Azalea Health Innovations Friends Newsletter – June 2010
IN THIS ISSUE
* Welcome
* 99% Club
* Industry News: “Hospital EMR Reimbursements at Risk: HIMSS”
* Billing Tip: Medicare to hold claims again in June
* New Features
* Upcoming Events
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Welcome
Greetings to all of our Azalea Health Innovations friends and thank you for reading our newsletter. We wish all of our readers a warm and prosperous 2010!
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99% Club
Electronic Claim Clearinghouse Gateway EDI has added Azalea Health Innovations to the 99% Club for showing outstanding performance in electronic claim submission. This means that 99% of the claims we submitted to Gateway EDI were ERROR FREE, therefore achieving the Gold Standard of Revenue Cycle for Medical Practices. Achieving a “99% clean claim status” produces the following value: faster access to revenue, better realization in gross revenue, less cost associated with collection of revenue (i.e. decreased overhead), and increased levels of patient satisfaction with fewer questions and complaints about the administrative portion of their visit. Thank you to all our AHI staff for helping us achieve a “99% clean claim status”, as reaching this standard is a great achievement!
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Industry News: “Hospital EMR Reimbursements at Risk: HIMSS”
HIMSS Analytics recently conducted a new IT market survey and found that a majority of clinics and a minority of hospitals are at risk for not qualifying for full federal reimbursements for EMR systems under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, and the clock is ticking for aging financial-software systems. The survey indicates that between 30% and 40% of current U.S. hospitals are at risk for not meeting the meaningful-use criteria, both financially and operationally, and over half of all independent clinics will be at risk, despite the fact that the government will be establishing regional extension centers that will help office-based physicians get their subsidized EMR systems up and running.
Overall, hospitals’ IT spending on applications as part of total capital spending is projected to increase through 2015, largely because of the stimulus-fund support. HIMSS analytics project a 2% increase alone in hospital capital spending for IT application solutions in 2010. Furthermore, hospital capital spending for software applications is projected to be between 46.5% and 48.3% of total IT capital budgets this year.
For more information on EMR meaningful-use criteria, go to Azalea Health Innovation’s government incentives web page at http://www.azaleahealth.com/incentives. You may also contact us for a consultation meeting at 1-877-777-7686 or email us at info@azaleahealth.com.
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Billing Tip: Medicare to hold claims again in June
It’s time to prepare for another 2 weeks of waiting as The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) announced on May 27th, 2010 that Congress is considering another negative update to the Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. This likely means another 2 weeks of waiting on payments from Medicare until this is decided. Please read the exact wording as it was released from CMS
“The Continuing Extension Act of 2010, enacted on April 15, 2010, extended the zero percent (0%) update to the 2010 Medicare Physician Fee Schedule (MPFS) through May 31, 2010. The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) believes Congress is working to avert the negative update scheduled to take effect June 1, 2010. To avoid disruption in the delivery of health care services to beneficiaries and payment of claims for physicians, non-physician practitioners, and other providers of services paid under the MPFS, CMS has instructed its contractors to hold claims containing services paid under the MPFS (including anesthesia services) for the first 10 business days of June. This hold will only affect MPFS claims with dates of service June 1, 2010, and later.
This hold should have minimum impact on provider cash flow because, under the current law, clean electronic claims are not paid any sooner than 14 calendar days (29 for paper claims) after the date of receipt.”
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New Features
Please remember all the new features we have added to Azalea QuickBill™. These new features include additions to the appointment scheduler, such as as personalized appointment reasons, scheduling a patient to a resource in addition to a physician, schedule blocking, and lock-out blocking. With these new additions, you may now customize the Scheduler in a way that best fits your practice. We also added the ability to scan images (i.e. patients’ insurance cards and drivers license) into the system. By utilizing this feature, you will lessen the amount of insurance denials and returned patient statements due to mis-types and lack of patient information.
We always want to make sure you are taking full advantage of all our products have to offer and utilizing them to their greatest potential, so please visit the following link to review our recently added features: http://www.azaleahealth.com/quickbill_blast.php. Also, be sure to look out for another “Product Updates” email from us tomorrow, as even more new features and updates have been added to both Azalea QuickBill™ and Azalea LabHub™.
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Upcoming Events
AACC (American Association for Clinical Chemistry) 2010 Conference. This event is being held at the Anaheim Convention Center, booth # 8030, in Anaheim, CA on July 27 – 29. For additional information regarding the 2010 AACC Annual Meeting and Clinical Lab Expo visit: http://www.aacc.org/events/2010am/Pages/default.aspx
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Thank you!
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
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