Physician employment rises in hospitals

Despite a shortage of doctors projected to be at nearly 30,000 in the next few years, one area which is seeing an influx of new doctors is hospitals, which will eventually result in an increase in hospitalists. U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics in February reported a rise of 61,000 jobs in Healthcare and social assistance employment, with healthcare adding in 28,000 ambulatory care services jobs and 15,000 hospital employment jobs.

New statistics released by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics project that Job growth in the healthcare sector will outpace other sectors through 2020 and employment in healthcare support occupations is predicted to grow the fastest with healthcare practitioners and technical jobs to increase at 25.9%.

More and more doctors are choosing to join hospitals rather than open their individual practices, reasons are various:

1. Too many administration issues
2. Healthcare compliance increasing
3. Fiscally a job is more secure

The down side to lesser practices is:

1. Healthcare dissemination to geographically remote areas is challenged
2. Concentration of availability of healthcare jobs
3. Pressure on current infrastructure of healthcare organizations

Nevertheless with this expected increase in hospital employment along with the healthcare reforms, hospitals need to realign their processes. Hospitals and practitioners who will look to register for the incentive program will face the decision on choosing an apt EHR, changes in billing system, besides other changes, but with their time resource being limited & dedicated majorly on patient care, such decisions are difficult and at times repenting.

In this scenario services of a Medical Billing Consultancy possessing the requisite credentials can be availed by hospitals and hospitalists to guide hospital staff in EHR implementation, HIPAA and other healthcare reforms hence improving physicians compensations along with hospital revenue generation and also help in maintaining a favorable corporate culture of the organization. Medicalbillersandcoders.com experts being constantly updated with the requisites of the industry and healthcare reforms are the right choice for hospitals and practitioners.

Medical Billers and coders (MBC) is one of the leading Medical Billing Companies  in USA & help doctors to shortlist Medical Billing Companies, Medical Billing Services  according to their preferences of specialty, city, software and services performed.

For more information visit: Medical Billing | Medical Billing Services | Medical Billing Companies.

Develop Social Media Networks for Hospitals and Small Practices to increase medical billing

Social Media is developing into a tool not just for communication and entertainment but is also emerging as a powerful instrument for marketing and efficient coordination. Hospitals, group practices, clinics and even solo practices have started to reap the benefits offered by social media networking. The implementation, control and fruitful use of social media in practice settings, especially in hospitals, can enhance the revenue of the hospital along with the quality of care that is provided. The various methods of incorporating social media into your practice or hospital are not limited to just tweets or the Facebook status but has taken a new meaning for networking in hospitals and small practices. 

Social media can also be used for keeping in touch with patients through secure and simple channels such as the use of e-mails in eRxs and such other data. Many social media websites can be used for education of patients and the scope of utilization is immense due to the presence of so many specialties and branches in medicine along with newer and innovative social media sites as well. On the other hand there are physician networks across the internet dedicated to discussion about clinical issues and the problems faced by physicians and their solutions.

Some ways that your healthcare organization can use social media: Share data with patients, share information with referring physicians, share information with workers or employees, create / augment consciousness of your brand, boost patient recruitment, train patients, and develop customer service in order to increase the bottom line.

  

However, the most important aspect as far as interaction between patients and physicians or providers is privacy and this is one of the biggest challenges presented by the use of social media. Even though physicians and patients can use smart phones and various tablets to access PHI, the breach of security is always a threat for physicians and patients alike. Compliance of HIPAA guidelines becomes a major issue when there is a plethora of information that is transmitted through countless network terminals. There are numerous ways of ensuring security when it comes to safely transmitting PHI and complying with the HIPAA guidelines. However while adopting all these measures a practice would benefit by employing a healthcare service entity who would be able to provide the necessary HIPAA and other privacy checks along with streamlining the revenue management. 

Social media can play a significant role in preventive medicine and the rapid growth in innovative technologies such as EMRs and EHRs has also given impetus to hospitals for adopting social media as an organizational tool and HIPAA compliance along with other prerequisites in the healthcare sector. Medical billers and coders does not just offer traditional medical billing and coding services but also the latest cutting edge EHR/PMS technology which further assists practices during social media adoption, in addition to other crucial departmental processes including Revenue Cycle Management, interaction with payers, research and consulting, hence increasing Medical Billing within the healthcare norms. 

Medical Billers and coders (MBC) is one of the leading Medical Billing Companies  in USA & help doctors to shortlist Medical Billing Companies, Medical Billing Services  according to their preferences of specialty, city, software and services performed.

For more information visit: Medical Billing Companies

Medical Billing Service in Michigan

Traditionally Michigan has been amongst one of the economically stronger states in the US, but in the area of healthcare this strength is often not reflected courtesy of certain inadequacies like – lack of nursing home and chronic care measures, resulting in poor access to healthcare services to Michiganders. Also, Michigan has a population which is economically disparate and a large pool of this population is either not economically-sound to afford insurance (small-income self-employed groups) or not provided insurance coverage by their employers. This results in a sizeable part of the population falling out of the insurance net. Additionally contributing to the lack of access to healthcare in Michigan is that the state is faced with paucity of physicians. 

To address these problems, the office of Michigan governor has proposed a two-pronged approach, one is self regulatory which recommends Michiganders to follow certain health-related best practices, like maintaining healthy diet, doing physical exercise; and the other is to develop a primary-care system with a patient centric medical home to provide patients with treatment which combines care coordination and appropriate preventive services for patients with safe and secure transfer of medical data through electronic means. Alas, this is aggravating the plight of physicians. 

If the coordinated-care scenario, discussed above, is deconstructed, it leaves primary care physicians more to worry about than to rejoice. While well-intended, coordinated care is leading to nonclinical paperwork for physicians and adding to their woes is electronic data transfer, meant for claim submission via HIPPA 5010 to Medicaid and Medicare agents, which leads to rejected claims due to minor errors in data entries. This is affecting physicians financially and leaving them with reduced time for patient care. 

As a result physicians in Michigan have been found to leave hospitals and return to their independent practice, further contributing to the ‘limited access to healthcare’ crisis in Michigan by withdrawing from organized healthcare net while failing to do away with their earlier administrative responsibilities given that the services provided under primary or physician healthcare, with or without a partnership with hospitals, come under insurance coverage requiring the same administrative work for claim submission and reimbursement. 

To tide over the challenge of mounting administrative activities including paperwork leading to claim denials and affecting the operating revenue and profitability of physicians and hospitals and also be ready to meet the changing trends of a dynamic and highly regulated industry, physicians and hospitals in Michigan need to strengthen their Revenue Cycle Management with a platform to facilitate electronic Medical Billing based on revised human practices and appropriate software applications. 

Medicalbillersandcoders.com can help you build a paperless and agile RCM process by performing an end-to-end study of your RCM process and environment and recommending an appropriate EMR software application. 

Through its Outsourced Billing and Coding Services, Medicalbillersandcoders.com has helped several clinics in all cities of Michigan (Detroit, Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights and Flint as also the smaller countries and cities) to improve their finances and increase their focus on healthcare though a group of experienced billers and coders who have sound knowledge of insurance collections in a timely manner and good relationship with key insurance payers, like BCBS, United Health, Workers Comp and government payers across Michigan. 

For more information visit: Michigan Medical Billing Services

Increase revenue by improving billing functions

The excessive administrative work healthcare organizations are having to deal with due to reforms in the US healthcare has begun to take its toll on the revenue of healthcare organizations across all the states of the US due to several reason, like claim denials by insurers and hospitals involved in increased non-clinical activities like claim preparation and their follow-ups consuming resources, financial and man power, of care providers without adding, in the least, to the quality or delivery of their healthcare services. 

HIPPA 5010, the electronic medium to transact medical data for claim submission to Medicaid and Medicare, has further compounded the problem for care providers by forcing upon them  a series of data handling activities which, if not handled with complete accuracy, lead to rejected claims. 

The reform-induced administrative responsibilities have affected profitability and operating revenues of healthcare organizations in the US healthcare industry. The increased paperwork and other compliance activities have exposed hospitals to the possibility of a two-fold monetary penalty: claim denials due to inaccurate submission and penalties incurred due to noncompliance and undetected overpayment not returned to Medicaid and Medicare on time, in a post-imbursement scenario. 

Apparently, the current scenario is changing the dynamics of the US healthcare industry without helping improve the quality of healthcare services. However, to blame the reforms for not helping improve healthcare quality is a futile exercise given that the reforms are not meant to ensure quality of care per se, but availability of care through insurance and reimbursement, albeit through a maze of procedural activities, which, incidentally and to a certain extent understandably, have fallen to the organizations involved in the delivery of care and, being cumbersome and outside their area of expertise, have managed to cause them considerable woes, financial and otherwise. 

However, the non-healthcare responsibilities, if left to people who are better equipped to handle them, should not muddle up the core healthcare activities, leaving hospitals with more time and focus for care and helping them to ensure improved finances through proper claim submission and reduced rate of claim rejections either through an improved in-house Revenue Cycle Management (RCM) process or through an outsourcing model. 

A sound RCM process helps address areas like inaccuracy in claim preparation and post-submission follow-ups, done in a methodical and scientific manner, through a close scrutiny of areas of concern to identify outdated and cumbersome processes, inadequate software applications, under-utilized workforce with inadequate knowledge of coding details and industry regulations. The RCM consulting services Medicalbillersadncoders.com provides have helped healthcare providers have a robust RCM process that helps meet the current financial and administrative responsibilities helping them to reduce cost through optimized work force and leading them to improved revenues. 

Many medical practices, in the US, have improved their finances due to accurate claim development, intricate procedure coding, electronic filling and timely follow ups thanks to the Outsourced Billing and Coding Services  provided by Medicalbillerandcoders.com, the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US.

Medical Billers and coders (MBC) is one of the leading Medical Billing Companies  in USA & help doctors to shortlist Medical Billing Companies, Medical Billing Services  according to their preferences of specialty, city, software and services performed.

Improving Patient Collections via Medical Billing

---

If the insurance-driven nature of US healthcare is leaving care providers to sort out administrative issues to ensure successful claim submission and reimbursement is one side of the problems US healthcare providers face, the other side is patients unwilling or unable to pay the share of the medical bill that’s not covered by their insurance, leading to unrealized patient collections for care providers affecting their revenue and crippling their profitability. However, unlike the unpaid-insurance-claim problem where the larger part of the blame can be laid on cumbersome healthcare policies and procedure, with unpaid patient collections healthcare policies are out of the equation leaving healthcare providers and their patients to share the blame. 

While patients’ part of the blame is simple – inability or reluctance to pay- the care provider can be indicted on several fronts, like lack of prior verification of the patient’s insurance coverage; absence of a clear written policy about the financial responsibility of the patient; non-identification of time lost between delivery of service and date of charge entry; absence of data on reasons of payment denials by patients leading to lost opportunity to train employees on how to avoid mistakes made in the past; lack of cross-training of billing staff so that, say, a person being on leave doesn’t interrupt the process with another person stepping in to continue it; use of obsolete billing software applications, etc. 

After being denied payments on time by patients, when care providers try realizing them by sending out patient collection letters, they meet with disappointments with the letters not eliciting any response from the patients and the letters being aggressive in tone, additionally, exposing care providers to the risk of disrupting their relationship with patients which in a competitive environment with other care providers always on the prowl for poaching patients can have the potential to lead to loss of clients. 

A cursory look at these problems will tell you that none of them is part of core healthcare, but issues that – however important for a care center to operate profitably – should be left to people best equipped to handle them. 

A strong Revenue Management System (RCM) will address all the areas of concern, enabling the care provider to build and maintain a data gathering and management system which will net the entire set of medical data starting from accurate verification of insurance coverage through such medical details as are required to prepare and submit claims, which although not a part of patient collection is inseparably intertwined with the overall financial process of an organization and require medical details that are identical to patient collection. Additionally, a good RCM process will identify and address training needs that, in the case of patient collection, will ensure the in-house personnel are not just familiar with procedural details of their own line of work but are also proficient in cross-functional responsibilities ensuring, as a result, the continuity of a process in the absence of a staff. 

Medicalbillersandcoders.com has helped set up and strengthen the RCM process of many a healthcare provider through its RCM consulting services that perform a thorough study of your environment and help you have an RCM process which runs parallel with your treatment procedure without interrupting it but absorbing and maintaining medical details quietly and efficiently and helping your organization to respond to any administrative responsibilities, either reimbursement or collection. 

Medicalbillersandcoders.com, the largest consortium of billers and coders in the US, has a network which spans across all the states of the US bringing healthcare providers a unique platform which combines the range of a national network and immediacy of a local operator. The billing and coding outsourcing services offered by Medicalbillersnadcoders.com combine this network with a team of specialists with years of experience in dealing with intricacies of billing and coding to ensure an end-to-end support for your patient collection responsibilities, leaving you to do what you do best – healthcare. 

Medical Billers and coders (MBC) is one of the leading Medical Billing Companies  in USA & help doctors to shortlist Medical Billing Companies, Medical Billing Services  according to their preferences of specialty, city, software and services performed.

For more information visit: Medical Billing | Medical Billing Services | Medical Billing Companies.