Ensure Billing/Reimbursement is Maximized & Compliant

All providers in all specialties want to maximize their revenue, while maintaining compliant practices.  There are constant state by state, payor by payor, evolutionary changes in most areas of medical practice.  One of the challenges is to be able to keep up with these changes at all levels of the organization.You may have a collection of Stand Operating Procedures (SOPs) or employee manuals, which is a good starting point.  But how do you keep up?It requires not only an understanding of the changes, but also an effective mechanism for implementing these changes.When changes or vulnerabilities are identified, they should be addressed immediately.  You will want to ensure there is a mechanism in place to very quickly translate any findings into action items – updating any forms or reports; training staff all along the revenue stream on any corrective measures; determining if any retroactive corrective action is required; updating SOPs; etc.

Some ideas for how to keep up include:

External audits or reviews.  These provide an excellent starting point for reviewing potential issues with coding, reimbursement and compliance.  If there is an audit or review in progress, there is the potential to support a positive outcome (or mitigate a negative outcome).  If there have been adverse findings in prior external audits, it is important to ensure corrective action has been taken.  These also provide concrete examples useful for staff training.

Denial reviews.  Review of claims that have been denied are an excellent opportunity to identify and remediate revenue leaks.  Examples of findings from this exercise include (where appropriate):

  • not providing an unbillable service in the first place
  • improving documentation to better support medical necessity
  • updated forms, codes or other information or processes to ensure payment upon first presentation of claim, thereby improving cash flow and lessening staff time to process denials
  • identifying opportunities for streamlining appeals processes

Internal review.  There are a many variations of internal review, but an excellent opportunity to identify revenue leaks is to take a sample of cases from start (making an appointment) to finish (payment received and posted).  This process avails the reviewer of a glimpse into every step of the life of a service, and further allows for a time study aspect to identify any bottlenecks in the process, including any potential violation of state prompt payment laws by certain payors.

Contract review.

  • Identify any currently participating payors who may offer enhanced rates or be open to contract rate negotiations due to panel openings or deficiencies
  • Understand all fee schedule and reimbursement guidelines by payor (can lead to identification of additional billable services)
  • Identify payors who may be good candidates for network participation
  • Identify payors for termination of participation due to excess headaches or fees so low they don’t cover your costs

Most medical practices don’t have the resources to tackle these issues.  Either their staff is already overworked, they don’t have the Project Management skills to process and implement these changes, or the personnel dynamics are not conducive to these higher level changes.

Consider bringing in a consultant for these types of special projects.  We can tailor our projects to meet your time and budget.  Our consultations are complimentary, so give us a call today.

Ebola was MORE than a Healthcare Crisis!

How important are solid policies and procedures, including clinical best practices? This is something that became very popular in the news with the identification of three cases of Ebola here in the US. But it’s also something that I’ve encountered personally over the summer as my mother had her knees replaced, my brother experienced a cardiac scare, and I prepared for a procedure.

While you probably don’t have to worry about contracting the Ebola virus in your office, the situation in Texas demonstrates that you never know when you’ll be hit with an unexpected crisis.  How will you and your staff respond?
I received this link from one of my nursing friends. It’s an inside story from some registered nurses at Texas Health Presbyterian Hospital in Dallas who have familiarity with what occurred at the hospital following the positive Ebola infection of first the late Thomas Eric Duncan and then a registered nurse who cared for him Nina Pham.

We now know many more details of the Ebola story, but just because it’s out of the news doesn’t mean the headaches are over for that Texas hospital, or any other health providers who may find themselves in a crisis situation.
It has served as a wake up call to many that usable Policies and Procedures are not just a binder full of papers that sits on a shelf.
Another situation that occurred for me personally, that demonstrated the importance and efficacy of documentation, policy & procedure, and overall public and provider information regarding best practices in health care was when my brother experienced chest pains on the train. He recognized them, his seat companion responded appropriately when he noticed, the taxi driver who overheard him telling his wife he was experiencing chest pains sped his way to the hospital, and when he presented in the ER, as soon as he uttered the words ‘chest pain’ he was whisked off, stripped of his shirt, hooked up to an EKG and given an aspirin.
My mother had her knee replaced and every person on the medical team, from the surgeons to the housekeeping staff were obsessed with avoiding falls. Every piece of equipment, cleaning supplies, warnings, patient and staff awareness was riveted on making sure the patient didn’t fall and screw up that new knee.
I’m having a procedure done next week as an outpatient. One of the biggest risks identified has been infection, so there are many different protocols to follow to minimize the chance of infection.
We can extend this now to the recent Ebola hysteria. I’ve said this before – there is no doubt about it – I think if you had asked anyone where Ebola was likely to show up they’d say NY or CA. I highly doubt ANYONE would have expected it to show up in the middle of TX.

I was at Peconic Bay Medical Center recently, and they had a guard with a questionnaire at the front doors with big signs to attempt to identify anyone who may need medical screening for Ebola. So the message is getting across, and these best practice protocols are being put in place. 

The doctor in NY who was diagnosed was identified immediately because the best practice for Doctor’s Without Borders is to make sure health care workers who return from an Ebola area take their temperatures twice a day until they are past the incubation period. As a result, this doctor was identified, isolated and treated very quickly.
In the meantime, each one of us has an exponentially higher chance of dying from a bad egg/chicken (salmonella) or the flu or in a motor vehicle accident than even contracting Ebola, much less dying from it.
There is never a good time for developing protocols and documentation and delivering training. And 99% of the time, you’ll be fine. It’s that time when you really need it that people will start criticizing, condemning and blaming (and of course, since this is the good old US of A, lining up the lawsuits) YOU for NOT having prepared.
Where are the holes in your practice? Documented clinical protocols? HIPAA privacy training for your staff? Coding and billing errors by your physician, coders or billing team?
Put on your calendar to tackle these one at a time. Compliance is more than another set of pesky rules – it can be a matter of life and death!

Types of Chart Reviews

So you’ve decided to implement an internal audit program for your practice.  Excellent!  There are so many external parties who can scrutinize your internal documentation, so it is a really good idea to see your practice from their perspective.  An internal audit/review is an outstanding and comprehensive tool.

The first decision is to determine what you want to get out of your audit/review.  Here are some examples of reasons to perform an in-depth, structured, peek into your own medical records:

 · “How are we doing?” review.  This is an excellent way to initiate an internal review process when you don’t have a lot of time, money, resources and have no reason to think there is anything specifically wrong.  Depending on the size of your organization, you select a very small sample:

  •  1-5 records from each provider
  •  representing a variety of services performed by that provider
  1. E/M
  2. Surgery
  3. office procedure
  4. studies
  • every piece of documentation that supports the service

 ·  Formal compliance review.  This process would follow the detailed description contained in the practice’s formal Compliance Plan.  Don’t have a Compliance Plan?  Well, that’s another blog post for another day.

 · “Someone else we know had a problem” review.  A news report or a colleague reports an awful experience with a payor or other oversight entity.  Your initial response is panic, then denial.  Eventually you realize the best path to peace of mind is to perform an internal audit/review to make sure you don’t have any of the same issues in your practice.

 · “We think we have a problem” review.  Somehow it’s been brought to your attention that one area in your operation may have documentation or compliance concerns.  An internal review can be a solid first step in determining if the problem does exist, and to determine the extent of it.

 · “We KNOW we have a problem” review.  At this point, an internal review should only be one component of a larger strategy.  Coordinating efforts with your Compliance department, and potentially Legal counsel, is imperative.  Once you’ve been alerted to a problem, the steps taken and the speed with which you correct the problem can be instrumental in mitigating consequences.

If you’ve got any questions about chart reviews, we can help.  Contact us at sue@habaneroinc.com.

Healthcare and the Internet

Patients and providers alike should be utilizing the internet in their pursuit of healthcare.  The first point of connection – the patient and the provider meeting – might be the most important for both parties.

keyboard_stethoscopeIf you are a patient, and you need to connect with a provider for a particular condition, how do you choose from the many providers out there?  If you’re a provider and you want to be able to connect with new patients, how do they find, and then select you?  Here are just a few options:

Insurance Company Lists

If a patient is fortunate enough to have access to health insurance, the insurance company maintains a list of providers who participate in their insurance plans.  These lists may be available in hard copy form, or more commonly, on the insurance company’s website.  Patients can use these lists to narrow down their choices based upon name recognition or geographic location.  Providers should regularly confirm all their practice locations are properly listed for all the insurance companies with whom they participate, and promptly update any inaccurate or insufficient listings.

Internet Searches

There are MANY sources of provider information available online.  Patients today can post their experiences, both good and bad, on one of dozens of healthcare opinion and experience websites, such as healthgrades.com, vitals.com and ratemds.com, to name just a few.  Providers, what information is prospective patients seeing about YOU when they do an internet search?

Word of Mouth

Often the first choice for a patient is a provider who comes with a glowing recommendation from a friend or family member.  Sometimes, the recommendation is so compelling, the patient doesn’t care if the provider is in their insurance network or not, and they are even willing to pay out of pocket and seek reimbursement from the insurance company after services are rendered.  The same word of mouth system can have the exact opposite effect, where a bad experience can steer a patient away from a prospective provider.  Providers, ask yourselves honestly, what are your current and prior patients telling their friends and family?  And keep in mind, unsatisfactory experiences with office and billing staff can negatively reflect on otherwise good medical care!

Please direct your health care reimbursement questions or topics you would like to know more about to Sue@HabaneroInc.com.

Case Study – Documentation & Training of Proprietary Systems & Processes

Case Study Documentation & Training of Proprietary Systems & Processes

A midsized consulting company created a proprietary product that had been around for several years.  There was a lot of “clutter”:

· staff members with slightly different unwritten processes and protocols

· documentation was dated and contained obsolete/incomplete:

o forms

o instructions

o processing descriptions

Analyze

The first part of the process was to identify and remove erroneous and dated materials from the shared repositories, archiving them for audit purposes.

The next step was to establish documentation standards for the shared repositories so all team members could find and create documents uniformly.  This included defining directory/file naming conventions and establishing templates for proprietary Lotus Notes database systems.

Areas of discrepant documentation were identified and a discovery process was performed to obtain team consensus on Best Practices.  Best Practices were then documented and incorporated into the system.

Document

The entire product lifecycle was then documented in an electronic document.  A key requirement was to ensure that when external documentation is modified, the most current version is available to the user.  To satisfy this requirement the document featured:

· clickable links within the document

· hyperlinks to the intranet and the world wide web

Train

The resulting Policy and Procedure manual was then presented to the entire team in two separate three day sessions.  A total of 44 people were trained.  The trainees included top level management (Vice Presidents of Sales, Operations and Programming), account executives, programmers, sales support staff and data entry/clerical staff.

The highly interactive presentation included:

· detailed examples from the current workload, which made the training particularly relevant to all participants

· live interaction with proprietary systems

· significant interaction among trainees as they learned from each other

· comprehensive question and answer sessions and the opportunity for follow up questions throughout the training period

· hard copy of manual for note taking and audience follow along

WHAT WE DO

Policy and Procedure Documentation and Training:

· Research, interview staff and document current formal and informal policies and procedures

· Identify and work to resolve current disparate processes

· Clarify vague areas in current processes and documentation

· Analyze suggestions for process improvement and implement enhancements where appropriate

· Update existing procedure manuals to incorporate new systems, regulations and requirements

· Train staff on updated documentation utilizing real examples from client’s processes

WHAT OUR CLIENTS SAY

The Senior Vice President of Operations, and project sponsor had this to say:

I have had the opportunity to work with Habanero, Inc. over the past several years and have been pleased with the products and services they have provided.

In particular, Susan Montana of Habanero, Inc. has been able to quickly integrate information from a diverse group of my staff to develop a comprehensive Procedure Manual customized to our operation, which involves interpretation of government policies, and internal/external systems and processes.

She then developed and delivered multiple group training sessions to a wide range of participants, including directors, managers, programming and clerical staff, to introduce these Policies and Procedures.

I was particularly satisfied with her ability to work quickly under pressure, her excellent writing, presentation and communication skills, and the flexibility to travel to accommodate our very busy schedules.

LET’S LINK UP

We look forward to helping your agency or business. To learn more, please contact:

Susan M. Montana

631-244-5661

SMontana@HabaneroInc.com

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