Overcoming Recent Billing Challenges with Efficient Medical Billing Services

Overhaul of codes, forms, rates and standards: the current year is going to be very eventful for care providers from a medical billing and coding standpoint. But whether you will emerge through these challenges 11 months later with your revenues stronger or weaker - depends on how well you can prepare your practice to meet the challenges.

If you closely look at the four challenges cited at the beginning, you will understand the wide-ranging impact they will have on cross-sections of your practice. This article will closely look at the specific issues, but it will first explore Healthcare exchanges (HIXs).

HIXs are meant to implement the principle of Affordable Care Act (ACA) which seeks to expand the base of insured Americans by making insurance policies cost effective. In practice, HIXs will allow a large number of insurers to sell policies at affordable rates to American citizens increasing the number of insured Americans to 40 millions.

This is highly commendable, but how HIXs will set the lower rates of insurance policies to facilitate this huge leap in number of insured Americans is not known; but that this will lead to plummeting reimbursement rates for physicians is easy to foresee. And this follows a two percent slash in Medicare rates, affected in April 2013.

But the good side of this rate decrease is that it’s going to a huge base of Americans (about 35 to 40 millions) to the current patient increasing the number of patients per care provider substantially.

Additionally, transition to ICD 10 from the ICD 9 platform has kept care providers concerned, especially with the effective date of 1st Oct. 2014 nearing. The wide-spread concern is justified for various reasons. ICD has 13000 diagnostic codes while ICD 10 includes 70000, which leaps to 155000 if you include the procedural codes. Not only that. Medicare & Medicaid Services introduced a new form which practices have to use to submit their claims.

Moreover, ICD 10 will also require practices to move to a new HIPPA platform, which means additional operational adaption and cost for them. No wonder ICD 10 is being seen as the biggest ICD code overhaul in years.

MBC has been helping many care providers, both in small and big cities of the US, to overcome their billing and coding challenges. We have guided many practices in setting up EHR so that they can handle larger number of patients and leverage the current HIX-caused patient influx. We have also helped practices with ICD 10 transition.

Our Revenue Management Consulting services can help you to fix and optimize your revenue management cycle. To help you do this, we assess it and identify it through training, installation of proper software applications etc.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US, has also been helping many practices to overcome challenges of slashed rates and ICD 10 with its outsourcing medical billing services handling the entire range of activities involved in billing and coding, starting from preparation of claims through submission to post-submission follow-ups. Our service modules are flexible and you can pick and choose only those pieces of our services that meet your coding needs so that you can avoid paying additional cost.

Challenges Push Family Practitioners to Partner with Billing Specialists to Improve Revenue

Despite the delay in implementation of 26.5 percent cut in Medicare family practitioners payment, AAFP continues to call on Congress for a repeal of the sustainable growth rate (SGR) formula. This is understandable because the deferment means a temporal relief for family practitioners and if SGR is around, given that it assesses growth solely from a financial standpoint, payment cuts introduced without taking medical and human factors into account will continue to recur.

Though, this cut which is framing the political discourse around primary healthcare in the US is a recent phenomenon (the cut was scheduled for implementation on 1st January, 2013), if we go about a year back and take the case of Dr. Hammond, we will see financial problems have been ailing family physicians for some time now.

Dr. Hammond is an independent family physician with a clinic in Denver who ramped up his in-house IT operations and staff to make his practice and services more holistic, such that with his increased staff strength and upgraded IT his practice is able to cover the entire need of a modern-day healthcare operations starting from keeping in touch with patients to track their health and progress to maintaining electronic data. It’s the most ideal practice to have, isn’t it?

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Though, Dr. Hammond and many family practitioners across the US have upgraded their family physician practices to meet the modern needs of healthcare (like outreach and coordination), the fact remains that these enhancements are not reimbursed under traditional insurance contracts making profitability difficult. This together with new payment reforms which encourage healthcare providers to come together is making independent family practitioners a dying breed in the US. Whether this is good or bad for US healthcare is debatable, but a close look at Dr. Hammond’s operations would reveal that it includes lot of things that are not part of core physician practice (like IT data maintenance) and could be kept out to keep the operations thin, nimble and cost-effective.

And as family practitioners wake up to the prospect of frequent cuts in Medicare family physician payments, there problems seem to be getting enough and counting. However, to upgrade their operations, thwart the effects of Medicare cuts and also to gear up for the innovative payment model, many family practices have been joining Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) or setting them up.

But transitioning to ACOs from their traditional mode of practice may not be easy as it involves negotiating pay schedules, negotiating payer contracts etc. Also, it requires monitoring and analyzing information, like eligibility for Medicare, medical outcomes, Medicaid and private insurance, and clinical compliance and reimbursement requirements to name a few. Family practitioners in addition to the Medicare cut challenges will have to ensure ICD-10, HIPAA 5010 compliant billing and coding along with EHR and PQRS.

Medicalbillerandcoders.com, the largest consortium of billers and coders across US, has also been helping various healthcare providers with billing and coding services for over a decade now. MBC’s Revenue Management Consulting services can help family practitioners by assessing their in-house revenue management cycle and ensure sound coordination between various components of healthcare, facilitating smooth flow of medical data for ACO operations and otherwise.

We also identify gaps in your process blocking areas of revenue leakage and identifying areas of staff training.  Additionally, we can help train your staff to  replace applications where required and handle new billing and coding challenges like EHR, PQRS, and ICD-10, and HIPAA 5010 compliance so that they can make error-free insurance claims.

Overcoming Cardiology Billing Concerns in 2013 with Complete Revenue Cycle Management

As a specialized healthcare field, Cardiology has cherished generous government support for testing services and unhindered reimbursements. However, with new developments in Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (PPACA) and lower reimbursements given recent healthcare reforms, Cardiology billing is expected to face some serious issues in 2013. In addition, ICD -10 and HIPAA regulations are bound to complicate the financial scenario for Cardiologists. Some of the major concerns in Cardiology Billing are expected to be –

• New Regulations & healthcare reforms – PPACA, ACA, HIPAA and ICD – 10 are some of the most popular regulations and reforms that have shaken the healthcare industry. Cardiologists are facing disconcerting billing issues, patient data documentation issues and coverage related dilemmas

• Reduced Reimbursements – Due to ever-increasing complexity of claim procedures for insurance providers and reduction in reimbursements from Medicare and Medicaid by up-to 25%, financial performance of every Cardiology Practice is bound to take a hit

• Consolidation and ACA – With increasing consolidation of large hospitals and independent practitioners, surgeons and physicians are losing their autonomy. Many organizations and practices are participating in Accountable Care projects to reduce costs but are in turn exposing themselves to heightened risks as well

• Increased no. of patients – With 30 million more patients expected to be covered by the end of the year 2013 as per new government healthcare reforms, burden on care providers is expected to increase multifold

• Stress on Quality of care – Increasing shift towards quality of care is adding to the service expectations from Cardiologists. Coverage is denied and audit issues arise in case of re-admittance of patients that had cardiac procedures administered on them within a 30 day time period

Despite prospects of difficult times ahead, Cardiology Billing concerns can be effectively addressed with efficient Revenue Cycle Management (RCM). RCM is gaining popularity with healthcare service providers due to the unparalleled time and freedom it offers practitioners to focus on patients. Judiciously aligned RCM can enhance productivity of billing process and reduce financial concerns dramatically-

• Accurate RCM reduces the claim denial rate by arranging pre-authorizations and checking patient coverage with insurer at the time of registration itself
• RCM monitors claim filing and coding process for immaculate documentation and patient record maintenance, that supports efficient billing
• Effective RCM improves revenue capturing and collection of outstanding bills by applying effective denial management, capturing proper documents, handling claim entry and secondary billing
• RCM also analyzes and realigns the payer mix, ensuring improved payouts per revenue cycle by cutting down the risk of practice

Expecting a Cardiologist to handle all this while delivering quality care service is like hoping for a daily miracle. Medicalbillersandcoders.com is therefore nothing short of a miracle partner that can solve all your Cardiology Billing concerns. We improve access management, handle regular claim denials with impeccable turn-around time and expedite cash collections. With a team of experts dedicated to handle all aspects of Revenue Cycle Management, medicalbillersandcoders.com transforms your Cardiology Billing concerns into guaranteed financial success.

How will the Affordable Care Act Impact Cardiology Practitioners and Their RCM?

Healthcare industry has been undergoing steady reforms over the past couple of years and the changes are expected to continue. The objective of this ongoing transformation is to achieve improved healthcare services with increased focus on quality care. In such a scenario, Affordable Care Act is being viewed as a promising way of improving healthcare and strengthening financial conditions of the industry. However in addition to expansion of coverage, increased accountability of insurance companies, lowering of healthcare costs and enhancement of quality care for Medicare patients; ACA is expected to increase revenue risk for physicians as well. As a shift from fee-for-service to revenue and cost sharing model of ACOs (Accountable Care Organizations), Cardiology practitioners will face a lot of challenges in realigning their revenue cycles.

Some of the major RCM parameters that ACA will affect practitioners are –

• Due to bundling efforts, cardiovascular coding will undergo additional changes
• Medicare fee schedules will change for physicians in addition to the continued threat of reimbursement cuts by 30% due to SGR
• Penalties for non participation in federal incentive programs like EHR, quality reporting system and e-prescribing
• Government and commercial insurers will pay for value based services (pay for performance reimbursement model) instead of continuing with the volume based or fee for service model
• Increased number of Medicare patients to be covered by Cardiology practitioner participating in ACO project, meaning more financial risk and heightened burden on RCM

With rising focus on quality care and expected collaboration between hospitals and independent medical practitioners under ACA, to cut down costs and enhance care coverage, Cardiologists will have to adapt their practices and RCM as per the imminent changes.

RCM or Revenue Cycle Management is the strength of any medical practice aiming to stay financially viable. RCM cannot afford to stagnate in its processes as the healthcare environment is changing on a continual basis. With industry changes, RCM of a Cardiology Practice must transform to better suit the needs of the practice. Given a high likelihood of ACO participation by most Cardiology Practices, some well planned changes in RCM can prepare a practice to absorb heightened risk and derive better revenue from ACO –

• Compliance to changing regulations and participation in federal programs designed to incentivize practice performance can save your practice a lot of future costs and penalties. Thus RCM of your Cardiology practice must comply with new regulations and keep your practice up to date
• Change in fee schedules and expected reduced reimbursements by Medicare would mean diminished revenues. Thus focus of your RCM must be to diversify the payers mix to absorb this inevitable decline in revenue
• Coding and billing changes due to bundling must be tracked and updated in your system to avoid any claim denial or audit complications
• RCM must strive to adopt value based reimbursement model for your practice and gradually shift away from fee for service payment model

As RCM and billing experts, delivering optimum medical billing and coding services across all 50 US States, medicalbillersandcoders.com can help add value to your revenue model and save you tremendous costs and expenses. Your Cardiology Practice can benefit from our billing and coding experts help and our accurate revenue cycle management can transform a high risk ACO project into a high return venture for you.

Providers Acquiring Medical Billing Services To Handle the ACA Impact on Revenue

The Affordable Care Act has left the healthcare providers in the US worried. A survey conducted sometime back reported that 55% of hospitals expect a dip in their revenue while only 28% think that there would be an increase in revenue. But the survey also revealed that a considerable number of those who are informed about the impact of the healthcare reform (about 58 %) plan to become accountable care organization to reap financial benefit of the reform and improve the quality of care.

The 58 percent that revealed their plan to become ACO organization are well informed about the finer points of The Affordable Care Act as the law aims to set up a national pilot program to encourage care providers of various stripes (doctors, physicians etc) to coordinate and work together to improve quality of care so that they can be reimbursed through a flat fee (bundled payment) for a singular episode of care which the law supposes will lower expense and promote quality of care.

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However, the concerns of the 55% hospitals that expect a dip in revenue can’t be dismissed either. The insurance authorities propose to pay a flat payment to healthcare providers of different stripes who have come together and formed an ACO. The problem with this model is that it requires sound coordination among the various providers involved in a treatment episode to ensure a centralized collation of medical data which would be used to prepare claims and appropriate codes assigned to them.

Another concern that has worried healthcare providers is that this reform has a punitive nature to it. Millions of tax paying Americans eligible for government-subsidized healthcare coverage but without government-mandated health insurance coverage will be penalized with higher taxes unless they get an insurance policy within a year.

This is indeed good because it will induce more and more Americans to get health insurance bringing them into the net of national healthcare security. Albeit, the problem is this will require healthcare providers to assess insurance eligibility accurately, handle instances of unrealized partial payments where the patient’s bill exceeded his/her coverage, and of course a phenomenal increase in non-medical activities for healthcare providers to handle. Additionally, under ACA insurance providers will provide more coverage for preventive services and these services would have to be coded using separate CPT codes with enrollee-costs waived.

These concerns have sparked a trend where healthcare organizations that were handling their billing and coding responsibilities themselves until now are hiring the services of professional billers and coders. However, it’s important to remember that to handle the above challenges brought by ACA, a billing and coding organization needs to be familiar with the current procedures; be able to handle medical details coming from varied medical practices for preparing claims for bundled payments; be able to negotiate the additional red-tapism in submitting claims; and ensure timely payment of claims through post submission follow-ups.

MBC’s revenue management consulting has been helping physicians by performing a thorough analysis of the Revenue Management Cycle and ensuring that there is sound coordination between various components of healthcare leading to smooth flow of medical data. Our RCM services also involve identifying gaps in the process and addressing them by advising physicians while replacing, if necessary, old software applications with new ones, blocking areas of revenue leakage and identifying areas of staff training.

Medicalbillerandcoders.com, the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US, has also been helping several small to medium size healthcare providers with its Outsourcing services. MBC handles the entire range of activities involved in billing and coding starting from preparation of claims through submission to post-submission follow-ups, along with regularly updating themselves about the changing healthcare industry trends.

Protecting Your Practice Against RAC Audits With the Help of Efficient Medical Billing Practices

Efficient medical billing practices can make or break your medical practice and if anything can verify this statement, it is an RAC audit. RAC audits of Recovery Audit Contractor audits are nothing short of a nightmare for any healthcare provider.

Medicare and Medicaid are two healthcare carriers that provide coverage and reimburse physicians and hospitals for the services they provide to patients covered under these carriers. However, medical practitioners are known to receive over-ayments due to incorrect claims or erroneous coding at the time of medical billing. In essence, government tries to ensure patients’ best interest and control the rate of fraud, error or wastage by putting RAC audits in place. But the resultant inconvenience caused to a medical practice in the event of an RAC audit is nothing short of disastrous.

Not only is error-free coding and meticulous book keeping of paramount importance, subsequent adjustment of office accounts can play an important role in case an RAC audit actually happens. To protect your practice against RAC audits, you must put efficient medical billing practices in place –

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• Follow correct coding for services –If a medical service is incorrectly coded for the sake of avoiding internal confusion or due to oversight and the incorrectly coded service is reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid; then your practice can be in for an RAC audit. Transparent and efficient medical billing practices help you monitor coding of services on a regular basis and avoid simple yet latent disasters, hence with a little more attention, you can save your practice a lot of money and hassle.
  
• File claims for correct payment amounts – Scrutinizing the final claim statement filed with healthcare carriers is of paramount importance. If the government settled an incorrect payment amount to your practice, as long as five years ago (as per recent healthcare reforms, the RAC audit period for overpayment has been extended from three years to five years) then your current financials can suffer drastically. Diligent book-keeping is a medical billing practice that can help you avoid this scenario altogether.
  
• Avoid duplicate services – It may not be fraud at all, but mention of duplicate services is rarely ever seen as an honest human error by an auditor. A prudent medical billing practice is installing audit software or enlisting the service of a compliance auditor, to fix your errors before an actual audit.
  
• Don’t claim for non covered services – Services that are not necessary and reasonable under section 1862(a) (1) (A) of the social security act are not meant to be reimbursed by Medicare or Medicaid. Avoiding inclusion of the same in your claim amount can save you from a potential audit.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com an expert in medical billing and coding serving the healthcare industry for more than decade now can help protect your practice from potential RAC audits by offering immaculate medical billing consultancy and services.

RAC auditors conduct audits on providers in response to insider information or complaints, upon diagnosing irregularities in billing and coding practices as per the CERT or other CMS analysis. With comprehensive and efficient medical billing practices in place with the help of our experienced medical billers and coders, our client’s practices are well equipped with all the required defenses in place to protect themselves against an RAC audit.

Insurance Underpayments, the Issue That is Plaguing Orthopedic Billing the Most

Insurance underpayments continues to be a major concern for medical practices across the United States; more so for orthopedic surgeons, who, despite serving in a more critical specialty, find it hard to fully recover their medical cost. Because most of the orthopedic procedures happen to be highly expensive, even a marginal percentage of insurance underpayments might turn out to be a major drain on practitioners’ revenue, which could severely spoil clinical and operational efficiency. With orthopedic surgeons’ insurance underpayments touching an all-time high of 10 percent and potentiality to reach 20 percent, it may be time that orthopedic surgeons relooked at their medical billing practices and process, and aggressively track and resolve their underpayments. It is encouraging that significant portion of these underpayments (as high as 7 to 10 percent) can easily be made good with a refined and robust orthopedic-specific medical billing.

While most of the underpayments may be linked to refusal by the insurance carriers, the root-cause may be inherent in orthopedic surgeons’ medical billing policies and procedures: Orthopedic Billing

To begin with orthopedic surgeons may have not been enrolled and approved by insurers.

They may not have taken due diligence in verifying patients’ eligibility for services prior to the actual appointment; there could have been lack of technology integration with practice management system to verify coverage for patients’ orthopedic procedures.

Orthopedic surgeons may have not been cautious in seeing pre-authorization or precertification, in the absence which payers are automatically authorized to reject payments for  procedures and services even if they have been proved to be medically necessary.

Orthopedic surgeons’ staff may have left deductible or coinsurance uncollected from patients.

Major portion of patients may have been Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries, whose reimbursements are lower than most of the popular commercial insurance plans.

There could have been coding errors (either under-coding or over-coding) due to coding staff’s incompetence. And with orthopedic coding likely to be more complex and vast post ICD-10, the scope for coding may be even more.

There could have been considerable in claim submission, so much so that insurance payers could reject them on grounds of being too late to be accepted.

Lack of denial management too may have been another reason; it takes special expertise to track and follow up denials in a system characterized by multiple payers

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It really takes an effective system to monitor and compare underpayments against contracted fee schedules, be it is Medicare, Medicaid or popular commercial health plans. The reasons for underpayments such as the ones highlighted can only be unearthed through a careful analysis of Revenue Cycle Management processes employed by orthopedic surgeons.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com – which has been a resource center for comprehensive medical billing solutions – can mediate the deployment of resources (orthopedic billing specialists) that offer remedial solutions to underpayment issue plaguing the orthopedic surgeons. Significant of advantage of sourcing resources through our platform is that you will get discover the real reason for a decrease in revenue; problems that should be addressed such as credentialing, insurance verification/precertification, collections, coding, and payer mix; and recognize the reasons for denials and comparing payments to the fee schedule to resolve issues with payers.

Orthopedic Billing Specialist to Take Care of CPT Code Changes Made to Orthopedic Surgery Billing in 2013

This year’s CPT Manual has spelt out extensive coding changes and revisions to orthopedic surgical codes.  In all, there are 500 code changes to the Category I codes, including 251 revisions, 151 new codes and 100 deletions. Moreover, there has been significant overhauling of nerve conduction studies, some revisions to the radiology section, and E/M changes. The extent of these coding changes and revisions, having already taken effect from January 1, 2013, has begun to impact orthopedic reimbursements in a big way. As a result, orthopedic practices may have inherited an ominous task of migrating to   a higher order in orthopedic surgical coding. Given the CPT Manual’s full list of revisions, deletions, and additions to have been effected for 2013, orthopedic practices would require to be conversant with the guidelines for the following coding sections:

Spine CPT Errata, whereinchange has been added to the spine bone grafts (20930–20938), instrumentation (22840–22844, 22848, 22845–22847), and intervertebral device (22851) CPT codes.

Bone marrow aspirate, wherein explanation has been added to bone graft codes (20930–20938) related to bone marrow aspiration. Henceforth, Category III code 0232T should be used when bone marrow aspiration is performed for platelet-rich stem cell.

Cervical Spinal Arthrodesis, which is now required to be coded as per the new guidelines issued to CPT codes 22554, 22585, 63075, and 63076

Cast application, which now includesguideline changes made to “Application and Strapping” section addressing the application of the first cast, its removal, coding by the individual who performs the initial service, and restorative management.

Hip arthroscopy, under whichCPT code 29916 (Arthroscopic labral repair of a torn labrum) is now considered inherent to CPT codes 29915, 29862, and 29863.

Chemodenervation, in which a new guideline change is introduced for CPT code 64614 used in  Chemodenervation of muscle(s); extremity and/or trunk muscle(s)

Intraoperative nerve monitoring is now included in the primary surgical service and is not separately reportable.

New CPT codes applicable to procedures for spine, shoulder arthroplasty, elbow arthroplasty, nerve conduction, extracorporeal shock wave: wound healing, etc.

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While these are some of the notable changes and guidelines to have been effected for orthopedic surgical coding since the beginning of 2013, orthopedic practices may need to follow these action steps to be fully compliant with the changes and revisions:

• Analyze the 2013 CPT Manual in its entirety to understand the guideline changes found throughout it. Specifically focus on the E&M changes and new codes that may have applicability to your practice.
  
  
• Revise charge capture tools, electronic health record (EHR) lists and short lists or favorites, if charge capture is performed within the EHR.
  
  
• Enroll with an accredited orthopedic surgical coding course.

Medicalbillersandcoders.com – which has always stood by the physician community during times of medical billing and coding crisis – has arranged for networking with the right resources (orthopedic coding specialists) to maneuver through this major surgical orthopedic coding changes and revisions. The competence and experience of our select pool of surgical Orthopedic Billing specialists should help you minimize the impact of this coding change and revision while ensuring appreciable increase in orthopedic reimbursements.

How best are medical practices prepared to address HIPAA breaches?

Contrary to the notion that government’s move to digitize healthcare information would enable healthcare providers, doctors, and insurance companies comply more aptly with HIPAA’s guidelines for patients’ privacy and security, there has been an upsurge in HIPAA breaches with providers being reported for breaches of some kind or the other. Electronic Health Record (EHR) systems, which are made mandatory for providers seeking to attain ‘Meaningful Use’ status, have shown propensity to be manipulated either internally or by unscrupulous external elements. Either way, providers have been held accountable and penalized for breach of HIPAA’s mandate for ensuring patients’ information safety and security. With the cost data breaches being unbearable and providers or doctors’ credibility at stake, it is inevitable that HIPAA breaches are responded instantly with remedial measures, such as:

• Replacing or removing the staff that may have committed the violation at a particular EHR access point. If the HIPAA breach is traced to an external attack, EHR access may need to be secured against all possible external threats such as hacks or thefts by manipulating EHR system passwords.
  
  
• Parallel recommendation to improve the HIPAA program; an intrinsic part of such improvement program would necessarily mean reframing EHR policy and staff training or reorientation in accordance with changing EHR environment.
  
  
• Apprising your EHR vendors of the need for better customizing the EHR systems so that you may possibly withstand any kind of threats to patients’ health data.
  
  
• Establishing protocols for tasks, timelines and communication among the team to ensure everything on your EHR system runs as smoothly as possible.
  
  
• Accurate and thorough assessment of the potential risks and vulnerabilities to the confidentiality, integrity and availability of electronic protected health information (EPHI).Irrespective of the compliance requirements, it is important that scope of the assessment is clearly defined, and communicated across the staff entrusted with the responsibility of conducting healthcare data in accordance with ‘Meaningful Use’ criterion under HIPAA.
  
  
• Determining how personal health information (PHI) and electronic personal health information (EPHI) are received, stored, transmitted, accessed or disclosed.
  
  
• Documenting HHS, which will require the analysis in writing, including material gathered and the corrective actions took to remediate problems uncovered by the assessment. The significance of such reports is that they act reference as well as proof during audits or verification by authorities.
  
  
• Conducting periodic risk assessments to mitigate the possibility of a potential data breach.

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While providers or doctors may have some form mechanism to respond any case of healthcare data breach or violation, it may not always possible for everyone to have comprehensive set of measures, working to put their EHR systems compliant with HIPAA audits. Therefore, they may have to seek external help to keep eternal vigil on their data systems.

And, when it is the question of sourcing resources for such an array of data-related tasks, Medicalbillersandcoders.com offers to mediate for the deployment of best resources that have demonstrated expertise and experience in implementing secure and HIPAA compliant healthcare data management systems and processes.

What Do Stage 2 Meaningful Use Guidelines Have in Store for Radiologists?

Stage 2 meaningful use guidelines are finally out, and radiologists may heave a sigh of relief since most of the ambiguity that existed in Stage 1 about their eligibility and the ways to approach the qualification criterion seem to have been made amply clear by CMS and the Office of the National Coordinator (ONC). The American College of Radiology (ACR) needs word praise for its relentless effort in getting most of the necessary changes made to radiology guidelines before the Stage 2 meaningful compliance regime comes into force.  While it is not before 2014 that radiologists should complying with newly laid out guidelines, it may still require some crucial adjustments in processes and technology to be fully ready for compliance and qualification under State 2 of meaningful use criterion.

Even as the Stage 2 requirements offer clarity for how computerized physician order entry (CPOE) will impact radiology, providers would still be required to use CPOE to order more than 30 percent — instead of the 60 percent CMS originally proposed — of radiology procedures during an EHR reporting period in order to qualify for MU incentive payments. Therefore, the necessity of having an efficient and effective computerized physician order entry (CPOE) would still be there.

As regards the problem of complying with the MU requirements on account of rarity of face-to-face contact with patients, radiologists and other providers may get reprieve from noncompliance penalties, but still they would be required to be versatile with specialty codes use in the Provider Enrollment Chain and Ownership System (PECOS). And this proficiency in using the Provider Enrollment Chain and Ownership System (PECOS) would definitely require specialized training or they might have to appoint external coding specialists for the purpose.

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While Stage 2 rules do not require an EHR to store images, providers or radiologist would still be required to ensure that they an active link to the images. Despite the initially proposed linkage of 40% being brought down to 10% finally, it would still be quite a task to keep those 10% active as and when required for clinical study, interpretation, or sought by patients for various documentation needs.

Along with these inherent challenges, providers or radiologists may still have to sort out the issue with employing clinical decision support (CDS) as The Stage 2 rules to do not expand the definition of CPOE to include computerized decision support (CDS). Also, there may be issues with transporting images in the absence of clear cut rules even in Stage 2. While DICOM mode can be relied upon for secure encoding images,   IHE profiles, such as XDS-I and XDR-I would still have to be sent via secure email, which may sometimes be vulnerable to security and privacy threats. Therefore, it could require a dedicated monitoring to see that such files are not exposed to threats.

Amidst managing as critical a practice as radiology, complying with these set of Stage 2 guidelines for meaningful use might either be too demanding or detrimental to the very purpose of diagnostic or imaging excellence.  Medicalbillersandcoders.com – with an objective to ensure diagnostic or imaging excellence unaffected by Stage 2 demands – has offered to mediate the deployment of Radiology Billing specialists that have the requisite competence and experience to implement processes and technology on behalf of radiologists, seeking to comply with the Stage 2 guidelines, and qualify for incentives.

Spiraling Cost of Gastroenterology Services to Warrant Billing Partner!

Despite Gastroenterology being one of the high-yielding practices, practitioners’ revenues from reimbursements continue to remain below par. This can be a distressing trend considering the spiraling cost of administering gastroenterology services. While clinical and technological advancements have brought in unimaginable precision to care, billing requirements too have become more demanding than ever before. As a result, a considerable portion of gastroenterology bills are susceptible to delays and denials, most of which are never pursued owing to incompetent billing practices. With the combined cost of such unrealized claims amounting to almost 20% of the total bills submitted, gastroenterology practices would do well to find better billing alternatives. While internal billing resources may be brought up with training and orientation, its success rate has not been all that impressive. Moreover, it could prove costly.

In view of the uncertainty over internal billing capabilities, hiring or outsourcing the entire gastroenterology billing management could prove to be a wise decision.  While the quality of outsourced gastroenterology generally happens to be good, you may still have to assess your prospective billing partners’ competence and experience against your requirements and the prevailing gastroenterology billing complexities. Primarily, your gastroenterology billing partner needs to be proficient in:

• Complex gastroenterology billing codes and rules
• Gastroenterology-related terminology
• Office notes and operative notes, coding for surgical procedures
• Code variations related to multiple procedure rules
• Denial process and appeal denied claims quickly and efficiently to ensure speedy reimbursement

The advantage of evaluating your prospective Gastroenterology Billing partner against these requirements is that it make you believe that you will be assured of comprehensive billing, collections, and practice management services, interspersed with:

• Account receivables management
• Round-the-clock claims processing
• Checking system based eligibility
• Quarterly coding updates
• System-based claims scrubbing
• Comprehensive response to all billing calls
• Regular quality assurance checks
• Weekly meetings to discuss progress and go over reports
• Customized monthly reports

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Such proven gastroenterology billing practices would invariably facilitate:

• Improved collections and income
• Accelerated payments and reduced stress
• 24/7 accessibility to your patient data and financial information
• Transparency throughout the revenue cycle
• Full financial and practice management reporting

Even as you scout for your prospective gastroenterology billing partner, Medicalbillersandcoders.com – with impeccable success in deploying apt gastroenterology billing specialists for practices across the 50 states in the US – offers a chosen pool of gastroenterology billers, adept at coding, billing, payer relations, patient relations, collections, financial reporting, fee analysis, managed-care contracts.