Healthcare is changing. It is changing to eliminate waste of money, time and resources. It is changing to make more care available with less providers. It is changing to empower patients to participate in their own care. How are you changing with the times in 2019? Here are nine ideas. 1. Make your website interactive, clean-looking, interactive, friendly and interactive. Think of your website as your digital receptionist to your practice. If all your patients can do on your

This is Part 2 of the information recently published by Medicare on choosing the date of service for claims that are not straightforward due to the service encompassing several dates, or being provided without the patient being present. Cardiovascular Monitoring Services There are many different procedure codes that represent the cardiovascular monitoring services. These can be identified as professional components, technical components, or a combination of the two. Some of t

Sometimes it is not clear what date to use when billing a service. The service might be performed over the course of more than one day, or may be provided without a face-to-face encounter. Medicare has recently reiterated which dates are appropriate to use when billing these service exceptions. Radiology Services Typically, radiology services have two separate components: a professional and technical component. These services will have a PC/TC indicator of “1” on the Medicare

Can I go without any income from a new practice for 3-6 months? Do I have another income stream or can I continue to work part-time at a hospital, urgent care, or with another employer while I’m building my practice? Can I envision starting my practice by myself with no staff? Do I have an existing patient base who will be interested in joining my practice? Is the community in which I want to work underserved or overserved in my specialty? Do I have a cash component to my pra

Credentialing new physicians can sometimes be a struggle and often a catch-22. The process cannot be started to early since some payers won't accept the application if they the physician does not have their malpractice in place. Often when the payer does accept the application the new physician is already on board and ready to start seeing patients. This can be bothersome to the practice since credentialing typically takes 3-6 months if not longer… Things not to do while wai

Harvard surgeon Atul Gawande, MD recently did a TED Talk titled How do we Heal Medicine. Dr. Gawande spoke about the cost and outcomes that are involved within medicine. Gawande focused on the structure of medicine and how it has been built around the concept of independence, self-sufficiency, and autonomy. He believes medicine should be more focused around a team structure, which Gawande refers to as a pit crew versus being a cowboy. A pit crew is always working together.

I can remember the days of the $5.00 copay. Actually, I can remember a time when there was no such thing as a copay! Insurance companies paid claims. All of the claims, and patients had little to no financial responsibility to pay for their healthcare services. Furthermore, premiums were paid, in full, by the employer. How times have changed. Healthcare providers can pretty much be guaranteed that most of their patients will have a significant cost sharing of their healt

When we bring on a new client, we often receive questions around e-mail communication with their patients. Some providers are unsure if they can communicate with their patients and staff through unsecured e-mail. I recently was provided some great information from an Expert at the American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC). The AAPC Expert provided me with some really clear information regarding this subject, as well as pointed to me to a fabulous article on the HHS sit