Medical EMR : How It can Simplify Healthcare Medical EMR

Physical Therapy EMR Top Five Advantages

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | Dec 2, 2018 | Electronic Medical Records, Physical Therapy Documentation, Physical Therapy Software

Many physical therapy business owners are not yet convinced they should make the change over to automated documentation.

Nitin Chhoda enumerates the five advantages that physical therapy EMR can give, and how it can affect the entire process of a practices’ documentation from scheduling to billing.

Physical therapy EMR system is obviously going electronic and is starting to look more and more like the obvious choice for physical therapy software.

Many physical therapy EMR systems handle everything from physical therapy documentation to billing to scheduling.

Just in case you’re not convinced, here are the top five advantages of physical therapy EMR for all of your PT documentation software needs.

#5: Integrated Billing

Many clinicians find this to be one of the most obvious benefits, but it cannot be stressed enough. When you implement physical therapy software that offers complete physical therapy EMR transition, your business has the opportunity to get much, much more efficient. Medical billing is a complex job, and EMR for physical therapy services can make it just a bit simpler.

Because billing, scheduling, and electronic medical records will all be tracked by the same system, you can expect things to be more intuitive.

Medical billing can involve many steps and should include aging reports and follow-ups. A good physical therapy EMR system will allow you to set reminders and collect insurance and patient payments in a more efficient manner.

#4: Professionalism

Your practice with an integrated physical therapy EMR services will give patients even more confidence about your services.

It turns out that the way patients perceive your office will make a difference – both new and continuing patients may decide your practice is not organized enough and walk out the door at any time.

If you show them a standard of paperwork, billing, and timely communications, they will respect the practice and feel more confident.

Additionally, physical therapy EMR can help busy therapists to keep all of their patients straight. No one is expected to remember every detail of every appointment. Electronic medical records make it quicker and easier to get caught up.

#3: Reporting and Profitability

A fully integrated physical therapy EMR will allow you to track the indicators that you want to check. How often do cancelled appointments remain empty? How often do referrals lead to a consistent new client? If you can get these numbers quickly and easily, you can use them to make your practice more profitable and efficient.

#2: EMRs are Coming

Physical therapy EMR and billing are the directions we’re all headed anyway. Why? Because they cut down on expenses and wasted time, which means you’ll be wasting less money on inefficient procedures. Implementing a physical therapy EMR now will ensure that you are on track to work with the rest of the medical community in the most efficient and practical way.

#1: Precision, Accessibility, Accountability

With physical therapy EMR and software that is designed by and for physical therapists, you can improve precision and accountability. When a system is intuitive to use and provides short cuts for a fast and constantly changing workflow, everyone gets better at their job. And if there is ever any question about why a decision was made or how a situation was handled, all the information will be together in one very easily accessible place.

Electronic Medical Records – What Is It?

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | Nov 18, 2018 | Electronic Medical Records, Physical Therapy Documentation, Physical Therapy Software

The latest and most convenient way to process your physical therapy documentation is through the use of electronic medical records. Nitin Chhoda defines this system and how it affects the whole process within a physical therapy practice.

Technology has allowed humans to achieve amazing things, even in the past couple of decades. Consider that less than 40 years ago email was a science fiction dream.

Sending messages instantly from anywhere to anywhere else in the world were seemed impossible then. Even electronic medical records are not developed yet.

Today we take that convenience for granted, even though email and the Internet have made it possible for improvements in efficiency that were previously unimaginable.

What is EMR?

EMR stands for electronic medical record, and electronic medical records promise to be the technology of the future for anyone with any kind of medical practice.

An electronic medical record (EMR) is the digital, or paper-free way for medical practices of all kinds to track a patient’s care, medical history, and progress.

From doctors to physical therapists to dentists, anyone who treats a patient must adhere to certain documentation practices like having electronic medical records. However, until recently the only option was to write everything down on physical forms and review the notes before each visit with a patient.

Electronic medical records allow healthcare professionals to review information more quickly and provide better care to their patients. Consider that a clinician may see anywhere between eight and fifteen patients in a single day.

Some may be new patients, others are coming back for check-ups, and others have specific diseases or conditions for which they need regular testing. Without a photographic memory, it is impossible to keep up with all the details that are important to caring for each patient.

That is why an effective and correct implementation of the electronic medical records is very important. In fact, some clinicians find that just remembering the names of all their patients is a huge challenge.

Recalling Important Details

Medical records are critical to the process of recalling those important details, including things like which medications a patient is currently taking and what was discussed at their last visit.

Electronic medical records make reviewing this information quick and easy.

Rather than having to spend time looking for a medical file, electronic medical records make all the information carried around on a tablet or computer shared between the reception desk computer and the clinician’s computer with the click of a button. Files are pulled up instantly and are always legible.

Of course good medical recordkeeping is a continuous job. Clinicians and other healthcare professionals must update records during and after each visit. In fact, electronic medical records can even help a clinician to remember which questions they should be asking and which tests should be performed, based on what information must be entered into the electronic medical records.

EMR and Billing

Then, with automatic or manually triggered processes, a patient can be billed as soon as the appointment is over. All the appropriate filing for Medicare or health insurance company billing can also be handled by electronic medical records systems. And alerts can be arranged so that if bills go unpaid, the clinic staff can re-bill quickly and easily.

If you want to know what electronic medical records are, think about the way you would manage all patient information, billing, and recordkeeping. Imagine a system that integrates all administrative tasks with a system that allows all kinds of medical professionals to be more efficient and better informed when heading into an appointment.

Medical Coding Latest Trends

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | Jun 17, 2018 | Electronic Medical Records, Physical Therapy Billing, Physical Therapy Software

Medical coding is a complicated task, and requires constant updating. NItin Chhoda shares the main tasks of a medical coder and the importance of using certified people.

Because medical coding is such an important task, many clinics assign a medical coder to do the job. Sometimes the medical coder and the medical biller are the same person, especially in a smaller clinic.

But medical coding is a complex task that requires a detail oriented approach and specific knowledge. Some of the most recent trends in medical coding have shown an increase in the demand for certified medical coders.

Updates to Codes

A certified medical coder for physical therapy billing is required to spend a certain amount of time studying medical coding before they become certified.

You don’t have to have a degree or certification to work as a medical coder, but you do have to understand medical terminology and have a good education in physiology and anatomy.

Reading what a clinician has written and assigning the appropriate medical codes would be hard if you don’t know what the clinician is talking about.

But another advantage of hiring a certified medical coder is that they will be required to take continuing education courses and re-certify regularly. That means that when changes are being made to medical coding websites, the medical coding staff member will be updated through courses.

One very important change that is coming soon is the switch from ICD-9 codes to ICD-10 codes, which will occur in October of 2013. An additional 100,000 codes will be introduced into the system, and the ICD-9 codes only number about 13,600 codes. This change is going to affect every single health care provider in the country.

Education and Job Outlook

As a result of the need for skilled medical coding professionals, the job of a medical coder is looking pretty steady for the next decade and beyond.

Competitive certification programs are popping up all across the country. For people looking for a steady and well-paid job, medical coding is a good option these days.

There have been a few recent trends in medical coding education. Most significantly, more and more medical clinics want to hire certified medical coders rather than someone they will have to train themselves.

A skilled and experienced coder will be able to handle the job efficiently and they will be learning how to deal with changes and updates as part of their re-certification courses. With this kind of confidence-inducing education, certified medical coders are a well-respected part of successful medical practices.

Paperwork vs. Electronic Medical Records

Another big adjustment that is rapidly changing the way medical coding is done is the introduction of electronic medical records. For some coders, this sounds like the best idea yet. EMR systems might make their jobs faster and more efficient, allowing for coding and billing to occur side-by-side within the computer program.

Some medical coding professionals are not so enthusiastic. They see plenty of potential for problems with security and privacy. But as electronic systems evolve and the need for better electronic security arises, it seems that security companies are developing the proper privacy measures to accommodate a paper-free medical coding environment.

Medical Billing And Coding In-House

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | May 27, 2018 | Medical Billing, Physical Therapy Billing, Physical Therapy Documentation, Physical Therapy Software

Whether your medical billing and coding should be in-housed or outsourced, there are certain things that are worth considering. Nitin Chhoda shares the advantages of an in-house medical billing and coding for a small or new private practice.

One of the biggest considerations for many practices is whether or not to conduct the medical billing and coding in-house or to outsource the work.

The question tends to focus on costs, which makes sense.

If your practice can save money by hiring a company to handle the medical billing and coding for you, why hire someone in-house?

But of course, calculating how you are best served is not all that simple. The determination often depends on the size of the office, how many claims need to be filed per day, how many clinicians work at the practice, and the costs of related hardware and software.

And of course, does in-house medical billing and coding improve the rate at which your claims are accepted and paid, or will outsourcing improve collection rates?

Benefits of In-House Billers

The most obvious decision will have to do with the amount of billing that your in-house billers and coders can handle.

In a very small practice, where the receptionist can handle scheduling, medical coding, and medical billing without being overwhelmed, hiring out medical billing and coding is probably unnecessary. And there are a few benefits to having the medical billing and coding professional right there in the office with clinicians.

When you can talk to your medical billing and coding staff member directly, all the details can be accessed at any time about any claim. One downside of an off-site service is that you have less control over and less access to your billing history.

Some services will provide reporting as a scheduled service or on demand. But timing will still be hampered by the fact that the medical billing and coding staff handling your practice probably has a number of practices to worry about. The process becomes less personal.

Another benefit of in-house medical billing and coding is that the information only has to be communicated once.

In other words, in many ways an outsourced system will require that someone put in a decent amount of work to get the billing accomplished.

In the most efficient scenario, you could simply scan relevant documents and hope they understand what is written.

But outsourcing will not mean that all aspect of medical billing and coding will be handled elsewhere. Someone still needs to be available for communication and transfer of information.

Size Matters When it Comes to Price

As you can imagine, the larger a practice gets, the more efficient an in-house biller can be. If you have a very small office, hiring one or two staff members just to handle medical billing and coding careers will be very expensive. In a private practice, there is a fine line to be drawn between having one staff member to handle everything administrative, and having too much work for a single staff member to handle.

When staff members with lots of responsibilities get overwhelmed, all tasks begin to suffer. And when medical billing and coding suffers, the entire practice is put in jeopardy.

Physical Therapy Software: Relationship Between EMR, Clearing Houses, Payers and Your Wallet

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | Aug 21, 2017 | Electronic Medical Records, Physical Therapy Documentation, Physical Therapy Software

The major roles of EMR, clearing houses, and billing are very important because the flow of the business depends on it. Nitin Chhoda explains these relationships and the impact it has on your practice’ income.

Reimbursements from private insurance, Medicare, Medicaid and Workers’ Compensation are the primary sources from which physical therapists collect revenues.

Those income sources pay the bills and salaries, fund expansion and equipment.

In an age where payments are being limited, capped and questioned, physical therapy software EMR offers assistance in locating the best payers that directly affects a practice’s profit margin.

An EMR offers online submissions for quicker turnarounds on payments, along with billing and coding options for greater flexibility. Physical therapy software also provides the means to identify the best payers.

Contracts with Payers

Therapists may have negotiated contracts with primary payers, but that doesn’t mean the dollars are going to start rolling in. Preferred provider organizations (PPOs) often sell their contracts to third party administrators (TPA) or another PPO that reimburses at a lower rate.

Selling contracts to other providers is a common practice, but most probably the one that’s financially disastrous for clinics. EMRs offer physical therapy software analytic tools that can be used to track payments from a wide range of third-party payers.

Therapists can ascertain which organizations pay the highest reimbursement rates and those that don’t limit or cap payments or services. EMRs offer physical therapy software billing and coding options to ensure practice owners are receiving the highest level of compensation for their services.

The Role of Physical Therapy Software

Physical therapy software provides the means for therapists to compare and contrast the financial benefits of working with specific third-party payers.

The current trend in healthcare is toward cost reduction, which directly affects access to established and potential patients.

Cost reduction is beneficial for insurance companies, but the plan doesn’t provide adequate reimbursements for clinic owners and their services. EMRs offer therapists physical therapy software options that help grow their practice.

Any therapist operating their own practice will soon learn about clearinghouses and the role they play in keeping their clinic funded. Millions of claims are filed with carriers each day, all of which would be traveling by mail to the four corners of the earth.

Clearinghouses and More

Clearinghouses were established to facilitate claims processing, resolve reimbursement issues and address physical therapy software errors. An EMR sends a therapist’s claims to clearinghouses electronically where they’re received almost immediately and checked for errors, before making their way to the specified payer.

The entire process can be accomplished in a matter of hours, compared to traditional mail that could take days to reach its destination. With the assistance of an EMR, questions can be answered, errors addressed, and corrections can be accomplished in the blink of an eye for a quicker turnaround on reimbursements.

Before the advent of physical therapy software EMRs, it could take weeks or even months of paper-based communications to clear a claim question and deposit the funds in a clinic’s account.

Physical therapy software provides the means to submit claims and obtain reimbursements quicker, offering better cash flow for any clinic.

An EMR saves long, tedious hours of phone time with individual insurance providers clarifying claims, allowing therapists to spend more time treating patients and less time waiting for reimbursements. They also contain the essential components needed for compliant physical therapy documentation to protect practice owners from a variety of legal ills.

Physical Therapy Software 2020

by Nitin Chhoda PT, DPT | Aug 6, 2017 | Physical Therapy Documentation, Physical Therapy Software

Nitin Chhoda sees a great future when it comes to using the physical therapy software. He shares the benefits and impact it will have on the physical therapy business.

As with any technological advances, there are early adopters and late-comers. Most of us fall in the middle.

We don’t want to try something that hasn’t been tested by a significant number of our peers, but we also know that at some point the technological benefit of making changes will be worthwhile.

For early adopters of physical therapy software, the learning curves were steep and the bugs were significant. Fortunately for the rest of us, physical therapy software now exists that can make your practice more professional, efficient, and effective.

Change is Good

Not everyone enjoys changing the way they do things. In fact, we’re so stuck in our ways sometimes that we don’t even realize that there are other options. As they say, humans are creatures of habit.

But we also react and respond well to changes that teach us new things, once we adjust our attitudes. We are so incredibly adaptable that even when we’re put into difficult and unimaginable situations, we figure out a way to get into new habits.

And the best news is that the staff that take on physical therapy software end up adjusting and eventually appreciating the increased efficiency and ease-of-use that they experience. Clinicians find that automated notes are easy to use and easy to review.

Billers find that once they get the hang of new physical therapy software, they are better able to bill and they even get a better rate of accepted insurance claims.

Overall, the entire practice will become more streamlined. Rather than shifting paper files back and forth, everyone has access to everything when they need it, no matter where they are.

With advances in tablet computer technology, physical therapy software can be taken for house calls and medical records can be updated from anywhere there’s an Internet connection.

Physical Therapy Software is Being Developed for a Reason

Physical therapy software isn’t just some crazy fad that was thought up by someone who is trying to make money. These days, physical therapists, medical billers, and physical therapy management are engaging with software developers to create useful programs.

Anything that makes doing your job more cumbersome may have a solution in technology, and there are a lot of people who want to find those technological solutions.

From the staff perspective, there are many ways that a practice can become more efficient, from better and faster forms of communication to fewer trips back and forth between medical files and the front desk.

The Future of Physical Therapy Software

Over the next decade or so, everyone is going to make the switch to physical therapy software. The only question for physical therapy practices is when to make that switch.

And from the physical therapy management perspective, physical therapy software offers a whole new world of reporting and analysis that will allow for increased efficiency. How often does a referral turn into a new, paying patient? How many appointments does the typical patient schedule? How often do patients cancel and how often are those cancelled appointments left empty?