Healthcare Provider Simplifies Billing With Coding Interface

For any business, receiving payments earlier rather than later makes a difference in the bottom line. For healthcare facilities relying on a myriad of insurance companies and government programs for reimbursement for patient treatment, a solution that streamlines the billing system can quickly pay for itself.

A 350-bed private, not-for-profit healthcare service provider in Massachusetts was experiencing delays in getting billing information to the parties responsible for reimbursing the hospital. The hospital uses advanced technological tools, including EMRs (electronic medical records), CPOE (computerized physician order entry), PCS (patient care system/nursing documentation), and BMV (bedside medication verification).

The vast amount of information that passes through the hospital's facilities, including the records of every patient (physician observations, prescription history, diagnoses, procedures performed, tracking of reactions to medications, etc.), must be converted into a universally recognized set of classifications, or codes. Medical coding has become the primary means by which insurance companies determine whom to reimburse for medical procedures and in what amounts.

The provider's healthcare information system relies on a combination of MEDITECH healthcare information system, which manages patient information and medical records; 3M medical encoding software; ProMed Scanning from BizTech Healthcare Solutions to scan medical records; and Valco Data Systems to archive the medical records on the back end.

Until recently, the hospital's medical encoding personnel would have to access patient record information in each of these systems individually in order to gain the patient data necessary to code and abstract a single patient's record.

The hospital's emergency department coding process was even more complicated because the hospital's HIM (health information management) staff was responsible for entering most of the charges generated there. Plus, the integration between the MEDITECH and 3M systems meant information had to be batch processed overnight, allowing the MEDITECH information to pass through the 3M software before it could be encoded, extending the coding and billing schedule.

Original Article: HERE

Integrated Solutions

http://www.integratedsolutionsmag.com/

Misys Optimum Video

Electronic Medical Record Technology

Cerner makes its moves beyond software

The North Kansas City-based company is vaulting beyond computer software in three key areas:

--Connecting hospital medical devices to patient electronic medical records to improve safety and efficiency.

--Coordinating health benefits for other companies to help them cut costs, boost workers' health and raise productivity.

--Crunching life science data to help determine the safety and effectiveness of drugs and medical treatment plans.

These endeavors occupy about 635 Cerner employees, a small part of the company's more than 7,600 workers around the globe, including more than 4,800 in the Kansas City area.

But the employee numbers belie the significance that Cerner attaches to these ventures.

"We are transforming ourselves from an IT company to a health-care company," Cerner president Trace Devanny said recently. "Extending our capability beyond information technology flow to that of the entire health-care process is a natural extension of our business."

Since its founding in 1979, Cerner has pushed the envelope of change. With the zeal of a cyber-missionary, it has sought to convince hospitals, doctors and other health providers to dump paper records and replace them with Cerner software. Despite frequent stock gyrations, steadily growing business testifies to Cerner's success. The company logged $1.52 billion in revenue last year, an increase of 10 percent from the previous year.

Original Article Posted HERE

Revolutionizing In-house Television for Retirement Communities

Touchtown TV+ is a passive system, delivering community information to viewers on televisions, websites and print. It gives communities the power to connect with all the people they care about - residents, family members and prospects - even if those people are not physically in the building or campus.


Touchtown TV+ is not simply a television slide show. It lets a community create and deliver a professional quality channel automatically, generating the final result from a database of local information. The unique value of TV+ derives from its ability to unify communications throughout a retirement community, ensuring complete, consistent and up-to-date information delivered throughout the community.



Touchtown Inc.
215 Allegheny Avenue
Oakmont, PA 15139
Phone: 412-826-0460
Web: http://www.touchtown.tv/
Email: info@touchtown.us

Internet Faxing: Extended Healthcare Technology

http://internetfaxsolution.com/

Integrate your paperless system seamlessly with your HealthMEDX EMR Software Technology.

Sending, receiving, and filing faxes is central to managing any healthcare organization. But while other systems and requirements — especially HIPAA-mandated security issues--have evolved, fax technology has hardly changed since the 1980s.

Sfax provides the secure transfer of patient health information (PHI), a feature virtually nonexistent with manual faxing. The system is an easy-to-deploy, scaleable solution that turns faxing into a paperless operation by tracking, routing and storing electronic faxes on a HIPAA-ready, Internet-based platform.

Sfax means Save – Time and Money

Sfax can save healthcare organizations 95% of the time and 80% of the cost of manual faxing. A simple three page fax costs upwards of $1.20 or over 40 cents per page which includes paper, toner, phone line and labor. The average 3 page fax takes more than 5 minutes to completely process. Multiply that times 1,000 faxes per month and you can see how it negatively affects your bottom line. With Sfax all the costs of manual faxing are eliminated—equipment, paper, ink/toner, dedicated phone line, and labor. All you need to use Sfax is a computer with an Internet connection.

Key Features

· Provides a HIPAA ready platform that meets or exceeds requirements
· Online Storage for 365 days – never lose another fax
· Auto log and audit trail of all faxes – record keeping made easy
· Index and Search – Find a fax in a split second
· Custom cover pages – saves time, every time
· Import address books – easy look up fax numbers
· Toll free numbers – routes faxes to the right person and saves time
· Export to document mgmt or EMR – no more scanning – think paperless
· Sfax means Secure - Full HIPAA security

HIPAA mandates strict security to keep patient information private. Sfax meets or exceeds the most stringent HIPAA security standards to keep you in compliance.

Cost Reductions: Use Information Technology

Because of the massive cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, long term healthcare facilities must learn to work smart. One step is to use information technology to improve management of staff, inventory, quality and reimbursement. Such attention can create considerable cost reduction helping to address all the impending reduction in revenue. Following are some of the areas that need to be reviewed in light of these necessary changes:

* Improved employee satisfaction and retention and reduction of temporary help
* Reduced cost through improved efficiency in staffing
* Elimination of unnecessary overtime
* Stronger staff education at the workplace
* Improved purchasing practices
* Movement from paper full to paper free electronic medical records

Here is how:

Human Resources

* Improved employee satisfaction and retention and reduction of temporary help through a web-based staff scheduling program that allows employees to select the various shifts that they are going to work or bid on. It also would determine the exact cost of employees, both FTEs and temporary.

* Reduced cost through improved efficiency in staffing utilizing staffing tools that enable prospective management and real time communication between staffing clerks and management with regard to ppd staffing, overtime and agency use.

* Elimination of unnecessary overtime generated by early and late time clock punches by linking nursing home specific scheduling to time clock management.

* In addition, this also ties into distance learning training for CNAs, LPNs and RNs. The cost reduction in this area is approximately ¾ less than the facilities are doing now.

Inventory Control

* Inventory control in a nursing home environment is massive in nature. Considering all the items and material needed to maintain an operation, the cost must go into the thousands of dollars.

* Many vendors will supply you with the complete inventory of their product lines so there is nothing that you would have to re-key. Tying this into purchasing makes this an automated process and has a great deal to do with reducing costs.

Resident (Reimbursement) Acuities Levels.

Because the reimbursement is based in the skilled facility on the acuity levels of the resident, there are more cases where these figures can be undercoded, therefore leaving thousands of dollars on the table.

With an analytical program, this area can be completely resolved and reimbursement can be improved dramatically.

Ancillary Areas

Ancillary areas, which would include forms and paper reporting, could realize substantial savings by adopting a document retrieval solution.

Application, server and desktop virtualization can significantly reduce IT costs.
It’s been our experience over the past ten years to be able to say that costs can be controlled internally primarily because of the fixed costs of the Medicare and Medicaid systems.

Edward Koscic & Associates
21887 Jonathan Drive, Suite 333
Strongsville STATE: Ohio ZIP: 44149
440-846-1120 FAX: 440-846-0959 E-mail: eek@go2guy.us

http://www.go2guy.us/

Our firm has conducted hundreds of needs investigations for computer hardware and software acquisitions, a large percent in the healthcare field. We have had experience with some of the top specialists in the computer industry. We have associates in fifty states dealing with pen computing to main frames and databases to wide area networks. We have researched the ASP new wave of software distribution for the twenty-first century and have developed an intuitive database of all software vendors that sell software to the LTHC industry.

HealthMEDX Partners With Silverchair Learning Systems

CHARLOTTESVILLE, Va., March 24 /PRNewswire/ -- HealthMEDX, Inc. (HMX), the leading provider of Web-based information system solutions for the extended care market, has partnered with Silverchair Learning Systems to offer Silverchair's powerful eLearning solutions to its customers.

Silverchair's Learning Management System is a highly effective, efficient, and affordable turn-key learning program that delivers, tracks, and reports on educational programs for senior care organizations. The program provides a complete curriculum of in-service and regulatory courses required by CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) and OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration), as well as important resident care topics that specifically address the needs of long-term care providers and their employees. The system can also be customized for an organization to include material specific to its facility/facilities.

"HealthMEDX consistently seeks partnerships that will benefit our customers and complement our services," says Charlie Daniels, President of HealthMEDX, Inc. "We're very excited to work with Silverchair Learning and the value this partnership brings to the industry."
"Silverchair is excited to partner with HealthMEDX," says Mike Mutka, Executive Vice President of Sales and Marketing for Silverchair Learning Systems. "They share our vision of improving senior care through innovative, effective use of technology. This partnership will allow senior care organizations to positively affect the lives of their residents in new and ground-breaking ways."

About HealthMEDX, Inc.

HealthMEDX, Inc. (HMX), a privately owned company based in southwest Missouri, is the industry leader of integrated software solutions for the extended care market. HMX's CareMEDX product suite is the only Web-based solution that addresses the needs of long-term care, home care and rehab. The depth of services positions HMX as a leading innovator in the health information technology community. CareMEDX product offerings are unsurpassed, featuring the clinical electronic medical record (EMR), census management, financial, analytics, dashboard, workflow and portal. At HMX we value our relationships with our customers, employees and partners. We are committed to deliver lasting value to help improve quality of care, maximize productivity, support business growth, and manage risk.

To learn more about CareMEDX benefits, call 877-875-1200 or visit http://www.healthmedx.com/.

About Silverchair Learning Systems

Silverchair Learning Systems works with senior care leaders who want to improve the training process in their organizations. Silverchair offers a user-friendly online training solution that improves compliance and eliminates record keeping headaches, while saving time and money. We make online training successful with easy set-up, ease of use, simple tracking, and educationally-rich yet fun courses. Using this system provides peace of mind and confidence. http://www.silverchairlearning.com/

Contact:
Mike Mutka
Executive Vice-President of Sales and Marketing
Silverchair Learning Systems
(866) 805-7575, x. 1813
mmutka@silverchairlearning.com

Website: http://www.healthmedx.com/

Website: www.silverchairlearning.com/

From PR Newswire

http://sev.prnewswire.com/health-care-hospitals/20080324/DC1738824032008-1.html