Physicians Practice - January 2008 - (Page 53)

TECHNOLOGY and use a practice management system wisely, you’ll ﬁnd you really can ﬁll your practice piggybank to bursting with every one of those hard-earned pennies. AN ELECTRONIC SOLUTION For starters, look for a practice management system with a component that lets you not only manage billing savings opportunity,” says Waymack. “Second, every payer I know pushes electronic claims through faster than paper. . . . Instead of waiting 28 days for Medicare to pay, it’s 14 days until the check is in your account. There is a value to that.” Faster payment on claims, of course, means increased cash ﬂow for your practice. BIG GULP Biting into a comparatively small overall budget with a high percentage of denials can cut the bottom line right down to the quick — and very quickly at that. Waymack also touts another beneﬁt to electronic claims submission: fewer errors from payers. “If the payer has to sit there and pound in a thousand claims and put in every CPT code, there are going to be errors. There are going to be transpositions,” warns Waymack. “Those are going to come across as overpayments or underpayments, which as a provider are going to cause me more work.” FIND THE RIGHT PACKAGE but also submit claims electronically. Electronic claims submission alone can make a notable ﬁnancial difference for your practice, says Pam Waymack, managing director of Phoenix Services Consulting in Evanston, Ill. “If you look at the number of claims you’re sending [by mail], not paying postage is your first reports on a speciﬁc denial category. “We were on a practice management system that really kind of tied our hands as far as being able to run reports that were effective and that would help us with our utilization of the system,” says Joan Bryan, 12-year veteran practice administrator for the Orlando group. “You had to do each and every single claim as an individual report. When you have a practice this large, that is very difﬁcult.” The practice’s new system is much more versatile, allowing Bryan to produce reports by payer, physician, CPT code or claims category, along with many more options. Betsy Nicoletti, consultant for Medical Practice Consulting Group in Springﬁeld, Vt., agrees, pointing out the importance of making sure the system you choose has this kind of ﬂexibility so you can analyze trends in claims denials. Why? Because “with denials there are no one-time-only denials,” she says. Nicoletti’s experience has shown that claims denials are usually indicative of systemic problems in a practice. That is, whatever mistake the staff is making — be it collecting READ MORE ABOUT IT! Visit PhysiciansPractice.com for additional articles and tools on using IT tools to bring more cash into your practice: ELECTRONIC SUBMISSIONS ON THE CHEAP Perhaps your practice isn’t quite ready to plunge into the entire suite of practice management software. Or maybe you’re just looking for a temporary but economical solution while you raise the funds to invest in a more elegant system. Whatever the case, not having a practice management system doesn’t automatically lock your practice out of submitting claims electronically. You can use an electronic claims clearinghouse, which uses a graduated payment system that’s based on the number of claims and the number of insurance providers to which your practice submits. With costs as little as $200 per month, even the smallest practice can afford their services. That all said, let’s step back a moment. Just because you need a practice management system is no reason to throw your hard-earned dollars willy-nilly at the ﬁrst system you ﬁnd. You could end up with a system that doesn’t really help your practice. The result? A complete waste of your money and your time. The Florida Heart Group learned this lesson the hard way. Certainly, a dynamic practice management system was a must for the practice’s four ofﬁces, 19 physician providers, and 60,000 annual ofﬁce visits. Yet its old system could not identify recurring issues with denials, because the software made it difﬁcult to run • Go to “Decisions, Decisions: Your IT Shopping Checklist” in our Tools section, and download our “Product Assessment Worksheet” to help you make wise technology buying decisions. choose a practice management system by reading “Time, at Last, for an Upgrade?” by typing “Upgrade” in our Search Articles box. reading “Mine Your A/R Reports” and many other helpful articles listed in our Billing & Collections category on the left-hand side of our home page. • Get expanded details on how to • Bone up on your billing practices by WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM JANUARY 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 53 http://PhysiciansPractice.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - January 2008

Physicians Practice - January 2008 Contents The Bigger Picture: Fixing Medicaid Letters Physicians Practice Pearls: You Can Teach an Old Dog New Tricks Noteworthy Cover Story: Fee Schedule Survey: 2007 Results Adding Ancillaries: Bucking the Practice Ask the Experts Idealab: 'How I Got Over My EMR Excuses' Technology: Don't Be Denied The Tech Doctor: Blessing or Curse? The Administrator's Desk: Learning From the Best Coding Career: To Partner, or Not? Management: Controlling Your Inventory Human Resources: How to Fire an Enployee Finance: Beyond Reimbursment - How to Fix Your Mix Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - January 2008

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