From patient care documentation to full reimbursement

Dr. Robert Robbins, a surgeon from central Kentucky recently commented, “When I started into practice many years ago, for every two hours spent with patients I had 20 minutes on paperwork. Now for every 20 minutes I spend with the patient, I spend two hours on paperwork!

Our doctors are under siege! Denials are up and reimbursements are down and many doctors are making less than they did two years ago. Better documentation cannot only solve the problem and rescue the situation; better documentation is also part of your on-going compliance program.

Carefully planned transcription can reduce not only the amount of time a physician spends documenting the clinical encounter, it can also make them more money. This is accomplished by building a better interface between what a provider dictates AND THE CODING PROCEDURE.

To help eliminate a doctor’s tendency to down code, a safety net needs to be put in place allowing our doctors to code and bill accurately. All of this must be done while elevating the quality of patient care. High quality documentation, supporting the rules of coding, plays an important role in building the complete AND compliant patient claim.

A process should be in place to assist your physicians with the dictation-to-transcription effort. Transcription is the first to know when documentation is lacking. So why not inform the provider when certain key elements are missing from their transcribed reports…components that will allow the coding department to bill correctly and to get the proper reimbursement from the insurance company or Medicare?

The coder’s dilemma – “Doctor, I can’t even tell if you gave the patient an exam based on your current level of documentation!”

Is profit wrong in healthcare???

Is your transcription department or service partner a cost center or a profit center? The American Medical Association (AMA) recently announced that for 2008, there will be 242 new CPT codes, 298 revised codes and 364 deleted codes. How does a doctor keep up with all this?? Everyone knows the provider is ultimately responsible for correct coding so the tendency is to under code rather than take a chance on being implicated in a fraudulent claim. A well run medical transcription process working closely with the coding department should easily find an extra $100/$150 per day in additional revenue for every doctor in the office. If a doctor sees patients 200 days a year – this is well over $20,000 per year without seeing one additional patient!

A cardiologist with the Louisville Heart Surgery Center in Louisville, KY said, “I didn’t know anyone cared enough to help my situation…especially my transcription company!”

Process Improvement - going beyond verbatim transcription

A better more profitable (and compliant) future - add value to your practice!

Patient care is your chief concern as a health care provider. While you focus on meeting patients’ needs, complete documentation helps manage details essential to a compliant and efficient medical practice.

• Documentation – Practice managers properly utilizing their transcription partner for patient care documentation achieve higher levels of coding compliancy. Have your partner verify complete details of every document to protect your bottom line and ensure HIPAA compliance.
• Efficiency and Security – Your outsourcing service will furnish completed files in print and chart-ready formats for inclusion in a patient’s EMR. Be sure to use encryption and password technologies to safeguard patient information.
• Customization – Reporting tailored to your dictation style results in more accurate documentation and higher reimbursements, allowing you to focus on your patients – not their charts.
• Higher reimbursements - Increase your cash flow $20,000 to $40,000 annually through correctly coding each new patient visit and avoid the tendency to down code a visit. Spot and correct errors concurrently prior to the coding process. Also, improved efficiencies are realized by saving untold hours in administrative expense and record maintenance.
• Speed – Time is of the essence in medicine. Find a partner that supplies high-quality documentation in less then 48 hours – and preferably processes all your work in the United States.

Transcription services are readily available in metropolitan areas throughout America. Yet, community hospitals and clinics supporting patients in rural areas experience difficulty attracting full-time MTs. On-Demand is the solution for many smaller hospitals or medical facilities needing occasional back-up support with no additional overhead expenses:

• On-Demand is a cost effective alternative to staffing extra personnel during unpredictable peak hour situations.
• Unexpected events are an On-Demand specialty. Find a partner who provides back-up support when transcription departments fall behind due to unforeseen events.
• Operational efficiencies can be derived in a variety of medical record environments via on-demand transcription support.
• Extra transcription support is available on a PRN basis for evening, weekend, or vacation scenarios.

Also – the complete transcription partner will offer patient care documentation in several options. One of the popular options is to complement your electronic medical record (EMR) system. This is accomplished by signing on and updating the patient records with the transcribed reports requiring little or no administrative intervention. This service is perfect for those providers who wish to retreat to the comfort of their old process and dictate certain portions of a report (a history of present illness, for example), rather than using a point, click and type documentation process. The physician is central to the delivery of patient care. Turning these revenue generators into data entry personnel is not always the right answer in every EMR situation. For these applications to succeed, they cannot interfere with the doctor’s ability to practice medicine…so ask your transcription company for help!

Benefits can accumulate exponentially when taking a holistic approach to revenue cycle management.

Ralph T. Piercy is President of MediVoxx; a United States based medical transcription service. He can be reached at 502-244-9859 or emailed at info@MediVoxx.com.