Medical billing technology has witnessed a continuous expansion during the first two months of this summer, as evidenced by press releases on some ninety products accumulated on BillingWiki. A practice manager may have difficulty selecting the best product from such a large variety of products. This article tabulates approximately eighty-five press releases about medical billing technology products and/or providers in two dozen service categories.
Asset Life Cycle Management: Products that help healthcare organizations optimize the performance of their capital assets, uncover hidden costs, gain more visibility and control over their facility and asset operations, and improve security. Such systems also serve as repositories for hazards, alerts, and recalls, facilitating a closed-loop process that documents the hospital’s ongoing notifications and corrective actions. See St. Croix and LYNX.
Audit and Compliance: Products that help providers and payers manage compliance by facilitating internal audits and planning external audits respectively. Such systems help an auditor detect errors, omissions, fraud, and abuse. Solutions range from basic audit reporting to full automation of the audit process by using data mining, natural language processing, and statistical methods to produce a random sample of medical records, data scoring, and estimation of potential revenue loss. .
- Claims audit: Artificial Life, CodeRyte
- ETF audit: GlobalSCAPE
- HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance: MedicalSuite
Certifications and Awards:
- Best in KLAS: KLAS is a leading source of information on the performance of healthcare information technology providers, with data collected from users at more than 4,500 healthcare facilities nationwide. Performance data collected from 300 healthcare information technology providers and 500 of their products is evaluated and made available to subscribers through the KLAS website, as well as through periodic reports and personalized investigations. See press releases about VantageMed and athenahealth.
- Certification: The CCHIT Certified mark, a “seal of approval” for EHR products, provides the first consistent, consensus-based benchmark for outpatient products. See LSS and Misys data systems.
- DOQ-IT tests: CMS, an agency of the US Department of Health and Human Services, established the DOQ-IT initiative program to encourage physicians to adopt EHRs and, in turn, improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of healthcare . To earn official DOQ-IT recognition, suppliers must meet DOQ-IT’s 35 reporting requirements. see mysys
Offers: This category shows business development activity based on leveraging reciprocal customer relationships and complementary product capabilities. See A-Life, Affinity Billing, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Eclipsys, GE Centricity, H-Quotient, Healthnostics, IngeniousMed, JPI Data Resource, LEAPpm, Massachusetts Medical Society, MedLink, Misys, medFORCE, medHost, MediSys, Nexplicit, Nicka & Associates , Nightingale Inflight Communications, PatientKeeper, Quantum Group, RXHub, Scandent, Streamline Health.
Electronic Charge Capture: medaptus
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): The ability to access a single source of continuously updated claims tracking data to perform real-time status checks directly from local PCs instead of spending hours on the phone calling one insurer after another to track the status of filed claims. See MicroSys.
e-learning: AlphaQuest, Care2Learn
Improved website: CAP-MPT, complementary technologies, Patientrak
Factoring: Factoring provides healthcare professionals with automated electronic insurance claim management solutions and advance financing of medical claims, as presented, through a revolving line of credit. See MDWers
Integration: Products that streamline the revenue cycle by integrating office management functions, which in the past were often performed separately. Integration eliminates redundant data entry, reduces errors and costs, and streamlines the revenue cycle. Please refer to the press releases on the four aspects of integration described below.
- Billing and Coding: ChartLogic
- Billing and EMR: Affinity Billing, MediEMR, Siemens, NextGen, athenahealth.
- Billing and Compliance: Billing accuracy.
- Billing and Images: IMPAC, AMICAS, Fujitsu, MedLink.
New customers: Ingenious Med For, Lumetra, Misys, Per-Se, MediSys, Craneware, PaperFree, athenahealth, Picis, MicroMD, intraNexus, Visionary Medical Systems, AllScripts, LUMEDX, Streamline Health, LYNX, Sullivan Group, PHNS, Streamline Health, ECDS, McKesson
New billing products and services: Automed, HealthWare, JP Morgan, Physmark-Transplant, LabDAQ
Online Supply Store: Antek HealthWare
Verification of the patient’s ability to pay: It offers predictive reporting functionality to determine a patient’s ability to pay for services and verify a patient’s billing address in real time. See Per Se.
Payment Side Automation: See Guidewire ClaimCenter, XPERT Connect.
Personal Health Record Smart Card: Patients and healthcare providers can access medical records and send and save their most important personal medical information instantly via the Internet or various devices such as smart cards, USB keys, mobile phones, PDAs and Tablet PCs. See Patienterak.
Telemedicine: Electronic notes.