One of the biggest problems that healthcare practices are facing is delayed payments from insurance providers. The problems related to collections regarding treatment and services provided may occur due to various reasons and these reasons could be from the side of a healthcare provider or the patients. Every healthcare facility’s aim is to improve its revenue cycle management so as to maintain its financial health and provide quality care to its patients. Healthcare providers need to follow some best practices to improve revenue cycle management by increasing the on-time payments from patients or insurance providers.  Concentrating on collections at the point-of-service is one of the most rewarding practices of revenue cycle management. It is a fact that less than 1/4th of healthcare providers collect patient fees at the point-of-service i.e. at or before service. Many of the healthcare providers even accept the fact that it gets overwhelmingly difficult for them to c...

It is a shocking fact that medical errors are a major cause of deaths that need to be addressed by both the healthcare providers and the government. While the first concern of healthcare providers is always providing the best-quality care to the patients, they are also human and they may err. Mistakes involving treatments and medications prove to be dangerous and even fatal at times. One thing that can minimize the medical errors is the efficient use of the electronic health records .  It is established that patients receive better medical care when their healthcare providers have full access to their accurate information in the form of electronic health records.  With effective EHR solutions, the healthcare providers improve their capabilities in diagnosing diseases and reducing medical errors that prove to be costly for the organization, their revenues and the public health in general. Studies have shown that more than 3/4th of the physicians who are implementing...

Jobs that involve coordination among different parties are prone to errors in the work performed. Healthcare documentation jobs are part of such jobs where there are different people involved - the physicians and medical transcriptionists or healthcare documentation specialists at various levels. Irrespective of the caution exercised; there will be some percentage of errors that impact of quality of healthcare provided. Hence, both physicians and transcriptionists should put some extra efforts to reduce healthcare documentation errors.  Healthcare documentation errors may be either from physician side or transcriptionist side. Poor quality of voice recording, lack of clarity in voice, heavy accented dictation of physician, and background disturbances are some of the reasons errors may occur from the physician’s side. Transcriptionist side errors may be a result of poor quality typing, a transcriptionist who is not perfectly trained, or proofreading and editing not done...

Collections job is a challenging task that can give a number of sleepless nights to people handling it. It is all the more challenging in the healthcare sector where collections involve patients and their attendants. The medical billing team has a huge responsibility to raise accurate claims for the procedures and services offered and collect the amount due in time. This whole procedure of issuing bills, raising claims and collecting the dues is called revenue cycle management. If your facility is facing stress in taking care of revenue cycle management, you can reduce your stress by outsourcing the medical billing process to efficient RCM service providers. Let’s see how RCM services providers can help your bottom line. Improve operational efficiency : Taking care of medical billing processes in-house can slow down your operations and have a negative impact on your productivity. If you don’t invest in a separate billing team and rely on the existing administrative staff, i...

Medical coding is one of the promising career options in the healthcare industry where a coder compiles patients’ information from medical records to convert it into universally acceptable codes. There are a pretty good number of medical coding companies in Hyderabad that offer bright career prospects in medical coding jobs. Although many other sectors are impacted by the use of technology, medical coding is one sector that is not going to face any medical coding jobs loss due to automation. However, there are few tips that every wannabe medical coder should remember and avoid doing certain things to grab the best opportunities. Quit asking these questions: With my training can I work with any physician/ specialist?  No, you will be not able to work for any physician or specialist, if you have just started your career as a medical coder and completed a course in basics of coding. It is to be understood that even coders with vast expertise and of 15-20 years of expe...

What is that we typically do for self-improvement? Set a large goal; try to accomplish that in the least possible time. At the outset, this seems perfectly alright but does not work in practicality. It often leads to exhaustion, frustration and failure. This pattern needs to change; instead, we should aim for simple path of continuous improvement by slowly fine-tuning our everyday behavior and habits. Continuous improvement means, making minor changes and adjustments in our everyday life with the anticipation of a remarkable change over a period of time. It’s not that easy to believe that small changes can lead to big shifts of improvement because we can’t see any notable accomplishments on a daily basis, BUT IT WORKS. Minor alterations don’t show results at that particular point of time but add up over a period, hence, we can see the results only in the long run; in fact, it is possible that we may happen that we may not even recognize it initially. How do we go about it? ...

Digitalization of most of the things in healthcare facilities has changed the way facilities operate in a big way. Hospitals and other facilities have seen a drastic change in their operations and regulations which have come at a fast pace. Because of all these changes facilities are facing issues in satisfying patients with their services and abiding by different regulations, leading to a problematic revenue cycle management. Though providing the highest quality care to patients is the topmost priority, if your revenue cycle management is struggling, then your facility will struggle. But, many facilities fail to identify their revenue cycle breakdown at the right time, which put them in more troubles. So, here are few hints to identify the reasons for your revenue cycle issues. Patient Portal Services : One of the things that affect your revenue cycle is the access you give to your patients via patient portal services. If you are not yet giving your patients access to the portal...

With the modernization and abundant use of technology in the medical industry, all kinds of healthcare facilities have switched to the electronic mode of documentation that has facilitated in better maintenance of the patient records. This has also helped in improving the coding levels and thus improved the revenue cycle management. This kind of use of technology in maintaining health records has led to an increase in the demand for professional medical transcriptionists, medical coders and billers.  Medical coding is one of those professions that are seeing a fast growth rate and at the same time play a significant role in the growth of the industry. Medical coding plays a crucial role in the healthcare industry as medical billers use the codes given by medical coders and raise claims for the services provided based on which the insurance companies give the payment to the healthcare providers. These payments become critical for every healthcare facility which make or bre...

With time, old things fade out making space for new things that gain importance. But there will always some old things that retain significance. Let’s see some such pointers that are classic and still hold great value in today’s times for a good revenue cycle management i healthcare facilities. By engaging the clinical staff at the time of pre-authorization process, the risk of working again and again for the exact of information for authorization that has been missed or recorded inaccurately reduces considerably. One of the best ways to ensure that your organization’s collections are good is constantly measuring your performance against that of the competitors to identify areas of improvement. It is to be noted that quality care can be provided only if the facility’s revenues are good which is only possible with accurate documentation. Expert RCM service providers opine that facilities have to keep a track of the deposits and check which customer’s cash belongs where th...

For the people in medical coding jobs, it is very critical to distinguish between an established patient and a new patient to code accurately. To do appropriate Evaluation and Management (E/M) coding and adhere to the coding compliance for timely reimbursements, it is necessary to understand the difference between a new patient and an established patient. Established Patient: According to the CPT guidelines, a person who has received a professional service from a physician or healthcare professional of the exact same specialty and who belongs to the same group practice, within the past three years is an established patient. For the new entrants into medical coding, it is difficult and confusing to distinguish between an established and new patient, but it is very important to learn this. To understand this better, one has to know what a professional service is. For the purposes of E/M code selection, the CPT recognizes a service as professional service if they are ren...

Medical coding is a profession in the healthcare industry that demands high attention levels of the people in medical coding jobs to perform with the highest level of accuracy. The medical coders are responsible to assign appropriate codes to the procedures performed by physicians which are helpful in medical billing process to submit insurance claims so that timely payments are received by the healthcare providers. If you are interested in medical coding and new are new to the field, you may find it very difficult to understand the coding procedures and various codes and modifiers that are used to record the different medical processes performed on a patient. The people in medical coding jobs have to familiarize themselves with different coding systems used like the Current Procedural Terminology (CPT) codes, International Classification of Diseases (ICD-10) codes and the Healthcare Common Procedure Coding System (HCPCS) codes. Though you will learn the coding methods in yo...

It is very natural that employers ask for experienced candidates for their companies and when they are scouting for candidates they ask questions related to the experience levels of the candidate. If you are one of those experienced candidates searching for medical coding jobs , more chances are there that they ask if you have experience with specific EMR software. If you are an experienced person, it is ok to face such questions. But, if you are a fresher and are asked questions related to the knowledge you have regarding the EMR software, then it is a bit tough to answer. Let’s first understand that a person, who is not into the health information management field, will not have any idea about the EMR software and it is alright to say that you do not have an understanding about it. It should be noted that, if you are mentioning in your resume that you are a fresher but have expertise in using an EMR software because you have taken training in medical coding , then you are inv...