Medical Billing Blog with Medical Billing & Coding Info & Articles
Our blog contains news and articles relating to numerous healthcare sectors including revenue cycle management, medical billing, medical coding, ICD, HIPAA, practice management functions and more.
EHR Use and Administrative Burden Accelerate Burnout
In response to a new study about high levels of physician burnout among family physicians, Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center family physician Donald O. Mack, MD, suggested the recent transition to a value-based care system and increased EHR use may have augmented the problem. “Burnout is associated with lower patient satisfaction and care quality, higher medical error rates and malpractice risk, higher physician and staff turnover, physician substance abuse/addiction, and physician suicide,” he wrote. “The causes are numerous, and in many cases physicians point to the increasing demands of electronic medical records, quality metrics, administrative tasks such as prior authorization, and value-based payment requirements, which take time away from …
RCM tip: Identifying the root causes of denials
Discovering the reason for a hospital claim denial can help healthcare organizations improve revenue cycle performance, according to Susan Eilman, senior healthcare consultant for revenue cycle transformation at Hayes Management Consulting. Ms. Eilman shared the following tip with Becker’s Hospital Review. “Recently I was working with a revenue cycle director who researched root causes for registration and eligibility denials and identified a specific clinic with a denial rate of 42 percent. This director contacted the clinic and asked the clinical director, ‘Why does your location have a denial rate of 42 percent due to registration and eligibility denials when the industry standard is less than 5 percent?’ The clinical director …
RCM tip: Invest in automated rules engine to improve RCM
Investing in automation tools, such as a rules engine, can help healthcare organizations decrease their administrative workload, according to Andrew Wade, practice administrator at Conway, S.C.-based Coastal Orthopedics. Mr. Wade shared the following tip with Becker’s Hospital Review: “If we want to truly free up providers from administrative burden and empower them to do the work they love to do — spending more time with patients and delivering quality care — organizations need to invest in tools that automate tasks wherever possible. Thanks to our technology’s rules engine, our claims can be automatically verified and some errors automatically resolved based on knowledge gleaned from the network. We are getting cleaner …
MIPS: The Day of Reckoning
One of my favorite books is The Big Short by Michael Lewis. It was eventually made into a movie by the same name and gives a clear view of the housing bubble that burst 10 years ago and pushed the US economy into the Great Recession. What fascinates me was the ability of some to predict, and profit, from knowing when the collapse would occur. They were able to delve into the details of millions of mortgages and see when the adjustable rates would suddenly increase leading to escalating mortgage payments and boosting the default rates dramatically. The subsequent collapse was unavoidable, and predictable. What does this have to do …
Newly-Designed EHR Notes May Improve Usability
Showing less data in physician EHR notes may produce more benefits for physician productivity, according to a recent study published in the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine (JABFM). The study by Jeffery Beldon, MD et al. compared different physician EHR note designs to see which design physicians found most efficient, accurate, and usable when attempting to obtain information for ambulatory chronic disease care. Researchers devised four physician note designs and tested the designs on 16 primary care physicians in random order. Physicians were instructed to find key information in the EHR notes during timed tasks. Physicians then gave each note design a usability rating and new feature …
7 strategies to prevent claims denials
Claims denials pose a serious issue for hospitals amid an already complicated reimbursement landscape. “Denials are a huge obstacle to timely and complete reimbursement,” said Carmen Sessoms, associate vice president of the revenue cycle management advisory services program at Nashville, Tenn.-based Change Healthcare. In 2016, Change Healthcare managed 1.8 billion transactions with a value of more than $3 trillion. Leveraging this data, analysts determined approximately 9 percent of claims with a value of $262 billion were denied. These denials impacted about 3.3 percent of net patient revenue, translating to an average of $4.9 million per hospital. Denials are not only highly prevalent in the healthcare environment, but also very costly …
Hypertension Coding in the Age of Quality
The hypertension “epidemic” hearkens back to boxer Joe Louis’ words regarding a smaller, quicker opponent — light heavyweight Billy Conn, “You can run, but you can’t hide!” No matter what specialty of medicine or surgery you practice, or whether you are a primary-care provider, elevated blood pressure represents a recurring problem that will not go away. Furthermore, hypertension is often accompanied by comorbid conditions such as diabetes mellitus, obesity, CKD-3, and systolic dysfunction which complicates blood pressure treatment, according to researchers at University of Miami Miller School of Medicine. The downside of this epidemic is clear, untreated blood pressure is fraught with multiple target organ complications. In fact, approximately 80 …
Most Providers Report Lack of Health IT Interoperability
A new eHealth Initiative survey found 68 percent of providers believe current interoperability solutions fail to help meet the goals of value-based care. Researchers in 2017 Survey on Access to Patient Information gathered responses from 107 respondents including CEOs and other executive leadership, IT leadership, clinical staff, and administrative leadership from hospitals, health systems, medical groups, physician practices, HIEs, and other organizations. The survey addressed issues including health data exchange, interoperability, federal regulations, patient access to information, and patient engagement. Researchers found that most providers believe technology has improved healthcare quality since 2008, but certain areas—including interoperability—are still in need of significant improvements. “Sixty-three percent agree that technology has helped …
Healthcare security compliance in the cloud
The “cloud” has almost become a buzzword in health IT, with many hospitals considering a shift to remote servers to reduce costs and improve scalability. However, some executives have hesitated, given the cyber-security implications of accessing protected health information through the internet. “It’s like online shopping,” Shaung Liu, chief technology officer of the provider division at Teladoc, said during a Microsoft-sponsored workshop at the Becker’s Hospital Review 3rd Annual Health IT + Revenue Cycle Conference Sept. 21 in Chicago. “When you first did online shopping nobody wanted to put their credit card in the cloud … you didn’t trust it,” he explained. “Now, everybody does.” Teladoc, a telehealth company that …
10 Common Physician RCM Mistakes
If you’re familiar with the beloved sitcom “Seinfeld,” then you have probably seen “The Opposite,” an episode where George Costanza takes it upon himself to do the complete opposite of what he believes is right. The episode serves as the inspiration for Craig Pedersons’ presentation, “Physician Compensation: 10 Common Mistakes (and Four Solutions),” at the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) Annual Conference in Anaheim, Calif. “I am going to go through case studies and specific examples of financial train wrecks. I’m not trying to tell people what to do, I’m telling them what to avoid. Case studies allow examples to become a lot more real,” says Pederson, a principle consultant …
