Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 - (Page 53)

Blair agrees. He says that although replacing an old system vastly improves a practice’s functionality and data quality, it also means that “you lose a lot of experience with the senior billers. Tips and tricks get lost, which affects work ﬂow. In the billing department, they lost several hundred years of accumulated training.” You can also expect faster, more accurate claims processing with a modern PMS — down from a typical 30 to 60 days for paper submissions to 10 to 14 days for electronic submissions. “Often we get paid within the same month,” says Jenkins. “Or at least we know how bad it is that much sooner.” Another major area of concern AgileEMR Simple. Affordable. Smart. QUESTION AUTHORITY Feel free to pop in your jaundiced eye and cast it about whenever you see fit, especially if a vendor claims unique features. Still, if you upgrade your practice’s PMS, you can, in time, count on an overall improvement in staff productivity and, by extension, increased patient satisfaction, thanks to more ﬂexible scheduling and easy data access. READ MORE ABOUT IT! To help you determine the practice management software that best suits your practice’s specific needs, go to PhysiciansPractice.com: • Ever feel like you could use an assistant when navigating the complex process of shopping for pricey IT tools? Type “Tech Shopping 101” in our Search Articles box for some invaluable pointers. addressed by upgrading is that of standardized data regulations. HIPAA compels practices to achieve such compliance or suffer the consequences of claims rejection due to missing or incorrect data. Practice management vendors are not required to make your legacy system HIPAA-compliant. And there are also other encroaching data-standardization issues to bear in mind, including the mandatory, unique National Provider Identiﬁer numbers, which have been required since May 2007 for all providers who use HIPAAstandard electronic transmissions. PMS/EMR INTERFACING • Learn how to use practice management software to reduce claims rejections by typing “Don’t Be Denied” in our Search Articles box. our product assessment worksheet to compare and contrast the different software vendors you are considering. •Go to our Tools section and download Finally, with EMR adoption on the rise nationwide, you’ll want a practice management system that interacts well with your EMR since the data used by these two applications do overlap. Ideally, you should stay with the same vendor for both applications, suggest veteran upgraders, “because otherwise you can really get burned,” says Jenkins. Bristol Park’s Pat Dolphin com- $795* *No. We didn’t leave off any 0’s ;) WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM TECHNOLOGY GUIDE | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 53 http://www.agileemr.com http://PhysiciansPractice.com http://www.agileemr.com http://WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM

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

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008 TG Cover Story: Protect Your Practice and Sleep Better Operations: Paperless? Not Quite The Internet: You've Got Mail...Or Do You? Patient Relations: Attention Grabbers The Tech Doctor: All About Blogs Lessons Learned: 'My EMR Nightmare...And Why I'd Do It Again' Scheduling: No More No-Shows The Marketplace: Who's Got Your Back IT Enhancement: Time, at Last, for an Upgrade? Online: 'Yup, I'm a Junkie. And Proud of It.' In the Office: New Technologies in the Workplace: Blessing or Curse? Web Surfing: If You Build It...

Physicians Practice - Tech Guide 2008

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