At Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, doctors are saving time and sharing ideas using Box, a file-sharing and collaboration software that lets providers browse available medical documents and communicate with each other about treatment options. We are big believers in Box at Manage My Practice – we use it, and most of our clients end up using it too. Box is the only HIPAA-compliant file storage and collaboration service, and just like the doctors at Wake Forest, it makes our lives easier countless times a day. Wake Forest uses Box to store all of their medical journals and articles, as well as commenting on each file so that physicians can discussproceduresand treatment options. The doctors can access the repository from their tablets and smartphones, so that accessing detailed disease or treatment information is always as close as their mobile device.
Box is a simple and secure solution for sharing content with your coworkers, customers and audience. If you have moved your organizations’s practice management, electronic health record or email service to “the cloud” then it only makes sense to move your paperwork and content out of boxes and storage and into the cloud as well. If you have are using email attachments, a network drive, FTP server, or a non-compliant solution like Dropbox, then switching to Box can help your practice reduce your liability, stay HIPAA compliant, and store all of your digital content in a secure and accessible manner.
Box also makes mobilizing your workforce across locations easy. Box means your content is always available in a web browser, a phone or tablet, or synced on your desktop. Many of our consulting clients also use it to coordinate work and file across locations. If you have outsourced your billing or human resources, a shared folder in Box allows both locations to have the latest information and stay in touch.
Manage My Practice is a Certified Box Reseller, and would love to help you leverage Box to improve your practice’s workflow.
Many colleagues I speak with have a sense of or some experience with the tenets of “Lean.” But how does it really apply to healthcare – and is it really a way for medical practices to do more with less and maximize their resources? I recently spoke with Lean Healthcare Expert Mark Graban about where the rubber meets the road in healthcare.
Mary Pat: Most people have heard of Lean or have had some experience with it – can you explain what Lean is? (more…)
This is no April Fool’s Joke for medical practices and providers: starting Monday, April 1st, we will face a 2% cut in reimbursement for services due to the “sequester.” The sequester is the other half of the “fiscal cliff” that we reported on back in January. Although not too long ago, all the conventional wisdom was dead set against the government “going over the cliff,” and here we are with both automatic tax hikes and spending cuts now a reality.
Managers might find themselves giving the same explanations about gridlock to the doctors that you gave your employees when their first paycheck of 2013 was lower than usual.
Although the cut is only 2%, it comes entirely from the 80% of the allowable that the government reimburses, as opposed to the 20% patient responsibility. The cut does not affect the Medicare patient’s co-insurance, not does it affect the 2013 Medicare Part B deductible.
To give medical practice managers an idea of what that cut will look like, here are some sample numbers.
There’s a lot of talk today about how physicians (and other care entities) are paid. This slide deck discusses how the system used predominantly today (RBRVS) to pay physicians came to be and how Medicare and other payers calculate a payment. Download this Slide Deck and learn about Relative Value Units.
Click Here to Download.
If you could improve your patient collections from $600 a week to $6000 a week, would you do it? Of course you would! These numbers are from a Manage My Practice client who is collecting between $2500 – $3000 per day in a solo primary care physician practice with the Credit Card on File program.
Establishing a Credit Card on File program in your practice will significantly increase your practice’s cash flow, significantly decrease your accounts receivable, and reduce your patient collection expense immediately! (more…)
Most readers know that I have a special interest in helping physician practices survive and thrive, and have been writing recently about different models of care that physicians are adopting to make private practice financially viable. Here’s an interview with Scott Borden of Direct Care Consulting, who helps practices convert to a Direct Pay Model. ~ Mary Pat Whaley
Mary Pat: What is your background, Scott?
Scott: I am a passionate Health Savings Account (HSA) expert. My background has been in health insurance marketing and management for 23 years. I have been heavily involved with Consumer Driven Healthcare for the past 15 years. I have been both a talk radio show host and guest on hundreds of shows over the past 8 years. I have also been featured on several television broadcasts and been a guest speaker for dozens of organizations.
Mary Pat: Your company is calledDirect Pay Consulting and you help primary care practices transition to a Direct Payment Care (DPC) model – will you explain what that model is? (more…)
The HIMSS13 Conference in New Orleans, one of the biggest gatherings of Health Information Technology professionals of the year, was host to speakers, panel discussions, and one pretty large announcement from some of the big names in the electronic health record industry.
Meaningful Use (MU)
Meaningful Use is the phrase used in the 2009 HITECH Act to describe the standard providers must achieve to receive incentive payments for purchasing and implementing an EHR system. The term meaningful use combines clinical use of the EHR (i.e. ePrescribing), health information exchange, and reporting of clinical quality measures. Achieving meaningful use also requires the use of an EHR that has been certified by a body such as CCHIT, Drummond Group, ICSA Laboratories, Inc. or InfoGuard Laboratories, Inc. The term can also apply informally to the process of achieving the standard, for example “How is our practice doing with meaningful use?”
mHealth
An abbreviation for Mobile Health, mHealth is a blanket label for transmitting health services, and indeed practicing medicine, using mobile devices such as cell phones and tablets. mHealth has large implications not only for newer devices like smartphones and high-end tablets, but also for feature phones and low-cost tablets in developing nations. Many different software and hardware applications fit under the umbrella of mHealth so the term is used conceptually to talk about future innovations and delivery systems.
From our friend Frank Cohen:
“I have some great news concerning the upcoming Mastering RBRVS quickinar on Tuesday, March 19 at 2:00 ET. The presentation has been granted 1.5 AAPC CEU credits. According to AAPC: “This program meets AAPC guidelines for 1.5 CEUs. Can be split between Core and CPCO, CPMA, CPPM and CEMC for continuing education units.”
What is Medicaid?
Medicaid provides health and long-term care financial assistance for certain groups of people with limited income. Medicaid was enacted under title XIX of the Social Security Act as a joint program between the Federal government and all 50 states, the District of Columbia, and the U.S. Territories.
Medicaid became effective January 1, 1966, and currently is the largest source of medical and health-related funding for Americas poorest people. The Federal agency that administers the Medicaid program is the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), an agency of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services.
