The d.i.d. Circle Organization in late February released a medical billing and

scheduling package aimed at doctors and claims processors.

The Medical Billing Circle maintains billing hierarchies when dealing with the

carriers, patients, charges and claims in common insurance transactions. The

company said The Medical Billing Circle supports an unlimited number of

carriers per patient or charge, and it lets users set up default claim and

policy types from patient and carrier profiles.

The software, which supports transaction-based payments and postings, lets

operators schedule unattended statement, correspondence and claims-print runs.

It also includes limited support for electronic claims submission, and it

allows insurance-company fee tracking.

The software has relational-database capabilities that are shared through a

common software engine with three other institutional-software products from

the company: The Sales Commission Circle, The Incoming Travel Circle and The

Contact Circle.

The Medical Billing Circle is available as a stand-alone application for

$1,260 or as a client for ACI US Inc.’s 4th Dimension database for $960 per

workstation.

XGear Technologies has released the newest version of its proprietary Practice Management and Billing Software, ClaimGear. Upgrades to the software were designed to further reduce the amount of time required by clients — medical billing companies, clinics and doctors’ offices — to send and receive patient and financial information to insurance companies and third party administration organizations. In addition, several new features were added to enable tracking and editing of patients’ information, claims data and scheduled/canceled appointments.

“We work closely with our clients to determine key industry needs, then adapt and enhance ClaimGear as needed to meet those needs,” said Douglas A. Kegler, President and CEO. “We are particularly excited about this release, which we spent months developing and testing, because of the way it enriches the user experience.

“One of the optimum attributes of this upgrade is the ‘point and click’ usage, which allows a great deal of editorial capacity for the updating of patient’s information, as well as a higher navigational speed — no wasted time going from screen to screen,” affirmed Kegler. “The integration of our unique system-wide notes feature means that clients can view and edit information in any screen. Each note entered into the system is stamped with the time, date and username for tracking purposes.”

“I just wanted to thank you all so much for all of your hard work! It feels so good to finally be using a software vendor that listens to suggestions to make our day-to-day job a little easier!” said Merilee at NW Professional Billing Services. She went on to say, “I am so excited about the new changes I have seen, and look forward to working with a vendor that will always ‘be there’ for us billers and make our suggestions happen. Thanks again for everything, and keep up the great work. We certainly appreciate it!”

Another key enhancement to the system is its time-saving Payer address database, a unique feature that allows clients to easily load payer addresses and contact information with easy-to-use search functions. The hours of time previously used for this task will be greatly reduced, allowing for better time allocation.

In September, Medical software manufacturer Bloodhound, Inc., requested the American Chiropractic Association’s assistance in making sure its programs are consistent with the ACA’s policies on coding and billing. Representatives of Bloodhound met with members of the ACA Coding Committee to discuss Claims Guard, a billing review product made by Bloodhound and sold to health, automobile and workers’ compensation insurers.

Insurance companies have requested coding advice from the ACA in the past, but this marks the first time a medical review organization has sought such counsel. Following the meeting, Bloodhound officials expressed their delight at the depth of ACA’s coding and billing policies, as well as its knowledge of the American Medical Association’s CPT code process. Bloodhound also assured the ACA that it plans to continue reviewing ACA coding policy to ensure consistency with its own coding edits.

“We are very grateful that Bloodhound came to us to make sure they are on the right track with our doctors,” commented ACA President Donald Krippendorf, DC. “It’s a very positive step. I sincerely hope they are the first of many insurance medical review companies to come to us.”

Most businesses don’t like billing. It’s tedious administrative work that costs them time and money. In fact, some businesses hate billing so much they’ll pay you to do it for them. That’s a potentially profitable, low-overhead business opportunity.

You can run a billing service from home full-time or part-time, with little specialized knowledge beyond the ability to use a computer. Adding a billing service is a great way for an accounting or secretarial service to expand its offerings. Of course, as with any business, the ability to market your service is the key to success.

There are two main types of billing services: those that serve health-care providers and those that serve small businesses (see “Billing-Software Companies”). Start-up costs for a general business billing service are significantly lower than those for medical billing services. If you already own a computer and printer, you can get started for less than $500 ($300 for software, $150 to $200 for stationery supplies). Start-up costs for medical billing services range from $4,000 to $10,000. In either case, a high-speed, wide-carriage dot-matrix printer is recommended for producing duplicate copies, along with a fast computer (preferably a 386).

GENERAL BUSINESS BILLING

“Our research shows that small businesses in the service sector, such as landscapers and janitorial companies, lack the staff needed to generate invoices promptly and to adequately track payments and receivables,” says Scott McIntire, president of the American Association of Billing Professionals and owner of BlueJay Systems, which sells small-business billing software.

Lori Ende, who lives in Minnesota, chose to add a billing service to her home-based secretarial business when several of her existing clients asked for such assistance. She looked at several types of software before settling on the Basic Billing program ($289) developed by BlueJay Systems. (If you’re comfortable with database or accounting software, you can design your own billing system.) “Then I contacted the businesses that had previously expressed an interest, as well as others I thought were good prospects,” says Ende. “Eleven of the 50 businesses I spoke to agreed to try the service free for one month, and all signed on as clients.”

Beyond the center-stage portion of its mission statement–delivering quality care to its patient population–every hospital must manage the clinical communication challenges and administration requirements that support its mission.

Without streamlined and automated communication among clinicians, the best specialists are inefficient and referring physicians are frustrated. Without accurate coding and billing, no hospital can afford to provide treatment for very long. Without precise data capture and meaningful data manipulation, coding, billing, reimbursement and quality improvement remain difficult.

During the past three years, our hospital has confronted all these issues and addressed them with information technology that has yielded the desired results while improving provider satisfaction.

Making Technology Count

San Francisco General Hospital (SFGH) has served all residents of San Francisco, and especially the underserved, for more than a century. A county hospital and the region’s Level I trauma center, SFGH is a teaching facility for the University of California-San Francisco (UCSF), which provides staff to the hospital. With 450 beds, the hospital serves about 88,000 patients annually, many of whom are low-income from economically distressed neighborhoods.

In the gastroenterology division, we have six full-time physicians, one physician assistant and up to six part-time physicians working in four procedure rooms, and availability of a travel cart to perform endoscopic procedures in other hospital units, such as intensive care. We perform about 2,500 procedures annually.

But we represent much more than these providers. As the referral site for 12 health centers within the SFGH network, we link to about 500 referring physicians. Communication between SFGH specialists and referring physicians is constant and critical.

San Francisco General Hospital has an electronic medical record system, the Lifetime Clinical Record (LCR), from Shared Medical Systems or SMS (now Siemens). But the hospital lacked a vehicle to automate production of procedure notes that could be electronically created, signed and made available to hospital physicians and referring physicians in outlying clinics through an LCR interface.

PocketChart lets physicians and health care workers enter and access patients’ data from customizable menus or pick-lists. Provided on included PDA, software can also be downloaded to other PDAs or used on PCs and laptops to provide paperless, immediate access to information. Users can enter, update, and access records on-the-fly, in real time, from anywhere. HIPAA-compliant product comes with drug interaction database and also assists in billing.

TROY, Mich., Aug. 25 — Delphi Medical Systems, a subsidiary of Delphi Corp. (NYSE:DPH), is launching the easy-to-use PocketChart electronic medical record (EMR) software and personal data assistant (PDA) at a breakthrough price of $1,495.

Physicians and other health care workers can now enter and access their patients’ medical record data with a few taps of a pen on customizable menus or pick-lists. That means paperless, cost-effective immediate access to information on a patient, like medication allergies, test results, previous surgeries, and other medical concerns, all at the fingertips of a physician or other healthcare worker.

“There is no need to wait for user-friendly EMR software — it is here today,” said Christophe Sevrain, Delphi Medical Systems managing director. “We want to show the medical community that we can provide them with affordable, quality products that will help them reduce the cost of providing healthcare. PocketChart is one way to help address these rising costs, by giving doctors and nurses a more efficient way to access and record patient information.”

The announcement comes on the heels of Medicare offering its current EMR software to physicians nationwide for $2,700. At less than $1,500, the Delphi PocketChart software can be easily installed on the included PDA, or downloaded on to other PDA units. The software also works on PCs and laptops. This allows users to enter, update, and access records on the fly, in real time, any time, anywhere. There are even optional specialized add-ons available for specialties such as Psychiatry, Trauma, and Surgery, and updates to the software are free for the first three years. The software is used with any Windows-based PC, or Windows CE-based PDA, enabling doctors and nurses to continuously update, view, exchange and print patients’ information. The system complies with the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, HIPAA, by protecting patients’ health information.

Patients, doctors, hospitals and others spend approximately $425 billion every year on administrative waste and redundant medical care, says Avisena CEO and founder Albert Santalo.

That translates to 25 percent of annual health care spending amounting to $1.7 trillion. Doctors and insurance companies spend an additional $100 billion each year on paperwork, he calculates.

While Santalo does not think all of that money is wasted, he does believe that his company’s software can cut those numbers down. Miami-based Avisena makes software that handles the appointment and billing processes, among other things, for doctors’ offices, letting staff concentrate on medical work and outsource administrative tasks.

“We founded this company to improve the picture of the health care industry, to help the provider, the doctor, in his or her struggle to get paid,” Santalo says. “Our staff goes after what the doctors are owed so they can practice medicine.”

Avisena offers comprehensive practice and revenue management services, such as claims submission, payment posting and insurance collections, as part of back-office management. All are accessed through Web-based platforms.

The company also offers Web-based systems for appointment schedulers, front desk management, payment processing and patient registration. It also offers its clients consulting services on provider licensing, managed care contract negotiations and assistance with government program applications.

Avisena works with small and large practices, with a large portion of its clients being specialists. Among them is Cosme Gomez, a Miami urologist, who has been an Avisena client for about seven months.

Avisena’s Web-based software platforms helped Gomez and 13 urologists form a practice under one tax ID number as well as streamline their billing.

“To describe them as a billing company would not do them justice,” Gomez says. “They provided us with an excellent practice management and billing software. But more importantly, they have been our backbone for business logistics and operations.”

Santalo says the company, which was founded in 2001 and has about 90 employees, is growing at a fast clip, with 300 percent to 400 percent revenue growth in its first year, and about 100 percent in growth each year since. He expects to hire more people for the back-office operation as well as customer service.

Physicians at Harmony Ambulatory Surgery Center in Fort Collins, Colo., opted for efficiency when they first opened their doors in 2000. They bypassed traditional dictation and transcription options for the clinical documentation that follows gastroenterology procedures, and instead selected ProVation MD with its GI module. Right out of the gate, they chose IT, time savings, cost savings and a one-and-done approach to documenting the surgical experience.

Harmony’s Administrator Rebecca Craig, R.N., says, “Our physicians had vision. They knew that all aspects of clinical documentation are moving in an electronic direction. Even though we didn’t have an EMR in 2000, the physicians still wanted a procedural documentation system that could download to one.” Turns out, it was the right decision.

Harmony Ambulatory Surgery Center is affiliated with Poudre Valley Hospital and is a 27,000 square foot, multispecialty ambulatory surgery center (ASC) offering general, orthopedic, plastic, GYN, urology, ENT and ophthalmology surgery, and GI and pain management services, with the availability of six overnight beds for those who need more care than a same-day discharge affords. Accredited by JCAHO, the center includes four operating rooms, two gastroenterology endoscopy rooms and a pain management room, plus separate admission and recovery areas. The original five GI physicians have increased their numbers to eight GI physicians, and the ASC handles more than 700 cases per month.

Originally hired as the organization’s clinical director, Craig says the software works so well that Harmony added ProVation’s pain management module in 2003. In fact, the ASC hasn’t yet identified an EMR product that physicians like well enough to purchase and has suggested to ProVation that the vendor consider developing an EMR product as well.

Since technology changes so quickly, it is hard to begin by saying “in the old days . . . ,” but that seems to fit the best. In the old days, medical companies, service providers, and almost any other business which used automated billing enjoyed the convenience of logging on to a database (or several, they the company had multiple offices) and processing their billing statements. This “old way” required IT and servers, and is actually still the current way for most businesses.

Somewhere along the way, medical billing software was developed to process billing without logging on to multiple databases, without having IT, and without crowding the server. This medical billing software is not only cutting edge, but it is also a miracle because it comes without a large set-up and usage expense. Soon, all companies will be marching to the beat of the new medical billing software drummer.

Let’s explore the differences between the “old way” and the new by looking at the 3 reasons why medical billing software is leading the way in corporate software.

Connection

The “old way” was convenient for its time, but that time may soon be gone. It consisted of a different database for each office, which meant that if your business had 3 offices, you would have had to log on to 3 different databases to process your billing statements and close at the end of each day.

Using only a broadband connection, “the new” way connects you to an unlimited number of databases at once, allowing you to manage all of your accounts with clients, providers, etc., all in one connection.

In addition, with the same technology now available with medical billing software, you can connect to a secure server from anywhere with a broadband internet connection. You can work from home, the hotel, or anywhere else on a secure account that can only be accessed by those whom you authorize.

Capacity

The “old way” was to have separate applications for every function your business needed to perform. For example, records of clients, customers, providers, or patients, would each be kept in separate files in multiple databases. Then, to track appointments and schedules, your business would probably have had to open a whole new application.

Now medical billing software has one system for all of the functions your business needs to perform, not just to process medical billing statements. Log on; track your provider records and schedules, your client records and schedules, and your own financial records and schedules, all in one place.

Security

The question that runs through the minds of every thoughtful business when a new technology that claims to guard so many important and sensitive documents is, “Is this secure software?”

The answer is “yes,” because this advanced medical billing software backs-up, protects, and secures all data on HIPAA-compliant servers, which are accessible only to those whom you authorize.

New medical billing software is also a pioneer in financial security because the software does not require large start-up costs; it is billed the same way it is used: month to month.

Businesses can benefit from the technology medical billing software now has to offer. It has been said that the greatest breakthroughs come at the intersection of two different disciplines. Medical billing software has made a breakthrough in combining business skills with medical practice and providing medical billing software that not only meets medical billing needs but also provides a template for software that any business could benefit from.

Medical Billing Software

The practice is running smoothly, with patients coming in and out with smiles on their faces because of the great service your practice is providing. At the end of the day, you review the office secretary’s billing records and realize you are behind, again.

Running a successful practice depends upon the efficiency of the billing. Unfortunately many practices still must deal with a variety of different databases containing different sets of information. The patient contact information and the patient histories may be in totally separate databases, both of which have to be accessed in order to put information into a third database containing billing history. Though the database information in this example may be different from information in your practice’s databases, the database confusion is the same.

In addition to the database difficulties, running on multiple servers, installing billing technology with IT, and backing up all of your data is overwhelming if not impossible to always be on top of.

Simplify

Medical billing software has simplified the practices office structure to open up more time to continue giving quality service to patients. Medical billing software is a solution employed by countless medical practices to ensure effective and accurate billing.

One of the biggest ways medical billing software saves practices extra work is by enabling information on various servers or databases to be synchronized onto one account. By logging into your account you can access all of the information you need on any patient.

In addition to streamlining the billing process, medical billing software simplifies the financial obligation to billing and database technology by cutting most of it out. Using medical billing software enables tracking, billing, and security of all accounts online, eliminating the need for a costly IT infrastructure. The cost is usually a monthly fee payable as you use it.

Feel free to access your account from anywhere, including your PDA.

Secure

No practice should read an article like this and be convinced to find medical billing software without asking itself if an online medical billing software system is a secure system to change to.

Some of the examples of security precautions medical billing software takes includes electronic back ups, automatic posting, HIPAA and HCFA compliance, and secured accounts only accessible to authorized viewers.

In selecting a system for medical billing to suit your medical practice needs, consider a solution recognized by countless medical practices already. A secure a simple way to streamline medical billing is with medical billing software.