Medical Billing Services Save Heatlhcare Practices Money and Time

There are many reasons healthcare practices might outsource their billing to a professional medical billing service; confusing insurance requirements, staffing problems and just keeping up with industry changes are a few examples. In the end though, the reasons most medical billing companies hear about come down to the two driving principles of any business - Time and Money. This article discusses how medical billing services are able to create significant savings in time and money for healthcare providers.

Medical Billing Services Save Training and Research Time

- Some readers might take the short view and think medical billing companies just enter data into a computer and send it off to a clearinghouse. In reality medical billing is a detailed process requiring specialized skills and in-depth knowledge of medical practice management, insurance industry practices, and the regulatory framework around state and federal laws. Professional medical billing companies invest countless hours in training and research to keep abreast of current codes, submission requirements, industry trends and the needs of their clients.

Significant expenditures are also made to ensure medical billing companies are up to date on the latest software. In a constantly changing industry, software vendors are always finding new and better ways of supporting practice needs. It's not practicable for small or medium sized practices to dedicate the time necessary to stay on top of the latest innovations.

These investments of time by professional medical billing services are often not considered by providers, but they eliminate endless hours otherwise spent in seminars, meetings with vendors, or on the phone with clearinghouses and carriers. This time savings creates a valuable commodity for a practice seeking the edge necessary to keep up with a rigorous patient schedule.

Medical Billing Services Save Operational Time

-Medical billing services are able to save operational time by leveraging the economy of scale and the efficiency of task specialization.

Professional medical billing companies, by their very nature, create an economy of scale in maintaining a team of medical billing professionals to provide services across several practices. This structure creates a well trained pool of resources to manage each practice's needs rather than just one individual overseeing all billing functions. The team approach also removes interruptions to revenue flow that result from vacations, unexpected sick time and staff turnover.

Task specialization among teams further heightens the efficiency of medical billing companies. Through task specialization, a team of billers can accentuates individual skills and reduces distractions of other activities.

Consider a provider who sees an average of 30 patients per day, or a total of 150 encounters per week. The time required to generate and submit 150 patient claims and follow up with insurance carriers with a high lever of accuracy can take up most of the time of an in-house biller. But this is just the beginning. That same individual will also need to follow up on denied or partially paid claims, researching why and resubmitting for further review. Patient invoices require additional time- printing, stuffing and mailing- as well as posting payments, running reports and providing detailed analysis on the current state of the practice; all this just to meet the standard offering of professional medical billing companies.

Through task specialization, medical billing companies might offer each of its clients several billers submitting claims and reviewing insurance payments with the highest level of accuracy. At the same time, the service might have other individuals or groups dedicated to managing patient invoices and questions across several practices with increased efficiency. This approach maximizes the time available for each activity by specialists with a greater knowledge of their roles, and, again, guarantees minimal (if any) interruption during employee leave and staff changes.

Medical Billing Services Save Money

-Hiring and training new staff, employee benefits, vacation/sick leave, and staff turnover are just a few factors increasing the costs of managing an efficient in-house billing program. Added to the operational overhead of day to day billing, software/hardware maintenance, clearinghouse fees, postage, and so on, the list of expenditures for practices is endless.

Good medical billing companies will design their services around covering all of these costs and immediately do away with the problems they create. To clearly demonstrate how medical billing services can save practices money, let's compare the core costs associated with in-house medical billing against working with a professional medical billing service.

Cost of In-House Billing:

Our comparison begins with a typical practice with one or two providers. Let's assume this practice has a dedicated, in-house biller receiving an annual salary of $30,000, or about $14.50 per hour. The chart below outlines the additional costs of having a full time employee in the office to handle all aspects of medical billing.


Base Pay --------------------------$30,000
Medicare and Social Security ---------$2295
401K --------------------------------$1080
Disability -----------------------------$720
Healthcare --------------------------$5220
Time off -----------------------------$3270
Total labor for 1 in-house biller ------$42,585


Next, we'll need to consider materials and fees. An average practice will probably upgrade computers and software every 3 years at a cost of about $6,000. Spread out over those three years, we'll assume an average annual software/hardware expenditure of $2000. Since our practice will send out its own patient statements, we'll need about $150 per month for postage, paper and envelopes, an annual cost of $1800. Clearinghouse fees for electronic claims will come to about $60 a month, or around $720 annually. For the sake of simplicity, we'll forget for the moment that our biller will need a climate controlled workspace, lights, general office supplies and a desk.

Here's what our list of software/hardware, materials and fees looks like:


Software/Hardware -----------------$2000
Materials ---------------------------$1800
Clearinghouse Fees ------------------$720
Total ------------------------------$4520


Adding the two totals above (labor + materials & fees), the annual cost of medical billing services performed in-house by the practice comes to $47,105 per year. Of course this number might not mean much until we put it in perspective against teaming with a professional medical billing service. As we move forward, keep in mind this conservative estimate does not factor in those other costs mentioned above that are often hidden - ongoing training, unexpected leave and sudden staff changes.

Cost of Professional Medical Billing Services:

To evaluate the cost of working with medical billing services, we'll assume our practice has contracted with a medical billing company for full service billing. This includes all of those activities that would otherwise have been performed by the in-house staff above; claim generation/submission, insurance follow up, patient invoicing and support, detailed reporting, expert practice analysis, etc. We'll also assume the practice has negotiated a rate of 8% of collections with its professional medical billing service.

Note: Calculating costs for medical billing services will vary slightly depending on the fee structure but will usually be based on either a percentage of collections or a fixed fee per claim. For more information on fee structures, see Percentage vs. Flat Fee Pricing by Medical Billing Services.

Assuming our provider visits 30 patients per day, 50 weeks out of the year, we'll have 7500 patient encounters per year. If each encounter results in an average reimbursement of $60, our receivables come to a little over $450,000 per year. At a rate of 8%, the annual cost for the professional service to manage all aspects of medical billing services for the practice would be $31,500. In comparison with in-house services that's a savings of $15,600 per year!

Summary

In evaluating the benefits of outsourcing to a professional medical billing company practices should consider the overall savings in time and money, beyond just minimizing the hassles. Medical billing companies provide knowledge, training, continuity of operations and a network of support leveraging task specialization and the economy of scale. Medical billing companies are able to eliminate dependency on one or two costly staff members to maintain revenue flow for the entire practice.

For more information on the benefits of outsourcing, contact Diversity Medical Billing Services [http://www.diversitytech.com]. Leverage maximum efficiency and economy through a well designed support structure and industry leading rates. Diversity’s medical billing services ensure the stability of practice cash flow while attaining the highest reimbursements possible. You can also learn about other ways to improve your billing with in-depth Medical Billing Articles and Information [http://www.diversitytech.com/kc].

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Telepresence Managed Services - Best Practices

THE ROLE OF MANAGED SERVICES FOR TELEPRESENCE

Over the last 12 months, there has been a dramatic increase in the attention that video has received in regards to inter and intra office communications. On a global scale, the introduction of telepresence is making a resounding impact and causing enterprises to change the way they communicate by incorporating video as an essential ingredient in their communications mix. And to that end, the role of the Managed Service provider in the video and telepresence space has become increasingly relevant. In many cases, it's the Managed Service that can play the key difference in the success or failure of telepresence in the organization.

Understanding Telepresence

Before one can fully appreciate the role that a service provider plays as it relates to Telepresence, it's important to understand what telepresence actually represents. Telepresence is a term coined to describe a video communication solution, where the audio, visual and physical elements of a meeting room environment are designed in a way to create an immersive experience. In addition to identical or nearly identical furniture, monitors, cameras, speakers and video devices which are installed at offices in different locations, telepresence equipped locations use an IP network for connectivity. When a video meeting is initiated, the people on either side see and hear each other in a high quality, life size image which yields the appearance that they are actually sitting in the same room. Because of this arrangement of cameras, monitors and speakers, the technology becomes part of the room and the meeting participants become immersed in the experience, focusing on the agenda of the meeting, rather than on the technology that is driving it.

Is this just video conferencing under another name?

Yes and No - Telepresence is in fact a form of video conferencing. Beyond overall adoption challenges, video conferencing has been faced with other perceived barriers including: quality of the network, non-standard room environments, and lack of widely accessible expertise / support.

Network - When initially introduced video conferencing was invariably compared to the television and telephone - both of which took many years to be perfected but have now become synonymous with reliability and quality. In a similar fashion, traditional video conferencing has been slow to evolve into a fully reliable communications method due to the limited quality and capacity of network types (such as ISDN), ease of use issues and lack of reliability. Additionally, there was limited focus and expertise focused on addressing these issues that caused an inconsistent and poor experience to the users of the technologies.

Room Environments - Traditional video conferencing equipment was often purchased and placed in conference rooms with little or no regard to the quality of lighting, the audio or the placement of the camera for optimal coverage of meeting participants. With video systems in vulnerable positions and capable of being moved out of position, there was a high potential for a poor overall experience. In fact, users often complained they could not see or hear people at other sites with the cause being more related to poor lighting, acoustics, and room layout rather than the equipment or the network.

Support / Expertise - Traditional video conferencing also suffered from a lack of overall support and "ownership", having rarely received the appropriate level of attention that other "mission critical" applications were given. The result was a perceived difficulty in using video and even worse, many employees not even being made aware that video conferencing was a communication tool available to them.

Beginning in late 2000, the transition to IP and the creation of a new breed of service provider dedicated to supporting video communications yielded significant strides in improving the overall reliability, ease of use and performance. With these improvements, video conferencing adoption began to occur in many organizations. At the same time, with greater importance being placed on "green" methods and cost reduction efforts, video was on the verge of becoming a "mission critical" application.

A new era of Video Conferencing emerges: Telepresence

Originally marketed by a company called Telesuites, telepresence has in fact been available for a number of years. Telesuites gained early traction by building and managing "telepresence-type" rooms for several organizations around the world. That said, the term telepresence did not become prevalent until some big technology companies, including HP and Cisco recognized the potential and began marketing the concept globally. There was a common objective: join the emerging video communications market, but distance the "new generation" technologies from the negative connotations associated with the term video conferencing.

With its launch of Telepresence in 2006, Cisco and their CEO, John Chambers have become the driving force for global awareness of Telepresence and have yielded the video market world-wide attention and increased adoption. Since that time, all the leading Video Conferencing industry manufacturers have added to the accelerated adoption and awareness by launching Telepresence solutions of their own.

And telepresence is coming full-circle. Although Telepresence is regarded as a room, immersive experience and, in its original form, includes a complete "room" configuration, several manufacturers are moving toward single screen stand alone models that resemble traditional video conferencing systems.

These developments have driven a new expectation level that represents a significant change from the traditional video conferencing era such that high quality "Telepresence" immersive experiences have become the benchmark for quality and performance of video in the business community.

Markets projections driven by the Telepresence era

There are many conditions driving an increased demand for high quality video communications. Global Warming, rising fuel prices, an economic downturn and terrorism have all combined to create a "perfect storm" of demand for Telepresence. The different approaches by new and traditional providers to capitalize on this emerging market have added to the awareness and attention.

According to the IDC and Cisco, The worldwide revenue opportunity for telepresence is projected to be $5 billion (U.S.) by 2011, with the largest portion of the revenue ($3.8 billion) driven by network and managed service revenues. Of the $3.8 billion, $1.5 billion will be attributed to managed services and $2.3 billion for network connectivity.

Telepresence is increasingly being sought as a collaboration tool between business partners and customers. Although the price tag of installing a telepresence room (ranging from $150k to as high as $400k) may seem to indicate that it is only designed for C level executives, in reality telepresence technology is designed to help any organization reduce costs and improve communications. In addition to playing an important role in addressing the issue of global warming and carbon footprint reduction, telepresence can help organizations save money on travel and can help to increase productivity.

A recent study by TRI, which included discussions with organizations who are using telepresence, identified the following business objectives behind telepresence:

- Greater operational efficiency,

- Optimization of global resources & competencies,

- Mitigate risk & promote secure business interactions,

- Raise quality of life, and

- Promote a homogeneous, robust culture.

Respondents to the study had the following to say about telepresence: "Telepresence provides significant communications benefits. It is a far more efficient approach to working."

"Telepresence provides a meeting across the seas as easy to set up as walking down the corridor to gather up colleagues."

"Telepresence is not just about saving money on international travel, it is about getting smarter at communication, strategy, and collaboration."

Clearly, telepresence has the ability to impact the bottom line of any organization in a positive way with both quantitative benefits and qualitative value. But how does it compare to video conferencing?

Telepresence offers great quality, yields a fantastic experience, and users love it...

So where's the "But?"

As with any new generation of technology there are few key barriers to consider:

1) Interoperability - many companies already have made a significant investment in "traditional" video conferencing equipment and need to leverage both the traditional and the Telepresence solutions.

2) Bandwidth - the great video quality and reliability comes at a high cost in terms of network bandwidth. Each room's set up uses 3 or more video codec's that require an average of 15MB of network bandwidth.

3) Investment - while the rooms are specially designed and integrated, they represent a considerable amount of equipment that must all function properly in order for the experience to be high quality and reliable.

4) Resources - the ability to establish multi-point (several rooms in one session) Telepresence calls requires additional investment and appropriately trained resources.

So when everything is operating and functioning properly, Telepresence offers a superior experience to the users. However, support of Telepresence rooms can be a daunting task and most organizations lack the expertise and available resources to dedicate to this effort. As a result, a new type of video managed services has emerged which is routinely offered along with Telepresence rooms called "VNOC" services.

VNOC stands for "Video or Virtual" Network Operations Center and is generally comprised of a suite of services tailored specifically for the unique requirements of Telepresence rooms.

VNOC services are a critical component of the telepresence experience because:

- The complete telepresence experience must consistently satisfy end users under the most demanding conditions.

- The adoption rate and overall productivity of a telepresence investment is directly related to user experience on a day-to-day basis.

- The benefits of a telepresence solution can only be fully realized by leveraging the expertise of a Telepresence VNOC Service Provider.

- The right service and support can make the link between telepresence and video conferencing appear seamless.

- Business to Business and the advent of public room rental using Telepresence technology is available without added investment or effort.

According to Frost & Sullivan, telepresence revenues are expected to increase by nearly 850% within the next five years. This means that telepresence and video conferencing will no longer be optional communication methods, as they will be essential for organizations to be competitive and demonstrate improved productivity, efficiency, and to have the ability to communicate with other organization's video platforms on public or private networks.

In order for Telepresence to avoid the challenges and pitfalls of the past and achieve wide adoption, it will require that:

- Video technology from different manufacturers will need to successfully communicate with one another and interoperability must be achieved.

- The complexity of room scheduling and call launching calls must be overcome.

- The technology must be as reliable and consistent as using the telephone.

- Analysis and information about room usage and productivity must be readily available.

- The technology must be "always on" with help and support available as it is with typical help desk availability.

- Seamless communication with private or public environments must be achieved.

The FOUR FACTORS to Properly Evaluate VNOC Service Providers

There is more to a successful telepresence experience than just installing the room and equipment. Utilizing a VNOC Service Provider should not be considered optional or a luxury. Even if you do have the internal resources available, you should be sure that you have access to a team of specialists dedicated to keeping up with equipment and software changes and they should be trained and certified on all the various "standards-based" platforms for interoperability issues. Even more basic than that, is making sure you have a plan to address some of the simple, most common questions that always arise:

- How do you schedule a meeting? What if there are more than two sites involved in the call?

- How do you launch a call?

- Whom do you contact if there are problems?

- How are users trained?

- Do you have the infrastructure to maintain connectivity to the outside world?

When it comes time to make a decision on a provider, properly evaluating their capabilities is essential. The FOUR FACTORS to consider are as follows:

FACTOR 1 - EXPERIENCE & INFRASTRUCTURE

Ensure that your provider has specific experience in Telepresence and traditional video conferencing, as well as networking, scheduling, multi-point bridging. Your provider must also have a proper infrastructure to enable your environment to private and public environments in a secure fashion.

FACTOR 2 - FLEXIBILITY

Choose a VNOC partner who is not tied to any one particular manufacturer or Telepresence solution as your needs may change and different systems may be chosen for the differing conditional and environmental needs of your locations. It's critical that you retain flexibility so your company doesn't get locked into one technology.

FACTOR 3 - ROBUST AND REDUNDANT SUPPORT RESOURCES

Many organizations focus on the equipment and room aspects of telepresence, but the importance of maintaining a consistent experience worldwide should not be secondary. Your service provider should offer comprehensive support for telepresence facilities through concierge services, remote management, and connectivity on a global basis.

FACTOR 4 - INTEROPERABILITY CAPABILITIES

Pay careful consideration to the provider's ability to offer interoperability compatibility between and SD, HD or telepresence environments and provide both telepresence VNOC services, exchange services, public room access and network services:

What You Should Expect From Your VNOC Service Provider

Proactive Monitoring - 24/365 proactive monitoring of the conferencing equipment and connections should be included to ensure that all equipment is functional and operable on a minute-by-minute basis. A combination of advanced infrastructure technology and experienced personnel should be deployed at all times with escalation and notification procedures in place.

Scheduling and Management - a dedicated toll-free number, a concierge service, and web portal scheduling tools for the user communities should be included. Automation and advanced tools such as integrated outlook and lotus notes capabilities with its confirmation notifications provided to requesters and participants of meetings.

Call Launching and Monitoring - can be handled by an engineer, who manages the successful launch of the call and connection of all sites in the telepresence meeting, including point-to-point and multi-point calls. The VNOC should be able to digitally monitor connectivity levels during sessions and should always be available to ensure a high-quality experience, every time.

Help Desk Support - users should have a single point of technical support for telepresence solutions to ensure a high-quality, uninterrupted experience for every call. Your provider should be able to interface and coordinate with hardware vendors, network providers, and integrators to repair or replace any component parts, network degradation, or resolve room integration issues.

Performance Reporting - provides key metrics on a monthly basis to identify areas of success, as well as areas in need of improvement. The reporting should include the telepresence room, the network, and supporting service levels. Your reporting should be detailed, such that it includes network and room service levels and availability, number of conferences held, total hours of usage, mean time to respond and repair any technical issues, along with a root-cause analysis and corrective action plan, where applicable.

Training - required for ensuring the successful use and adoption of telepresence systems.

It is not only important for users to feel comfortable using the technology, but to also understand the value the technology brings to day-to-day business activities. Using telepresence systems helps improve communications, enhance productivity, and have access to subject matter experts when and where they are needed.

Interoperability Testing and Support - to ensure telepresence systems can connect with other video conferencing rooms and businesses outside of your private network. Make sure the VNOC service provider is experienced in evaluating and testing video communication equipment for reliability and interoperability across manufacturers and access to exchange services for communication with private and public environments in a secure fashion.

A Final Thought

The future for telepresence appears robust. Environmental and economic issues necessitate finding more effective ways to communicate, be more productive and creative, and telepresence is rapidly becoming a "mission critical" application in the communication mix.

While providing a superior experience, today's Telepresence technologies are complex and demanding on your network and human resources. Advancements in technology may very well reduce the complexity over time, but the technology should always be secondary to the reason for using it. It is important to address entire picture - the technology, the service and the support - to ensure success with video programs.

As with any communications tool, Telepresence is best supported when an experienced service provider hides the complexity and simply makes it work, allowing the users to leverage the experience as part of their everyday life.

We are embarking on a visual society that is endless. Whether it means communicating with business executives on the other side of the world on important tasks, providing complex guidance to surgeons in an operating room in a different state or country, or extending your most talented and specialized resources across borders to interact with your most valuable clients, the new era of video communications is here and is no longer just a "nice to have".

The final and most critical decision is to choose the right overall solution for your needs by partnering with the right service to ensure it works anywhere, anytime, for any application.

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