Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Medical Billing Systems

An EHR must not only record your patient data electronically, but should be certified for meaningful use by CMS. Once you select a certified system, this gives you the potential to earn financial incentives from CMS by providing the required proof of meaningful use.  

                                                                              

Integrating multiple systems can enhance your work environment and improve efficiency. Your billing and coding software should be able to directly import medical data such as patient demographics from your EHR. This type of integration will eliminate the need for re-entry of patient data into the billing system by office staff.

Iridium Suite medical billing software now comes with the Connectivity Clearinghouse enabling connections to multiple EHR systems. You can connect to your EHR as often as your office work flow dictates. With accurate and complete data entry in your EHR, you are able to bring in all the necessary information to bill and file your patient claims. 

The Connectivity Clearinghouse can use multiple protocols such as: LLP, HTTPS, and SFTP. It can also be extended to use multiple data formats such as: multiple versions of HL7, any well formed XML and delimited text.

The versatility of the Connectivity Clearinghouse in Iridium Suite practice billing software provides the foundation to integrate with your existing Electronic Health Record, saving your practice time and money.

Check the Vital Signs of Your Medical Practice-Part 2

A Medical Practice is a unique business in many ways, but it is still a business and must be treated as such.  Checking the health of your practice is similar to checking the health of your patients.  In this three part series, we will look at these Vital Signs, pulse, blood pressure and temperature, to help you assess the financial well-being of your medical practice.

In Part 1, we addressed the pulse of your practice: trends in new patient statistics and physician referrals.  If you missed Part 1, please select this link: Check the Vital Signs of Your Medical Practice-Part 1

For Part 2, let’s check that Blood Pressure-   

Are the numbers of services you bill increasing, decreasing, or staying the same?

Depending on your type of medical practice, you could expect to see one or two procedure codes billed per patient visit or for some specialties like Radiation Oncology, you may bill 10 procedure codes per visit.  In either case, reviewing reports that show month-to-month statistics can allow you to recognize anomalies in your billing patterns.  Sharp declines in a certain procedure may indicate forgotten or missed coding opportunities and therefore missed revenue.  

Many payers have time filing limits from the date of service.  They can range from 60 days to one year.  A regular review for missed charges will enable to meet those filing limits and collect on all of your rendered services.  If your report showed an unexpected procedure or an unusually high number of a certain procedure was billed, you will be able to audit the medical record(s) for appropriate documentation.  

If billing errors are discovered, you can get ahead of an insurance audit by quickly refunding any payments received for these non-provided services.  Keeping yourself in the good graces of your payers is always important.