Helping Medical Practices Increase Revenue

Over the past several years, physician groups and hospitals in various markets have started participating in accountable care organizations (ACO). Some ambulatory surgery centers (ASCs) have already joined ACOs, while others try to determine if they should get involved or go in another direction.

Before you can determine if being a part of an ACO is right for you, it’s important to fully understand ACOs, some of the potential hurdles for contracting with them, and some insider tips on surviving in an ACO market, whether you decide to join one or not.

In today’s increasingly digital day and age, medical professionals need to be more vigilant than ever before to avoid costly setbacks like hacks, cyberattacks, and data breaches. As a dedicated health care provider, you are a target for hackers to exploit your business’s private information. Moreover, you must take steps to protect your patients’ private medical information -- all while staying HIPAA compliant. Health care providers also have to consider the potential financial cost and loss of resources that could be associated with a data breach. With the global cost of data breaches rising to $6 trillion annually, health care professionals can’t afford to be indifferent about cybersecurity. For these reasons and more, it’s time for medical professionals to take a stand against data breaches by utilizing tried-and-true strategies. Take a look at the 4 tips for health care professionals in today’s market to effectively avoid costly data breaches.

Implement Single Sign-On to Tighten Access Control

Particularly during a time when so many professional teams are working remotely, it’s crucial that medical providers take steps to secure their data and servers by incorporating single sign-on software (SSO). SSO is a security measure that restricts users from being signed into the company’s platform on multiple devices at a time. This measure effectively cuts down on the possibility that an unauthorized party could access the platform from another device with stolen log-in credentials. By prioritizing security measures early on with airtight access control measures, health care providers are sure to enjoy heightened security benefits and less risk of data breaches. 

Do you offer home health services to patients? Unfortunately, billing Medicare is a lot more complicated than it might seem when it comes to this type of treatment. That’s why it is incredibly vital that every visit is properly documented and meets certain requirements to ensure the payment process goes as smoothly as possible.

In this guide, we’ll go over a few of the basics you need to know about various medicare requirements for home health billing. Then we’ll take a look at a few coverage restrictions and why they are important to remember. Finally, we’ll look at why you might need an outside team to help you with the process.

Ready to get started? Let’s go.

The Opioid Treatment Programs Medicare Billing and Payment fact sheet received an update from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) back in December of 2020, and it includes new billing and coding policies to use in 2021 when dealing with opioids use disorder (OUD).

Medical coding modifiers are two characters that are appended to HCPCS Level II or CPT codes, offering more information about the medical service, supply involved, or procedure without changing the code’s meaning. When procedures go beyond the normal range of complexity, sometimes you may need to use a modifier. In this case, modifier 22, which is for “Increased procedural services,” maybe the right choice. However, a difficult procedure isn’t enough to add the modifier to the procedure code.