EHR Alerts … and more!

Pew: Patient safety demands more robust testing of EHR usability

Healthcare IT News
Pew Charitable Trusts says not enough attention is being paid to electronic health record usability from a safety point of view. And given that federal certification requirements don’t address two key safety factors, it’s offering EHR developers and provider organizations a toolset to help boost patient protections.  READ MORE

Few execs believe healthcare IT security tech will be disruptive

HealthITSecurity
Only 7 percent of executives surveyed by Reaction Data believe that healthcare IT security technology will have a significant disruptive impact on healthcare. Twenty-nine percent said that telemedicine will be the biggest disruptor, 20 percent said AI, 15 percent said interoperability, 13 percent said data analytics, 11 percent said mobile data, 3 percent said cloud, and surprisingly only 2 percent said blockchain would be the biggest disruptor.  READ MORE

Hackers favor using vulnerable web apps to beat security perimeters

Health Data Management
For many organizations, vulnerable web applications may be their weakest link when it comes to an effective data security strategy. About three-quarters (73 percent) of successful perimeter breaches in 2017 were achieved using vulnerable Web applications, according to Kaspersky Lab’s analysis of penetration tests it conducted on corporate networks that year.  READ MORE

HIMSS: Stark Law hinders care coordination, health data exchange

EHR Intelligence
The Physician Self-Referral Law, commonly known as the Stark Law, places unnecessary administrative burdens on providers while hindering care coordination and health data exchange, according to a letter from HIMSS to CMS Administrator Seema Verma. In response to the federal agency’s June request for information (RFI), HIMSS advised CMS to change Stark Law regulations to ensure they do not prohibit or interfere with health data exchange and care coordination.In its letter, HIMSS emphasized that alternative payment models (APMs) require a flexible regulatory framework to succeed.  READ MORE

How blockchain could solve 4 major problems in healthcare

Health Data Management
The healthcare IT industry faces a host of challenges today, including silos within hospitals that restrict information sharing, integrating artificial intelligence into clinical practice, to solving the opioid crisis. While distributed ledger technologies such as blockchain won’t mitigate all of them, this technology can resolve a number of significant pain points associated with routine business processes.  READ MORE

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Billing, Medical Transcription, Scribe Services, and AzaleaHealth EHR.   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.  We have education programs in Medical Scribe Specialists. #MedicalTranscription #AzaleaHealthEHR #RevenueCycleManagement #MDSofKansas #MedicalBillingService #MedicalScribes

5 Best Practices To Ensure A Smooth, Expedient ICD-10 Transition

The ICD-10 Compliance date is looming and it is imperative that healthcare providers be prepared to make the transition. It affects everything from claims processing, physicians’ workflow, and patients’ access to care. Many organizations may be rallying employees and resources in order to make the switch from the ICD-9 to the ICD-10 coding for medical diagnoses and inpatient hospital procedures before the implementation date of October 1, 2015.

To make matters worse, the transition is not easy, but a major undertaking with nearly 19 times as many procedure codes and almost five times as many diagnosis codes in the ICD-10 than in the ICD-9. While the ICD-10 switch is definitely necessary, as the outdated and clinically inaccurate ICD-9 has not been updated since its installation, in 1979, the ICD-10 stands to enhance the quality of healthcare, improve data for epidemiological research, as well as enable physicians to make better clinical decisions. However, this is dependent on the ability for the healthcare industry to make a smooth and accurate transition to the new International Classification of Diseases, according to Richard Milam, president and CEO of EnableSoft

In order for healthcare providers to successfully meet the ICD-10 deadline, Milam suggest five best practices to ensure an expedient, smooth ICD-10 transition:

Richard Milam, president and CEO of EnableSoft
1. Employ Robotic Process Automation That Does the Work for You

“You” is meant to imply the entire organization because that is how many resources it will take to have the ICD-10 switch completed by the deadline if Robotic Process Automation is not used to update and add the multiple new codes into EMR, NDC, medical billing, and claims processing data systems. Certain softwares may have to upgraded or replaced to support the 68,000 diagnoses codes and nearly 87,000 procedure codes; however, through a series of human-directed scripts, Robotic Process Automation technologies will populate the specific fields in the data systems with the ICD-10 data required. The already costly transition to the new ICD-10 can be mitigated by not having to outsource or hire new employees to enter the new codes manually. Furthermore, the data transition can take place over the course of a few days, not a few months, ensuring healthcare providers will be ready to transition to using the new ICD-10 codes.

2. Test Your Software

Not only should you confirm with your clearinghouses, billing service, and payers that they will be upgraded and compliant with the ICD-10, but when they will be ready for testing to occur. Robust end-to-end testing must occur with your software in order to ensure claims are being accepted properly and processed by insurance contractors, Medicaid, Medicare, and other payment processes are operational. Test internally to ensure transactions can be generated and sent with the ICD-10 codes and test externally to ensure the transactions are successfully received by payment providers and that the payment can be processed correctly. After October 1, any ICD-9 codes used in transactions will not be accepted for services and will be rejected for payment. Failure to test your software properly can result in disruptions in patients’ receiving the treatment they need and receipt of due payments.

3. Educate or It All Falls Down

The updated, enhanced medical coding that is to enhance and improve patient diagnoses, performed procedures, treatment, and billing will not prove capable of these abilities without humans to employ its codes, terminology, and procedures appropriately and correctly. You must educate your staff about the changes to the ICD-10 and perform practices and routines in order to prepare for the change. Have each of your staff participate in educational seminars in order to become informed of the changes and how that will affect their position, the procedures patients are to undergo based on the new diagnosis codes, as well as the improved treatments that patients are to have performed. Assist and inform staff by identifying the 50-100 most commonly used ICD-9-CM diagnosis codes based on specialties and determine the equivalent ICD-10-CM codes, and have this information accessible before and after the implementation of the ICD-10. Having your staff prepared and knowledgeable about the ICD-10 will reduce delays in patient care and procedures, which is the reason for the ICD-10—to deliver improved diagnosis and advanced medical treatments that will enhance patients’ quality of care.

4. Implement an Effective Communication Method and Coordinate Conflict Resolution

While making the data transition and update to the new and diverse medical coding that is in the ICD-10, it is imminent that there may be delays in processes, confusion over coding and form completion, as well as workflow changes. Make sure your employees know who they can contact or call on if they are unsure of what code to report, how to complete a form, or other transitory questions that may arise following the implementation of the ICD-10. Identify leads and supervisors for each workflow and specialty area that will be available for their staff requests and questions, and make sure those individuals are highly educated on the ICD-10 and have the authority to execute a resolution. Additionally, determine how transactions handled just prior to the compliance date will be handled in order to ensure payment processing will occur—and more importantly—patients are covered financially and receive the best treatment. Identify critical areas or procedures that may be challenging to transition to using the ICD-10 and have practical resolutions for those practices ready to be executed if, and when, needed.

5. Obtain the correct medical documentation and update your forms to support the ICD-10.

Patient intake forms, EMR forms, insurance forms, and superbills must be updated to support the ICD-10 codes. In order to have patient medical records completed correctly and treatments performed effectively, in addition to have payments process, healthcare providers, clearinghouses, and payers must update their forms to reflect the codes in the ICD-10. Physician forms must be updated with the new medical terminology and diagnoses and procedural codes, along with superbills. Identify categories of uncommon services and diagnoses and determine units, time, and cost for each category in order for physicians to be able to report in the EMR and on superbills. Determine and have readily available a list of common or most frequently used abbreviations to ensure they are utilized correctly and correspondently with the ICD-10 terminology and codes. Lastly, and this goes without saying, obtain the updated and correct documentation that will stand as educational and reference material in regards to the ICD-10. The American Medical Association publishes the ICD-10 codebook and other supplementary documentation on topics such as anatomy and physiology, mappings, and coding workbooks. Make sure to have these ICD-10 Bibles available, and in all areas, for staff and physicians to reference when needed or desired.

The healthcare industry is about to embark on an intense change in treatment, reporting, and payment processes as the ICD-10 Compliance date approaches. While the ICD-10 is definitely necessary to reflect advances in medicine and detailed diagnoses, the change is extremely disruptive for healthcare providers. By employing efficient technologies and engaging effective strategies, healthcare providers can execute the ICD-10 transition quickly and accurately by the compliance date.  READ MORE

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Billing and RCM, Medical Transcription, Pre-Certs with AzaleaHealth EHR.   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.  We have education programs in Medical Scribe Specialists. #medicaltranscription #azaleahealthEHR #revenuecyclemanagement

Significant Changes in the Medical Billing Due to Obamacare

It’s now been over four years since the Affordable Care Act, otherwise known as “Obamacare”, officially went into effect in the United States. However, we are just now learning the wide-ranging impacts the legislation has had on the healthcare industry, and in particular on medical billing in hospitals and doctor’s offices throughout the country. While we still don’t know the scope of changes that are yet to occur, there are some undeniable trends that seem to be making their way down the pipeline, particularly as we prepare for the oft-mentioned “employee mandate”, which, if all goes according to the (often revised) plan, goes into effect in 2015.     Article from M-Scribe

Medical Billing Will Increasingly Become Outsourced 
Medical billing has never been a particularly popular activity in doctor’s offices and in hospitals. Now, with the increasing number of medical coding requirements resulting from the Affordable Care Act, medical professionals are continuing the trend of outsourcing this work to companies that specialize in it. According to a report in Seeking Alpha, large outsourcing companies such as Firstsource Solutions and WNS are increasing their domestic US presence to accommodate a growing number of medical professionals who are choosing to outsource medical billing to them. 
By 2015, more doctors and hospitals are projected to outsource their medical billing than ever before, in large part thanks to Obamacare and growing administrative costs. The other less discussed (but no less important) consideration is that outsourcing medical billing reduces liability on the hospital or doctor’s office. 

AzaleaHealth is a well recognized Billing and Revenue Cycle Management company.  Medical billing services includes a full range of accounts receivable functions including: electronic claims submission, reimbursement accounting, denials management, patient invoicing, collections, detailed billing reports, physician contracting and credentialing. Azalea also provides clearinghouse setup services including Electronic Remittance Advice (ERA)Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT).  Azalea helps to reduce your storage and filing issues from paper EOBs and speeds up insurance payments by having reimbursements deposited directly to your bank account.

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The Number of Medical Billing Professionals Will Grow Dramatically 

While outsourcing is certain to increase in 2015, The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that the medical billing industry as a whole will increase in 2015 as well. In fact, it is estimated that the industry will grow by about 22% between 2012 and 2022. While some of this increase is in fact due to regulatory and administrative burdens resulting from the Affordable Care Act, many experts also believe that the changes from the ACA will actually reduce administrative issues, increase efficiency, and ultimately grow the medical billing industry at a slower rate than it otherwise would have in the absence of the Affordable Care Act. 
The other key reason why the medical billing profession is expected to grow is the simple fact that, under the Affordable Care Act, more people will have access to healthcare, which means more medical coding and medical billing will be required. While increased access to healthcare for the overall population (and particularly the poor) is a worthy goal, it comes at the very real cost of increased administrative and regulatory issues, at least in the short-term. 

Precertification and Eligibility Verification Will Continue to be Cumbersome 
While it’s true that one of the original promises of the Affordable Care Act was reduced difficulty for hospitals and doctor’s offices that needed to pre-certify or verify eligibility of a patient for a particular procedure, reality has proven itself to be more complicated. Early reports indicate that, at best, this process is as slow and cumbersome as it has always been, while critics claim that it is in fact less efficient than before the ACA was passed into law. Part of the problem stems from the fact that many insurance companies and medical offices still aren’t even sure how to properly code procedures and medical services; a problem that, while severe, should hopefully improve gradually in 2015 and onward if all goes well. 

Obamacare is causing significant changes in the medical billing industry. Hopefully the negative aspects will diminish over time, while the promised benefits of the law start to take hold. 

Article from M-Scribe

Medical Document Services of Kansas, LLC (MDS) is a Wichita, Kansas healthcare document service specializing in Medical Billing and RCM, Medical Transcription, and AzaleaHealth EHR.   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.  We have education programs in Medical Scribe Specialists and Healthcare Documentation Specialists. #medicaltranscription #azaleahealthEHR #revenuecyclemanagement