Healthcare IT News - January 2008 - (Page 38) 38 Healthcare IT News January 2008 ■ vENdoRS www.HealthcareITNews.com AdvancedMD touts Web-based billing solution By ErIC WICkluNd, Managing Editor Jim Pack, the CEO of AdvancedMD Software, Inc., figures his company has never seen most of its customers. And that’s just fine with him. “Currently, 95 percent of our users, we’ve never met them face-to-face,” he offers. Located in Salt Lake City, AdvancedMD offers medical billing and practice management solutions for physicians’ offices. The software is Web-based, meaning the company’s 8,000 clients need only a user SALT LAKE CITY – name and password to gain access, bypassing the expensive hardware and software that might take weeks to install and force the closure of a doctor’s office for days. Pack measures his success in contracts rather than face-time, and he’s feeling pretty good right now. Just last fall, “currently, 95 percent of our users, we’ve never met them face-to-face.” – Jim Pack AdvancedMD announced that, due to customer demand, it was expanding its marketing efforts to management service organizations, independent physi- Better Decisions for Better Patient Care cian associations and physician hospital organizations. That effort bore fruit in December, when the company announced Ohio-based Advanced Medical Group would use AdvancedMD’s revenue cycle management solution to help manage 25 hospital-employed physicians. According to Howard Drenth, Advanced Medical’s director, the company’s two medical groups use four separate medical billing software solutions, making it difficult to standardize management and reporting across the practice. “The easiest thing would have been to unify all of our billing under one of our existing vendors,” he said. “Unfortunately, none of those solutions were able to meet the specific needs of our multi-specialty group. AdvancedMD was the only practice management software solution that provided the advanced billing features we needed.” With doctor’s offices and clinics seeing an upsurge in visits, more healthcare providers are turning to revenue cycle and practice management solutions to separate the clinical side from the business and help doctors focus on healthcare. And that kind of assistance is sorely needed for, according to the Medical Group Management Association, healthcare organizations are sustaining average group practice losses ranging from $50,000 to $100,000 per hospital-employed physician. According to Pack, a typical clinic loses 10 percent of its charges because they aren’t entered into the PM system, for one reason or another. By keeping an accurate log of all patients and procedures, he said, AdvancedMD helps that clinic immediately realize a 10 percent improvement. In addition, he said, studies show that 20 percent to 30 percent of all charges submitted to insurance payers are denied. With its PM products, Pack says, AdvancedMD reduces that denial rate to 5 percent. ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: BilliNG 0108 ● Visit us at Booth #2841 INsuraNCE Continued from page 36 delivers the world’s most-trusted resources to the electronic health record. To find out more: Call toll free 877-857-1047 or email us at sales.CDS@elsevier.com www.ClinicalDecisionSupport.com e ● Connect: elSeVier 0108 of insurance,” he said. Massachusetts officials recently announced that about 300,000 residents had signed up for health insurance by the Jan. 1, 2008 deadline set by the Commonwealth. Once that deadline has passed, those without health insurance or a state-approved exemption will face tax penalties amounting to about $219 per individual or $400 per family, with those penalties increasing each successive year. Commonwealth officials have worked with health insurance companies and private businesses to reduce the cost for health insurance to as little as $200 a month for a single person. Nevins said the Health Connector Web site allows visitors to shop around. “Prior to this, there wasn’ t anyplace that a Massachusetts resident could go to compare products and prices,” he said. “And in doing this, it certainly has forced (insurance carriers) to look at how they price their products and think about different ways to present their products.” ■ More at HealthcareITNews.com e Connect: iNSuraNCe 0108 ● http://www.HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8443 http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8443 http://www.ClinicalDecisionSupport.com http://www.ClinicalDecisionSupport.com http://HealthcareITNews.com http://www.healthcareitnews.com/eConnect.cms?id=8478 http://www.healthcareitnews.com/story.cms?id=8440
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