A typical standard operating procedure in many practices when adding a new physician is to phase in his/her schedule as s/he becomes credentialed by each payer. Traditionally, new physicians have been able to see Medicare patients immediately due to the Medicare guideline that allowed for a practice to retro-bill for Medicare patients seen before (up to 27 months, actually) the doctor was officially credentialed.
Now all that has changed, and starting April 1, 2009, practices can only retro-bill for Medicare patients seen 30 days prior to the date the credentialing form was filed (if it was ultimately approved.) What are the implications of this? (more…)
The Medical Home, also called the Patient-Centered Medical Home, and the Personal Medical Home, is a movement to solve the problem of fragmented care (one hand doesn’t know what the other is doing) by having a primary care physician or practitioner act as the center of all care information for the patient. Fragmented care is dangerous (lack of coordination of care causes mistakes and mistreatments), costly (repetition of diagnostic tests and regimens), and wasteful of healthcare resources. The Medical Home plan goals are to provide care for all individuals, improve care, and decrease healthcare costs.
“Crossing the Quality Chasm: A New Health System for the 21st Century” was published in 2001 by the Institute of Medicine. In this landmark book, the patient’s role and responsibility for navigating the healthcare system and acting as the information hub around which the spokes of primary, specialty and tertiary care providers revolve was denounced (more…)
What a wonderful, crazy time this is, both in healthcare and in my life. I can hardy keep up with either!
First, some changes to my website/blog. I’ve added a few new pages to house special resources, but I don’t have them connected to RSS or email yet, so for the time being readers will need to check out these pages on the bar at the top of the page to see what’s new:
- The Library will house links and documents. Right now it houses links, but documents are coming soon. If you have documents you’d like to share, or some you’d like to see posted on this page let me know.
- Dictionary (will be available soon) is a collection of definitions of words used on this site and is a quick reference for readers. It works two ways. You can go to the page to look up a word alphabetically, and my wonderful tech guy has set it up so the definition of any word in the Lexicon shows up any time you roll over the word anywhere on the blog.
- Down the road I plan to…well, why ruin the surprise – stay tuned!
Second, yesterday my husband and I embarked on a cross-country trip from Seattle to Raleigh. We are relocating back to North Carolina as I continue my job search. If you’d like to hear about our travels, click on the last new page, Road Trip.
And third, Manage My Practice.com is closing in one year of blogging, 100 posts, more than 100 subscribers via email and RSS, and close to 100 visitors daily. I sincerely thank each of you for taking the time to visit my blog.
I know many people are having trouble understanding how Twitter could be relevant to a medical practice. Here’s a list that might help.
1. Tweet patients when doctor is running late.
2. Tweet doctor when patient is running late.
3. Tweet staff to remind them of staff meeting Monday morning.
4. Tweet patients to remind them of appointment.
5. Tweet when physician is giving a talk somewhere.
6. Tweet patients that medical report is available.
7. Tweet patients to call to make next appointment for vaccine or treatment series.
8. Tweet patient to complete patient questionnaire so payer will process claim.
9. Tweet patients to remind about NPO, golitely, drink water before test.
10. Tweet staff to remind of lunch event at work (forget the brown bag or remember your potluck offering.)
11. Tweet patient that medical records are ready to be picked up or have been sent.
12. Tweet patients that auto payment will be drafted tomorrow.
13. Tweet patients to take meds (especially meds that change: z-pack, coumadin.)
14. Tweet staff to turn payroll in, managers to look over payroll.
15. Tweet lab tech to go to exam room # for lab work.
16. Tweet x-ray tech to go to exam room # to escort patient to x-ray.
17. Send notice to patients when new info is on website.
18. Tweet patient that earlier appointment is available when patient no-shows.
19. Order lunch for physicians.
20. Announce new services, physicians, locations.
21. Let patients know when flu shots are available.
22. Remind patients about drugs (interactions, refills, take meds.)
23. Remind patients to take blood sugar, blood pressure.
24. Alert patient ride that patient is ready for pickup.
25. Alert referring physician that new test reports are available for them via the web.
26.. Tweet staff to give them inclement weather update.
27. Tweet patients to remind them of support-group meetings.
28. Tweet patient that last payment in payment plan is less or more due to EOB notice.
29. Tweet patients about drug recall.
What great ideas do you have for Twitter?
ARRA: American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, also called “The Stimulus Package” or “The Stimulus Bill.” Of the $850B in the bill, $51B is pegged for the health care industry and $19B of that will be used to incent medical practices to adopt EMRs/EHRs.
CCHIT: the Certification Commission for Health Information Technology is a private organization that certifies EMRs and EHRs based on 475 criteria spanning functionality, interoperability and security. CCHIT does not evaluate ease of use of products, financial viability of the company offering the software; or the quality of customer support offered by the software vendor. Whether or not CCHIT will be THE certifying organization to approve “qualified EMRs” will be announced at the end of the year. (Can be pronounced “SEA-CHIT” or each letter can be pronounced as in “C.C.H.I.T.”)
Comparative Effectiveness: Comparative Effectiveness Research (CER) compares treatments and strategies to improve health. For CER, HITECH provides $300M for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, $400M for the National Institutes of Health, and $400M for the Office of the Secretary of Health and Human Services. (more…)
Whether the title is manager, medical practice manager, physician practice manager, administrator, practice administrator, executive director, office manager, CEO, COO, director, division manager, department manager, or any combination thereof, with some exceptions, people who manage physician practices do some combination of the responsibilities listed here or manage people who do.
Human Resources: Hire, fire, counsel, discipline, evaluate, train, orient, coach, mentor and schedule staff. Shop, negotiate and administer benefits. (more…)
By Carla Hannibal, CMM,CPM,CIMBS
Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) will pursue corrections of Medicare claims by auditing for overpayments and underpayments under Part A or B of the title XVIII of the Social Security Act. Health care providers will be affected as Medicare has recently contracted with RACs for 2009 and beyond. RACs will audit every United States and Peurto Rico health care provider who files with Medicare. The audit and recovery plan is expected to be in place by (more…)
New employees must complete the new I-9 form (Employment Eligibility Verification) beginning Friday, April 3, 2009. Here is the link for the new form: New I-9 Form
Managers, you do not need to to use the new form for employees whose hire date is prior to April 3.
What is the purpose of the I-9? The form states that it “is to document that each new employee (both citizen and non-citizen) hired after November 6, 1986, is authorized to work in the United States.”
Reading the instructions, I was surprised to learn (more…)
