Azalea Health Innovations Friends Newsletter – December 2008

———-
IN THIS ISSUE

* Welcome and Happy New Year
* The New Administration and Electronic Health Records
* New Product: Azalea DrugWare™
* Medical Billing Tip: Billing for Dressing Changes and Suture Removal
* Google Apps for Healthcare

———-
Welcome and Happy New Year

Seasons greetings and best wishes for a wonderful new year to all of our AHI friends. We hope you enjoy this month’s newsletter.

———-
The New Administration and Electronic Health Records

Our new President’s healthcare plan includes 3 main goals and an estimated $10 billion in spending toward health information technology. First in the plan, all Americans should have access to high-quality, affordable healthcare. Secondly, accidental duplicate testing and unnecessary, excessive testing to protect from law suits and bureaucracy placed on physicians because information is not readily available must be eliminated. And lastly, the public health infrastructure needs to work cohesively with the medical system to prevent disease and improve the health of all Americans. All three of these areas in some way can be addressed by converting to electronic health records.

For the physician there are many benefits to converting to electronic health records. First and foremost, it saves them time. The transition to EHR would allow the physician more time to practice the art of medicine rather than countless hours of charting and duplicate paperwork. Not to mention the cost savings administrative tasks. One of the main reasons physicians spend so much time charting is due to fear of law suits and making sure they have everything possible charted. The EHR would be very specific in charting and do much of the work for the physician. It also provides quick access to lab reporting and results, procedures performed, and access to patient records from referrals and consultations, etc. The overall quality of care would be improved for the patient and the quality of life improved for the physician. We would be happy to share with you more on how you can convert your office to electronic medical records. Contact us today for a free demo and consultation at info@azaleahealth.com or call us at 1-877-777-7686.

———-
New Product: Azalea DrugWare™

Azalea Health Innovations is proud to announce the launch of Azalea DrugWare™, a web-based portal which enhances and facilitates drug testing result delivery to clients, Third Party Administrators, & Medical Review Officers. Azalea DrugWare™ provides faxing of results automatically and has been successfully interfaced with LabCorp and Quest Diagnostic Laboratories. Azalea DrugWare™ can also be easily interfaced with any other independent laboratory. Each Azalea DrugWare™ account has the ability to provide drug screening clients access to their own secure web-portal to review and print their drug testing results. It also gives system users the ability to receive e-mail notification when new results are ready for review. We are very excited to bring Azalea DrugWare™ to the marketplace and feel confident it will save our clients valuable time and money. You can read more about Azalea DrugWare™ here:

http://www.azaleahealth.com/azalea_drugware

Please contact us today for a free demo of Azalea DrugWare™ at info@azaleahealth.com or call us at 1-877-777-7686.

———-
Medical Billing Tip: Billing for Dressing Changes and Suture Removal

Questions often arise when it comes to billing and coding for wound dressings and sutures. You can in fact get reimbursed for a dressing change and/or suture removal, but, only in certain situations. It all depends on the global post operative period for the procedure performed prior to the dressing change or suture removal. Procedures such as biopsies and shave removals have no postoperative period while others can have a 10 day or 90 day postoperative period. If the dressing change/suture removal takes place during the post op period then it is not billable for reimbursement. If, however, the visit falls outside of the post op period then it can be billed using an E/M visit code.

What level of E/M visit should you use? Well that depends. In most cases, a level one new patient visit (99201), level two established patient visit (99212) or nurse visit (99211) because only one body area is examined and the history and/or medicaldecision making are minimal. There can be instances where a higher code would be used if the patient needed to be counseled and the pathology report is discussed. A higher level code (99213-99214 depending on time spent) is then warranted.

For questions or more information on billing and coding for wound dressings and suture removals please contact us today at billing@azaleahealth.com.

———-
Google Apps for Healthcare

Google Apps offers a very cost-effective feature of rich solutions for your medical office. Google Apps is a Software-as-a-service for business email, information sharing and security. Google Apps messaging include Gmail, Google Calendar and Google Talk. Google also offers e-mail security, archiving and encryption powered by Postini.

For employee collaboration, Google provides Google Documents, Spreadsheets, Presentation, Video, and Google Sites even compliment traditional office software to make teamwork easier. By using Google Apps Premier Edition, you will be able to automatically enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections when your users access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites.

Azalea Health Innovations is a Google Apps Solutions Provider. Please visit our listing at:

http://www.google.com/enterprise/marketplace/viewVendorListings?vendorId=220

or contact us at 1-877-777-7686 or info@azaleahealth.com for a free consultation.

———-
Thank you and Happy New Year!

Azalea Health Innovations, Inc.
100 North Patterson Street
Valdosta, GA 31601

Toll Free: 877-777-7686
Local: 229-269-4620
Toll Free Fax: 866-683-8679
Web: http://www.azaleahealth.com
Email: info@azaleahealth.com

———-
You are subscribed to our AHI Friends Newsletter. You can unsubscribe from this list at any time by visiting our website (http://www.azaleahealth.com) and using the Unsubscribe form below the menu. Also you can simply reply to this message with the word UNSUBSCRIBE in the subject line and we will promptly remove your email address.