States, January–March 2020 by LEVEL Medical Billing | Mar 20, 2021 | iMAX Medical Billing Insights Summary What is already known about this topic? Use of telehealth (the remote provision of clinical care) early during the COVID-19 pandemic has not been well characterized. What is added by this report? The 154% increase in telehealth visits during the last week of March 2020, compared with the same period in 2019 might have been related to pandemic-related telehealth policy changes and public health guidance. What are the implications for public health practice? Telehealth could have multiple benefits during the pandemic by expanding access to care, reducing disease exposure for staff and patients, preserving scarce supplies of personal protective equipment, and reducing patient demand on facilities. Telehealth policy changes might continue to support increased care access during and after the pandemic.Article Metrics Altmetric: News (2) Twitter (149) Facebook (1) Citations: Vie...

Elizabeth Woodcock explains the policies surrounding telemedicine, as well as what services are reimbursable and how payment is received.     Elizabeth Woodcock explains the policies surrounding telemedicine, as well as what services are reimbursable and how payment is received.

CDI can be a critical initiative that not only increases reimbursement revenue but also enhances the patient experience. In the wake of COVID-19, physician practices faced a myriad of challenges creating a contactless and consumer-friendly patient experience, ramping up telehealth services, and transitioning non-clinical staff to work from home. Given these priorities, it’s understandable that clinical documentation improvement, or CDI, didn’t see much attention during the first half of 2020. However, as providers shift from triaging day-to-day patient flow issues to focusing on financial resilience, CDI can be a critical initiative that not only increases reimbursement revenue but also enhances the patient experience.  How CDI helps practices financially and clinically Now that COVID-19 is beginning to plateau and patients are returning for “in person” visits, providers can once again turn their focus to CDI to achieve the host of benefits it offers. By focusing on quality clinica...

In part 2 of our discussion with Banker’s Healthcare Group, hear from the President of Patient Lending, Keith Gruebele, on how these programs can benefit your practice by extending the amount of patients that can receive and finance your services. In our last episode, we featured the first part of our Practice Financing discussion with Chris Panebianco, CMO of Bankers Healthcare Group, on loans and credit cards for physician practices. This week, we continue our practice financing discussion with a focus on patient lending services. Your ultimate goal as a healthcare provider is to provide the care that you spent years training to perfect. However, to provide care to all patients rests upon the presumption that patients will be able to pay for services. In an ideal world, this would be the case. But sometimes, some patients present with an ailment that must be treated regardless of the cost; the challenge comes in mitigating the cost responsibility In these instances, practices can tur...

  How an independent practice grew through optimizations and consolidation Current revenue cycle management (RCM) processes in some practices may be well established, but there is always room for improvement and optimizations. At MGMA’s virtual Medical Practice Excellence Conference, Lawrence Jones, MD, partner and physician of One Pediatrics; and Daniel Pope, senior vice president and general manager at R1 RCM, presented “Thriving Financially through Better Claims and Collections”. One Pediatrics, Dr. Jones’ practice, started out as an independent practice founded in 2014. Now a total of seven integrated practices all operate independently across nine locations, comprised of over 40 providers. In 2019, the practice group recorded 179,000 visits, roughly 35% of which came from the Lousiville market. During the time from establishment through the present day, Jones says that his practice was increasingly challenged by hospital groups that purchased ...

  The rapid decline of in-person visitation in early 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic revealed the unstable reality of fee-for-service payments, which should be replaced by population-based payments, authors of an article recently published in JAMA suggest. Suhas Gondi, BA, and Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc , suggest that financial clearance should be a new goal for payment reform . Though CMS designed and implemented various value-based are programs through alternative payment models to simultaneously improve the quality of care and reduce costs, the authors say these efforts have only had modest effects on health outcomes and spending. Furthermore, the authors write that the pandemic’s effect on in-person visitation reveals that fee-for-service payments are “exceptionally vulnerable to shocks that reduce demand for in-person care.” On the contrary, the authors suggest that population-based payments are more resilient in the face of shocks like COVID-19 a...

Consistent cash flow is essential to the health of any business. This holds true for medical practices, as well. Maintaining an adequate level of revenue while minimizing the number of claim denials can be a struggle. Unfortunately, claim disputes have a number of associated costs beyond the denied payment. Estimates show that the average medical practice could loose between $30,000 and $80,000 yearly in denied claims and the staffing expense associated with resolving them. Appealing denied claims can be a huge time drain on your staff. In some cases, the process is purposefully designed to discourage the provider. It is for this reason that some 50 to 65 percent of denied claims are never disputed. Bottom line and staffing costs can be exacerbated by deteriorating patient relations. When a patient is receiving bills months after service, they are likely to believe the medical practice is mishandling the billing. Ignore the issue and the same denials are likely to repeat. Staff trainin...