Implementing a new electronic medical record (EMR) system is one way to lessen the environmental impact of your office while also cutting costs. Medical records reduced to byte-sized information are obviously less costly and easier to store than paper records. Here are some other tips to help the environment and your bottom line:
- Install motion sensitive light switches in examination rooms if the practice doesn’t already have them. Although a room might be empty only rarely, the additional drain of electricity costs money.
- As long as you’re upgrading your system, purchase equipment meeting the federal government’s Energy Star initiative. Improve efficiency by turning off your monitors at night and putting your computers in sleep mode or shutting them off altogether.
- Rearrange your office. Your practice is set up for a paper world, so look at each space and determine how it can best be used. For example, as the file room is emptied, what revenue-generating purpose can it serve? Do you really need all the office space you have?
Change is difficult but changing the process a little at a time helps your entire staff to “buy in.” Make sure each time a familiar process – photocopying, faxing, etc. – goes away, the benefits of the new electronic approach are realized.
November 28th, 2011
“One of the new areas of focus from the 2012 OIG Work Plan is Incident To Services provided by Auxiliary and non-physician practitioner (NPP) personnel in a provider practice,” states AAPC member Holly Cassano, CPC in a November article for Advance for Health Information Professionals.
Read the full article here.
November 25th, 2011
“Here we are in the fourth quarter of 2011, and the ICD-10 implementation mandate of Oct. 1, 2013, is roughly 700 days away,” stated AAPC ICD-10 trainer Annie Boynton, CCS, CPC, CCS-P, CPC-H, CPC-P, CPC-I, and CPhT in a recent Endo Nurse article on ICD-10.
Boyton gives readers some tips practices should be incorporating right now in the ICD-10 preparation:
- SEEK 5010 COMPLIANCE
- ASSESS DOCUMENTATION PITFALLS
- KNOW YOUR ICD-9 WORLD
- PLAN FINANCIAL SOLUTIONS
Read the full article here.
November 23rd, 2011
By Brandi Tadlock, CPC, CPC-P, CPMA
If your provider is transitioning to an electronic medical record (EMR), take the opportunity to give him a “refresher” course on Evaluation & Management Documentation Guidelines. Many providers are actively involved with the purchase of their EMR systems, and undergo training on how to input information; however, that training often fails to account for the drastic change in documentation style that sometimes accompanies the new technology.
Some EMR features, such as Review of Systems and Exam prompts or MACROS, promise convenience and accurate E/M code selection. When properly used, these features can enhance the provider’s documentation by incorporating details that might have otherwise been overlooked. But for providers, all of the new prompted information can create confusion, leaving them second-guessing their understanding of how much documentation is really necessary to support the services they intend to bill. Consequently, they might overuse prompts, leading to notes that contain irrelevant, redundant, and/or conflicting information.
A simple review of the CMS guidelines can help your provider gauge the documentation he or she will need for each encounter. Emphasizing the importance of quality over quantity with regard to documentation requirements will make the transition to an EMR less overwhelming and allow your provider to make efficient use of the time spent recording each encounter, while facilitating truly accurate E/M code selection.
November 21st, 2011
“Confusion has surrounded the appropriate use of modifier 25 for a very long time,” says Brenda Edwards CPC, CPMA, CPC-I, CEMC in a recent posting on the health care site Scrubs and Suits. “The description for modifier 25 is a “significant, separately identifiable evaluation and management service by the same physician on the same day of the procedure or other service,” she adds. The article also talks about the most frequent uses for the modifier as an E/M same-day procedure.
Read the full article here.
November 18th, 2011