The original SGR language in H.R. 4213 included a zero percent update or a freeze until September 30, 2010.  The current SGR-freeze expires on May 31, 2010. It is understood that the House Ways and Means Committee is discussing a longer-term extension in the range of three to four, possibly five years.  The amount of any update is not known.  The budget resolution passed by the House and Senate exempted the cost of a five-year SGR fix (estimated a $80 billion) which means the cost of anything less than a five-year SGR fix would not have to be paid for if included in H.R. 4213.

Ways and Means Committee Chairman Sandy Levin wants to move a bill prior to the Memorial Day recess.  It is likely that the House will make changes to the Senate passed version of H.R. 4213 and then send it back over to the Senate for its approval without amendment.  The major sticking points continue to be how they off-set the costs of the non-SGR portions of the bill as the pay-fors used by the Senate were ultimately used to help pay for healthcare reform bill. 

© 2010 Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA), All rights reserved.

By Dave H. Perkins

If your organization is faced with one or more of the following issues then the chances are we can help you, then you should consider outsourcing your billing:

• Need to Focus more on Patients: You find yourself having to divert
  time and attention away from your patients to deal with technical issues.
  You need to simplify.
• Collections are Low: You have a high level of dissatisfaction with the
  effectiveness of your current billing and collections process yet can’t seem
  to get your hands on what needs improving. Professional certified
  coders can make sure all procedures have the correct CPT and ICD codes
  and modifiers to ensure maximum reimbursement for the services you
  provide.
• Not capturing all of your charges? Do you have a good way to know
  all of the services you provide are actually billed? Surgery charges?
  Outpatient services? Hospital patient visits? In-Hospital consults?
  Office Visits and ancillary procedures? We can help by providing the
  tools you need to bill EVERY service in a timely manner.
• You Need a New Practice Management System or Computer
  Upgrade: You know you need to replace your existing practice
  automation system(s) however you are losing sleep just thinking of the
  time, expense, and risks involved with selecting the right solution and
  then successfully implementing that solution.
• You are considering going to Electronic Health Records at some
  time and you don’t think your current practice management system has a
  complimentary EHR/EMR.
• You fear the loss of vital practice data: How can you really know
  your data is protected from Internet viruses, “hackers”, environmental
  disasters or Acts of God? Off-site hosting of your essential computerized
  records gives you assurance that it is safe. Secure hosting sites with
  hourly automated backups and on-site IT service protects you like you
  never could be with an in-house server.
• You don’t want to deal with technical issues or problems. “The
  server is down AGAIN”. If you had rather spend your time in patient
  care rather than computer care, you should consider outsourcing. With a
  hosted-managed off-site server solution, all you would have to have in
  your office would be workstation terminals, printers for relatively low
  volume on-demand printing, and possibly scanners for scanning patient
  documents at time of service.
• You Have Staffing Issues: You are experiencing issues with either high
  staff turnover and/or it is simply taking too much time to manage the
  billing office.
• Your Billing Costs are Too High: If you are concerned that your billing
  and collections related expenses are higher than they ought to be.
  Training and support fees, upgrade fees, software license fees are
  ongoing.
• You are concerned about capital expenditures at a time of
  uncertainty: Recent changes in health care, including the ARRA 2009
  and the “Health Care Reform” in 2010 have complicated your business to
  the point you don’t know what to do and could use the expertise of
  experts with knowledge of these changes in legislation and their impact
  on your practice. You’re not sure if now is the best time to spend more
  money on capital equipment, systems, or staff, when you don’t know
  what the future holds.
• Are you in “compliance” with CMS, OIG, HIPAA, “Red Flag Rule”?
  eHealthTech’s commitment to “compliance” is evident in every aspect of
  our operations. While our primary goal is to achieve the highest possible
  reimbursement to which our clients are legally and ethically entitled to,
  we always work in a manner that fully complies with both the letter and
  the spirit of all applicable guidelines and regulations.

The Compliance Program is under the direction of the eHealthTech Compliance Manager, who oversees quality from the original medical record through the coding process and ultimately through billing and collections. This written plan incorporates the guidelines defined by the “Compliance for Third Party Billing Companies” from the Office of the Inspector General (“OIG”) of the Department of Health and Human Services (“DHHS”), the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (“CMS”), and specialty organizations . A key component of compliance is correct coding for all services. eHealthTech’s professional coders are all Certified and members of AHIMA. To ensure they are informed regarding the latest changes in coding guidelines, each is required to earn continued medical education (“CME”) credits throughout the year. eHealthTech subscribes to industry newsletters, including Medicare Part B News to stay abreast of upcoming changes in coding and reimbursement. The plan is maintained as needs evolve and management ensures eHealthTech is continually following its own written program.

eHealthTech’s clients may rest assured that their billing is being handled accurately, professionally, ethically, and in complete compliance with the above-referenced regulations and guidelines at all times. Our account managers regularly review accounts with our coders and auditors to improve communications and fine-tune processes to continually improve data quality and integrity and keep our clients fully informed through regularly scheduled meetings and notices.

For more information on how eHealthTech Marketing, LLC can benefit your practice, please contact me.

For another article on this topic, please visit:  Software Advice

Dave H. Perkins
President
eHealthTech Marketing, LLC
www.ehealthtech.com
Phone: (601) 573-1826
Fax: (601) 898-4404

If you want to maintain a consistant office address for all insurance companies and patients to send payments and correspondence  with the least “hassle”, consider the benefits of using a bank lock-box operations.

What it is a Lock-Box?

The lock-box is a physical Post Office address, maintained usually by a bank, which has an associated depository checking account tied to it.

What is it for?

The receipt of payments in the form of paper checks and correspondence, including insurance company “Explanation of Benefits” (EOB’s).

Why would you use it?

a)      Protects you from fraud and embezzlement by office or third-party billing staff.    The bank has a fiduciary relationship and must be insured for this purpose.    You will be more protected from mishandling of funds, if those funds are handled by an independent fiduciary.

b)      the bank performs all “clerical” tasks such as opening the mail, removal of staples and clips, scanning of contents of the lock-box, making the bank deposits on a daily basis.

c)      the bank deposits the payments every day into your designated depository account, providing you with access to either the original bank deposit slips and checks, or with web-based access to the scanned images of these documents over the bank’s lockbox management system.

d)      Deposits are made much sooner than would be the case if payments were made directly to the practice’s office address.

e)      the bank’s staff can be relied upon to do the required work EVERY DAY, without concern for your own employees missing work or not being able to take off to go to the bank to make the deposit.

f)        your office staff does not have to tak the time to open the mail, copy the checks, make out the deposit slips, and transmit or deliver the contents to the bank to deposit or to the billing service to bill.

g)      the lock-box address can remain as the remittance address with all insurance companies in spite of changes of physical address by the medical practice.    This assures no interruption of cash flow or delay in receiving important notices from insurance companies, should the practice relocate or open additional offices.   Since the lock-box address doesn’t change, you would not have to submit “change of address” applications to every payor.

h)      The final and perhaps most important consideration of using a lock-box is …

to ensure a smooth transition, should you change from one billing service to another, or from a billing service to in-house, where you must ensure as of a specific date that all of the contents of the lock-box stop being delivered or transmitted to one party and begin being delivered or transmitted to a new party.   All you have to do is send a letter to the lock-box administrator, with your instructions.

How much does it cost?

The cost varies from bank to bank.   However, they usually charge a base rate, plus $.xx per check deposited.    You will need to provide enough details to your bank to get their best rates, which usually get lower with higher volume.   Check with several banks before making your choice.   The better lock-box operations offer web-portal access to both the scanned images of all lock-box contents to a third-party billing service or office.    They also offer on-line banking access to the depository account to confirm deposits.

Unfortunately for us who bill multiple payors for these services is the fact that Medicare has eliminated the consult codes, but  the other insurance companies have not not, at least not yet.   So you don’t use consult codes for Medicare and the Medicare alternative companies, but  you do use them for others?   Are your doctors going to make the decision of which code to use depending upon whether the patient has Medicare or not?  This gets even more complex when Medicare is primary and requires the new codes, but another payor is secondary and they do not use the new codes and you must bill differently for the same procedure(s) to each payor.

I am instructing my clients to continue to use the consultation documentation requirements for all consults, including requiring the referring physician name and NPI in case the patient has another primary insurance.

An excellent “flow chart” has been developed to help providers determine the appropriate E&M codes to use for what used to be a “consult”.   See  www.emuniversity.com/consultinfo.html

• I want to terminate my contract early?
• The vendor goes out of business?
• If I want to change vendors at the end of the contract term?
• If I want to bring billing back in-house at the end of the contract term?

While there is no one single answer, you should ask and have answers to several questions and position yourself the best way you possibly can to protect yourself.   Here are the top five things you can do to protect yourself:

1) Make sure you will be able to access the software and your patient accounts receivable database directly. If the vendor owns the license and provides you with access to the software as part of its billing service, make sure you have you own user ID and password to be able to view key management reports and perform analysis to independently evaluate their performance and verify financial reports they provide during the contract period.   In other words, it’s good to trust them, but better to “trust and confirm”.

2) Know what steps you would have to take to gain independent ownership and control of the software and your patient data, should the vendor terminate their service or you terminate the vendor. If you own the license and control access as a key administrator, it may be very simple to terminate the user ID’s assigned to the billing service.    If you want to allow a prior vendor access to records to collect the old accounts, but you want to start billing new services on a different system,  you may allow them to work out the old accounts for 90-120 or longer, accessing the old A/R system as necessary.   You should have a “post-termination” clause in every contract defining the responsibilities of both parties during this “wind-down period”.  If you do not own the license to the software the vendor has been using, make sure you can I contract directly with the software vendor to use the same system and access your own database.   It may be possible, but may require “permission” from the current vendor to transfer the database to you.  The database may be delivered in a format you can’t use.   If the vendor uses a web-based or ASP-hosted system it may be possible to sign a direct license agreement with the vendor, have the service company agree in writing to transfer the database to your new license without requiring an actual physical transfer of data or conversion.   For example, AdvancedMD is a web-based practice management system offered through eHealthTech’s billing service agreement.   eHealthTech purchases the license for its clients and accesses their database, which is hosted by AdvancedMD at its secure data center near Salt Lake City, UT.   eHealthTech provides its clients access to their databases during the contract period.   At the end of the service contract period, a client may request that eHealthTech authorize the transfer of their database “Office Key”, containing only their patient demographic and financial data, from which time the client would assume full responsibility for all fees related to the licensing, services, and support provided by AdvancedMD.

If your billing service is using a system that you do NOT own the license to AND you do NOT wish to assume responsibility for billing using that system, make sure you can trust the terminated company to continue to collect the remaining A/R for some period of time under a “wind down period” so you can move forward with new billing using either a new billing service or in-house, using a different practice management system.   This will have its challenges, as explained further.

3) Be aware that you may only have one remittance address at a time for your practice. If you change billing services companies or bring billing in-house, you must understand that the address to which insurance companies send payments and correspondence WILL NOT AUTOMATICALLY CHANGE.   If your payments and correspondence have been going to a bank lock-box owned by your practice, it is very simple to nofify the bank of the change in billing service and give them a new address to which to send the contents of the lock-box and to terminate the former billing service’s on-line access to the lock-box on-line or web-based portal used to view the contents of the scanned files and to view the bank account itself.   NEVER contract with a third-party billing service who requires your payments and correspondence to go directly to their address or to a P.O. Box or Lock-Box owned by them!  If you want to close the existing lock-box or P.O. Box or otherwise change the remittance address, you must notify all insurance companies of the change of address, using the various forms or on-line portals as required by each company.    Know that these changes WILL NOT BE MADE INSTANTLY.    You will continue to have mail sent to the “old” address for some period of time after you notify the payors of the new address.    You may have to track down payments made to you that you never received due to the change of address.

4) You may only have one entity at a time be the recipient of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) data from most payors. If you change billing services or bring billing in-house from a billing service, you will need to send new Electronic Data Interchange forms to the various insurance companies like Medicare, Medicaid, Blue Cross Blue Shield, etc. notifying them of the change.    When these companies process these new applications, be aware that this will re-direct all electronic remittance files, all claim edit reports, etc. that are processed by your clearinghouse or directly by that payor to the NEW entity.    This means the former billing services WILL NO LONGER RECEIVE ELECTRONIC REMITTANCE FILES OR CLAIM EDIT REPORTS.    If you had intended for the previous service to continue collecting the outstanding A/R during the “wind down period”, this will make is more difficult for them to perform their contractual obligations as effectively.   To overcome this, you must ensure that you or your new service FORWARD TO THE FORMER BILLING SERVICE all remittances and correspondence that is related to services billed by them under their contract.   This will create additional work for your staff, but is necessary and must be done expeditiously!

If all payments and correspondence has been coming to your practice’ physical address or your own P.O. Box, no change of address need be filed with the insurance companies or patients.

5) It will be VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE FOR BOTH THE OLD BILLING SERVICE AND A NEW BILLING SERVICE TO WORK ON THE SAME SYSTEM AT THE SAME TIME! Please understand that your decision to change to a new billing service should be made with a full understanding of the impact the change will have on both the new and former billing service to perform their contractual obligations under their respective agreements!

B. Todd Sitzman, MD, MPH
Advanced Pain Therapy, PLLC
Hattiesburg, MS

Read more testimonies and discover the power of  eHealthTech!

eHealthTech is here to help.                          

contact us today