDS of Kansas:
MDS of Kansas, L.L.C. is a small business located at 205 S. Hillside and offers Medical Transcription services, education programs for Medical Transcription and Medical Scribes, as well as Medical Billing & Coding services.  For more information, visit www.MDSofKansas.com or call (866) 777-7264.

About Azalea Health
Azalea Health (Azalea) is a leading provider of cloud-based healthcare solutions and services. Azalea provides Electronic Health Records (EHR), Practice Management Systems (PMS), Electronic Prescribing (eRx), Laboratory Ordering and Resulting, Patient Health Records Portal, Telemedicine and Health Information Exchanges (HIE), as well as Revenue Cycle Management Services (RCM), and Precertification Services. For more information, visit www.AzaleaHealth.com or call (877) 777-7686.

 

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Transcription, Revenue Cycle Management, EHR technology, Medical Scribe education 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. 

Copy & Paste is not okay? Say what???

“Seventy-four to 90 percent of physicians use the copy/paste function in their EHRs, and between 20 to 78 percent of physician notes are copied text, according to a September AHIMA report.”

“It’s become such a compliance and payment problem that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius together with Attorney General Eric Holder wrote a letter last year to industry medical groups underscoring the seriousness of doctors “gaming the system, possibly to obtain payments to which they are not entitled.”

We have spent a lot of time educating our students and MTs about the deadliness of the copy/paste function in medical transcription.  There can be serious errors made and the veteran healthcare documentation specialist has learned this over the last decade or two.  However, it is apparently common to see this going on in the EHR.  Take a look …

EHR copy and paste? Better think twice
Healthcare IT News
Who would have thought that something so simple as copy and paste could have such serious consequences? Speaking at the MGMA annual conference in San Diego, Diana Warner, director at AHIMA, confirmed the seriousness of inappropriately using copy and paste functions in electronic health records. And the government agrees — it’s no laughing matter.