Outsourced Billing Nightmares – Why Billing Precision? – Part II
by Erez Lirov Part II – How is Billing Precision a Non-Traditional Billing Service? “See, the problem is that traditional medical billing companies are built for traditional medical doctors.” Now the older man was philosophizing. “We’re different in many ways, but one of the most important ways is in our patient visit average. Chiropractors sometimes see dozens of visits for each of their patients. The coding and documentation is almost identical every visit. It’s only if you look at an interval of time – say 12 visits – that you can see large-scale improvements in the patient’s health and treatment.” “That’s why a higher volume practice cannot survive without a powerful in-house system that helps you produce documentation and claims by making minimal changes every visit, and not recreating an entire encounter every time you adjust someone. Now, all of the sudden, you have two systems. One for managing your practice and seeing patients. and the other, for doing your billing. The two systems can’t talk to each other, so everything becomes fragmented and things get missed.” “For example, last week I had a patient walk into the office for a routine adjustment. As soon as he scanned into my front-desk kiosk, an alert came up telling my CA that some of his previous claims had begun failing because his carrier was waiting for an insurance survey from him. If the billing system hadn’t been talking directly to the front-desk check-in system, we would have missed that and could have continued treating him for free for months.” The young man look awed. His current system didn’t do that. He asked the older doctor what system he was using. “Billing Precision,” came the answer. Now the young doctor was confused. Billing Precision? Wasn’t that a billing company? It certainly sounded like a billing company. But, then, what was the old guy talking about? He had to find out. “Do you mean your software is called Billing Precision?” he inquired. “No,” responded the older man. “The software is Vericle. I outsource my follow-up and EOB entry to a company called Billing Precision, and they supply me with the software. Billing Precision is not a traditional medical billing company. Their software is web-based, so it’s really my office software. I use it just like a regular practice management system. But the best part is that Billing Precision accesses it from their location to do their follow-up and EOB entry.” “It gives me the best of both worlds. I get the efficiency and control of an in-house system, without having to continuously hire and train billing staff. My patients’ charts come up automatically at each adjusting station when they scan their key-chain tags. It takes me 10 seconds to document and bill a repeat visit at the table. The data is then automatically pushed to the insurance companies or accrued on the patient’s account if it’s a cash patient. The whole process takes seconds.” “I also get real-time access to my vital stats and all of my financial reports. Not just in the office. I took a trip to Italy last summer. Halfway through, I really wanted to see how my associate doctor was doing while I was away. I logged on to the system from an Internet Cafe, and in seconds, I was able to see reports and stats.” The young doctor was hesitant. It sounded very different from the typical in-house or outsourced setups he had read about or seen in other offices. “Does it work?” he asked. “It worked for me,” mused the older man, “but I knew what I was getting into. I had experienced both traditional approaches to billing and I knew both didn’t work for me. I wanted to focus on building my practice without having to train and manage a team of billers, but I didn’t want to give up control of my billing. This was the only solution that let me have it both ways.” The older man smiled and thought back to the first time he talked to Billing Precision and received a demo of the software. It looked nice, but his stomach was doing backflips at the thought of another outsourcing billing nightmare. Now that everything was up and running, he was glad he made the right decision. He was concerned for the young doctor. Would he appreciate the benefits of Billing Precision’s non-traditional service without first experiencing the pain of traditional approaches? He thought about that for a while. “You have to decide for yourself,” he finally said.
Outsourced Billing Nightmares – Why Billing Precision? – Part I
by Erez Lirov The two chiropractors were chatting and billing companies came up. One was an older, experienced doctor. He had tried it at low volume, high volume, cash, insurance, care plans, fee-for-service. And several times, he had tried to outsource his billing — and failed. The younger doctor, having practiced for only a couple of years, had just brought up the subject of billing, and remarked at how time-consuming billing had become for his growing practice. His CA, he estimated, was now spending almost 20 hours per week entering charges, sending claim batches, printing and submitting secondary claims, and posting EOBs. With all her other duties, there was less and less time for claim follow-up, and the younger doctor was concerned that patients were not getting the personal attention they deserved. Worse, he was working harder, but revenues seemed to decrease as claim after claim was simply not paid. He finally said it: “I’m looking at hiring a billing company. Got any ideas?” The older, wiser doctor immediately frowned. His experience with traditional billing companies were complete and utter disasters. Each time, he had had to move the billing back in-house, find and train new staff and recover from financial issues. The billing companies he tried were simply not equipped to handle his volume of claims. Besides, there were lots of other issues. “Such as?” asked the younger doctor, obviously distraught at the prospect of having to hire and train a separate billing clerk for his office. He had hoped there was a simple solution – a silver bullet that he could simply sign up for and that would let him get back to doing what he loved — treating his patients. “Control, for one,” answered the older doctor, still frowning. It was a problem that plagued almost every billing service out there. Billing companies tend to work in their own software systems. It makes them more efficient at follow-up and data entry, since their billers need to learn only one system. It also allows them to monitor and control all employees centrally. But it wreaks havoc on the provider’s office. Few billing services provide any kind of remote access to their billing system. Often, remote access is slow and cumbersome, and the office never utilizes it. It’s hard to run a practice when the vital statistics are so hard to access. Harder still to control the billing and follow-up process when the claims and audit trails are out of reach. And that was just for starters. Lack of efficiency followed lack of control. With in-house billing, the charges flowed from one screen to the next, with no paperwork in-between. Once the process and data were moved out of the office, the staff started spending hours faxing superbills to the billing company. The faxes invariably died in the middle or came back as unreadable, causing no end of frustration. But that wasn’t the worst of it. Continued in Part II…
Cash Practice asks “When is the right time to collect money?”
Cash Practice As many of you know, it’s the little things that you do that make all the difference in your practice. Here is one of those little things we do in our office that make a big impact. Collect money first, schedule appointments last. This is set in stone in our office. Example: A patient has completed their first visit with Dr. Bodzin and now it is time for them to pay for their visit and schedule their Report of Findings visit. “Alright Jon let’s go ahead and take care of today’s visit and then we can schedule your next visit where Dr. Bodzin will review your x-rays with you. The total for today is $X.” Once you have done that, schedule for their next visit. This is so that when the patient leaves your office, they leave thinking about receiving care and getting better-not how much money they just spent. If the patient pays with a card, we store this card on file for them in the Cash Practice Systems. This means that the patient will never have to dig into their wallet for that card in your office again. This is just one more way of removing the interference that prevents people from staying well. If you would like to have a practice full of patients who want to be there and love what you do and are happy to pay you out of their own pocket, then you need it. Cash Practice integration could become a predicament with some software. However, Billing Precision solves it seamlessly, as demonstrated by Dr. Brian Capra:
Expert Chiropractic Billing and Coding Seminars by Dr. Kotlar of Target Coding
Not knowing how to go about proper reimbursement can be very frustrating. For many chiropractors, coding and billing turns into an insurmountable predicament. Billing Precision and Target Coding have pulled together their collective experience of more than fifteen years to help chiropractic offices get paid fairly and properly. Target Coding’s billing compliance, documentation and CPT coding products and services are designed to be educational, enlightening and financially rewarding. Question: Do You Know How To Maximize Reimbursement for EVERY SINGLE patient that walks into your office? After 10 years of experience visiting hundreds of chiropractors across the country, Target Coding found five very important items being overlooked: How to Establish and Document Medical Necessity in the SOAP Notes, Ammunition to Fight for Fair Reimbursement, Compliant Coding, Accurate Fees and Knowing How To Create Proper Treatment Plans and How To Update Those Plans In Order To Justify Continued Care. Proper utilization of these five items can provide an exceptional method to deliver high quality care, offer excellent financial return and help you sleep better at night. Target Coding sees hundreds of chiropractors losing thousands of dollars unnecessarily because of improper and out-dated billing and coding procedures. Stop giving things away for free! Dr. Marty Kotlar is the President of Target Coding. Dr. Kotlar owned and operated a successful chiropractic practice for 12 years and multi-specialty practice for 4 years. Dr. Kotlar is Certified in CPT Coding, Certified in Healthcare Compliance and a member of the American Chiropractic Association, International Chiropractors Association, American Academy of Professional Coders, American Medical Billing Association and The Council on Chiropractic Physiological Therapeutics & Rehabilitation. Dr. Kotlar has written seven chiropractic and physical medicine & rehabilitation books on coding, compliance and documentation. He is a contributing author to Chiropractic Economics, Dynamic Chiropractic and is a featured guest speaker for Foot Levelers Seminars, Parker Seminars, The Coding Institute and at many state association conventions nationwide. Dr. Kotlar has taught coding and documentation courses at Parker College of Chiropractic, Northwestern Chiropractic College and New York Chiropractic College.
Dr. Chris Zaino – 2500 Visits Per Week – Implements Billing Precision
Dr. Chris Zaino is currently the highest volume chiropractor in the country. In a practice this size, billing, collections, and compliance can become a major predicament. Billing Precision network helps Dr. Chris meet the challenges and increase the capacity of his practice. Having a single integrated technology, process, and billing service that manages your practice work-flow, is vital at any volume. Because of the growing complexity in coding rules, ever more frequent insurance audits, and busy patient lifestyles, not managing any one component leads to lost efficiency and revenue. Dr. Chris Zaino explains how his practice was “gushing blood” in all areas and how Billing Precision has helped stop the bleeding. Some important aspects of Billing Precision which allow him to do this are Real Time Billing with integrated compliance and coding warnings at the table Table-side documentation that can be updated in real time in under 10 seconds No show management and automated patient check in Web based transparency to all practice, billing and compliance statistics 24×7. Care plan management, including expected collections thresholds and reports. Full audit trail of all actions taken by practice staff and/or Billing Precision teams Integrated credit card and recurring payment tool Email marketing campaign manager. Automated appointment reminders. Many thanks to Dr. Chris Zaino, Whitney Zaino and their amazing team at Abundant Life Chiropractic. We are excited to be even a small part of a mission as big as this.
Chiropractic SOAP notes – Patient Visit Documentation in Billing Precision
Visit documentation is a major compliance requirement. A practice owner who neglects or postpones visit documentation risks failing post-payment insurance audits and severe penalties including license suspension and heavy fines per claim. What’s the best way to stay compliant, see more patients, and reduce your SOAP notes time? Use Genesis Chiropractic Software to complete your notes in 15 seconds like our clients do. Imagine having an all-in-one touch screen computer next to your adjusting table. While with the patient you touch a few buttons to copy the last note, create a new note, update the subjective, objective, CPT codes, ICD-10 codes, sign-off and send it to the insurance company. Everything can be done by touching buttons, not by writing long naratives in your SOAP notes. https://youtu.be/mfYeuqadqA8
Dr. Troy Dreiling Doubles Insurance Collections plus Improves Office Efficiency
Hello, everybody. Dr. Troy Dreiling here from Vancouver, Washington. I’m prepared to do my job today to take care of patients, get sick people well. The beautiful thing about Billing Precision is they do their job. So I don’t have to worry about my chart notes. I don’t have to worry about my appointments if they’re there or not. It’s all done for me by part of the management team of Billing Precision. So when I step into the office, it’s game time, it’s go time, and we’re taking care of patients to help them get well. We doubled our insurance collections, no joke, doubled our insurance collections, and it was amazing. I was like, “Holy mackerel! This works!” – Dr. Troy Dreiling So today what we want to talk about with Billing Precision is the followup. So once everything is entered into the system whether it’s from you or a team member, the insurance information or the patient information, date of birth is correct. If it’s an accident, the accident state, the diagnoses are in there. Once everything is entered, the chart note is entered. Once you hit bill or the really great thing I like is when you hit bill sign off, that means you’ve actually read the chart note. You approve the chart note, and you bill it and you sign it off, so you’ll never have to touch it again. And it has made our life so much easier. So now if we have to go back and get chart notes, we hit print and it’s done because we’ve already signed it off. We’ve done it that day. We’ve done it at the table. Also billing immediately has been amazing. We doubled our insurance collections, no joke, doubled our insurance collections, and it was amazing. I was like, “Holy mackerel! This works!” We had chaos literally chaos before, you know. Imagine seeing 80 new, 100 new, 200 new patients, 300 new, then to 400 new patients in a month. Imagine trying to keep all that organized with staff that’s not quite up to speed on billing and coding, and doesn’t have the software to back it up, doesn’t have a team that really knows what they’re doing. Imagine the mess that could come out of that, and you know I’ve been there. Yeah. So if you actually want to get paid, have faster claims come through, actually, get the claims paid in a timely fashion, have your billing team respond to tickets and claim it immediately, I recommend you go to billingprecision.com or now https://genesischiropracticsoftware.com. You arrive here to the website and schedule a personal review, and then they’ll take you through. Is it right for you? Is it right for your team, for your staff, for your office, for your needs? Probably one of the best things I’ve done in practice for the profitability and ease of use, and its compliance. Everything has just been streamlined and we’re working hard to make sure that all your needs are addressed. I’m glad you took the time to read this entry by Dr. Troy Dreiling on Billing Precision and making your life much easier as a chiropractor. The Billing Precision software has been re-branded as Genesis Chiropractic Software.
Financial Data Transfer Policy
Data transition across different software vendors is always a predicament. Billing Precision safeguards HIPAA-sensitive and financial data and protects our clients against data loss in three ways: We back up frequently all client data, We enable the clients to download data independently and at their convenience directly from our user interface, We offer custom bulk data download services. By the way, did you know that you can use the software without the billing service and avoid transition headaches? Talk with your Coach for more details. General Policy Access to reports and manual downloads by the client are included in the standard hosting fees during the termination period. ($99/mo – partial months are counted as full months) Client may maintain data hosting services for $99/mo, and can terminate at any time. Client may reactivate an account temporarily for $99/mo. Additional services or custom formats may be available by request as per the standard hourly service fees and as per the fee schedule below. Billing Precision does not assume responsibility for loading the data into any third party system or for formatting the data in any way other than the format listed below. Below is a list of some of the most common data requested for transfer. Access to all of these are included in the standard hosting fees, except items specifically marked. Common Data Requests Patient Demographics – one-click download into CSV format Schedule Information – one-click CSV report by date range Practice Financial Data – dozens of summary and detail reports by date ranges; most reports can be exported to CSV format Patient Financial Data – individual patient ledgers can be exported to CSV format, one at a time or all at once via the practice ledger report. Claim Followup Information – individual claim logs can be downloaded as CSV files claim by claim or patient by patient Electronic Health Records – completed narratives can be downloaded patient by patient into a text file format; $99 fee for technical support to download all completed narratives across all patients into one text file File Attachments (e.g., X-rays) – individual attachments can be downloaded;
