After the chaos that the HIPAA 5010 implementation has created in the industry, there are multiple unanswered questions before us. It all revolves around two factors – Healthcare implementations and the day to day billing operations. Are we striking proper balance between the two? Are we taking the medical billing and coding implementations seriously? A genuine answer to the questions would be a big ‘no’ from most of us. We all try to cross the bridge as it comes, without analyzing the depth of impact it may have on the day to day operations and vice versa. We try to keep pace with the regular activities until we dodge them aside only to run behind any implementation, while it nears deadline.
Keeping pace with healthcare implementations while sustaining billing productivity:
Starting from HIPAA 5010, we have many other implementations like ICD10 and EHR on Queue that need be worked out before 2013 & 2015 respectively. Every day, it’s becoming tough for the healthcare professionals to adapt to the rapidly changing industry, with ‘uncertainty’ spreading across like an epidemic. Now, it’s high time we streamline the work flow and make room for advancements in our daily schedule.
Here are a few suggestions for physicians and medical billing companies to keep pace with implementations/projects:
- Allot specific time for gathering industry updates
- Enroll for daily email alerts from reliable healthcare organizations
- Discuss with colleagues, social networking peers about the latest developments in healthcare billing on a regular basis
- Attend important events and meets that discusses on medical billing issues and developments
- Set up project plan & conduct weekly reviews for any implementation like ICD10
- Provide training to staff on a daily basis
- Testing is an important phase before any project goes live. Test every system before it goes live, find and fix the flaws in the system
- During the post implementation phase, monitor and maintain system. Analyze & measure user experience & efficiency with people involved. Document the observations which will provide input for future enhancements
When you are planned and well informed, you can easily manage the medical billing and coding operations and the implementations simultaneously without having to sacrifice the other.