Azalea Health Innovations Friends Newsletter – December 2010

IN THIS ISSUE

* Welcome
* ePrescribing
* Billing Tip: Medicare issues new Q HCPCS codes for Influenza Vaccine
* Healthcare and Cloud Computing
* 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 hope all of our readers had a Happy Thanksgiving and are enjoying their Holiday Season!

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ePrescribing

E-prescribing is an electronic way to generate prescriptions through an automated data-entry process utilizing ePrescribing software and a transmission network which links to participating pharmacies. Benefits of ePrescribing include:
• Fewer calls from pharmacies and fewer potential adverse drug events.
• Increased on-formulary prescriptions.
• Faster patient notification in the event of FDA safety alerts, without having to pull any charts.
• Safer prescribing with access to clinical decision support tools.
• Fewer handwriting interpretation errors, which are estimated to cause 9% of all medication errors.
• Increased productivity due to less time spent with pharmacy questions and renewal requests.
• Faster, one click, multi-script prescription renewal process. Case studies suggest a savings of 1-2 hours/day for the office staff.
• Eliminates calls from patients requesting alternative covered medication, mail order
submission or in need for the prescriber to obtain prior authorization.

With respect to covered professional services furnished by an eligible professional during 2012 or any subsequent year, if the eligible professional is not a successful ePrescriber for the reporting period for the year, the fee schedule amount for such services furnished by such professional during the year shall be reduced by:
• 1.0 percent for 2012,
• 1.5 percent for 2013, and
• 2.0 percent for 2014 and each subsequent year.

We will be launching our ePrescribing software in early 2011. Please note, ePrescribing will be integrated in both Azalea PM™ and Azalea LabHub™ as well. To find out more about purchasing our ePrescribing software or how you can add ePrescribing your current Azalea PM™ or Azalea LabHub™ system, contact sales@AzaleaHealth.com.

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Billing Tip: Medicare issues new Q HCPCS codes for Influenza Vaccine

Once again, our friends at CMS Medicare have decided to shake things up a bit with their coding requirements. This time the rules have changed for Influenza Vaccination coding. According to a publication released November 19th, beginning January 3rd 2011, CPT code 90658 (Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older) will be replaced with a series of new HCPCS codes for the purposes of the 2010-2011 influenza season. There are now five different HCPCS codes that are based on the product name. Please see the new codes listed below. Please click the following Link to read the entire article from CMS. http://www.azaleahealth.com/docs/influenza_vaccine_new_codes_2011.pdf

Effective Jan 3 2011
Q2035 – Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older – Afluria
Q2036 – Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older – Flulaval
Q2037 – Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older – Fluvirin
Q2038 – Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older – Fluzone
Q2039 – Flu vaccine, 3 years of age and older – Not Otherwise Specified

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Healthcare and Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is a style of computing in which dynamically scalable and often virtualized resources are provided as a service over the Internet. A cloud service has three distinct characteristics that distinguish it from traditional hosting. It is sold on demand, typically by the minute or the hour; it is elastic — a user can have as much or as little of a service as he/she would like at any given time; and the service is fully managed by the provider (the consumer needs nothing but a personal computer and Internet access).

The cloud can allow healthcare professionals to focus less time on managing IT and more time on doing what they do best: providing the utmost care to their patients. For smaller hospitals and physician practices, in particular, cloud based applications can be extremely cost effective. The cloud removes the need to purchase new hardware and the need to hire internal IT staff required to maintain and support new technologies. In the cloud model, providers only have to pay for what they use. When Implemented properly, cloud computing permits the development and deployment of applications that can easily grow capacity, delivers needed performance, and has a high-degree of fault tolerance, all without any concern as to the nature and location of the underlying infrastructure.

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New Features

Due to the dynamic nature of the medical industry, we are constantly updating and enhancing Azalea PM™ in order to provide our clients with the most innovative tools necessary to succeed. Recently, features such as an enhanced re-scheduling component, a patient ledger, the ability to download reports in excel format, a simpler way to edit a physician’s fee schedule, and the ability to add a “Lock-Out Reason” were added to Azalea PM™. In order to ensure you and your staff are taking full advantage of everything Azalea PM™ has to offer, we invite you to visit the following links and see all the many ways these features can benefit your practice:
New Features – September 2010 and New Features – October 2010. Look out tomorrow for our New Features – December 2010 email and learn about the newest features developed to enhance your practice management software!

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Upcoming Events

AHI will be exhibiting at the MGMA / Winter Conference in Birmingham, AL. The conference will be held at the Wynfrey Hotel. March 2-4, 2011.

AHI will be exhibiting at the MGMA / Annual Conference in Orlando, FL. The conference will be held at the Caribe Royale Resort. May 9-10, 2011.

AHI will be exhibiting at the CLMA ThinkLab 2011 Conference in Baltimore, MD. The conference will be held at the Baltimore Convention Center. May 22-24, 2011.

AHI will be exhibiting at the MGMA / Summer Conference in Destin, FL. The conference will be held at the Hilton Sandestin Beach and Golf Resort. August 1-3, 2011.

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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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