Eliminate the Need to Pay Support For Two Systems

ehrTransition A Good Data Conversion Will Eliminate the Need to Pay the Old Vendor for Support:

A good data conversion will make life easier for everyone associated with your clinic, including your patients.

When you electronically migrate data from an old system into your new one several good things occur.

• Manual effort to load data into the new system is correspondingly reduced.
• Support payments to the vendor of your legacy system can be stopped.
• Your staff will not need to look in two places for information on patients.
• Patients will not be required to give you insurance and other information they think you already have. (And you do.)
• The stress of transitioning to a new EHR is over sooner.
• Training on the new system can be done with your data.
• Multiple test runs can be provided to insure the highest quality and quantity of data transfer.
• If part of the data migration can not be made satisfactory, it can be bypassed while the remainder of the data can be moved to the new system.

 

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Medical Record and/or Billing System Implementation

If you are struggling with getting a new medical record or billing system installed, consider converting your current data into the new system. Often medical offices are advised to leave the old data behind and “start fresh”. What that means is the company selling the new system wants you to do the work of loading all the patient data, insurance information, referring providers and other data into the new manually. This leaves the clinic with all the work and much of it is unnecessary. The new vendor gets to focus only on installation, training on pretend data and collecting their check.

Add a data conversion and life gets better for the clinic but becomes a bit tougher for the vendor. The end result is better for both.

Data Conversion or Database Interface?

If you want an interface that moves data from one system to another-one time, it is probably better labeled a data conversion. The point being a one-time conversion is easier and less costly to develop and to implement. Less cost should interest everyone.

Does Your Medical Data Conversion promise This?

Does your data conversion team offer two passes at your data? Allowing you to review the results for a test pass before committing to the final run? If not, why not? Will they give you an issues list that includes things they found and questioned even though it is data related and they are not obligated to fix it? Are you getting the minimal deliverable where you really need the maximum possible? If your answers to these questions are not satisfactory-you need a new data conversion provider.

Implementing A New System? Don’t Leave Your Data Behind.

When you consider going live on a new computer system, have you decided to go without a data conversion? Most people do. In this case being in the majority is to your detriment, especially in healthcare. Many reasons are offered to persuade or justify this decision. In the end, clinicians and providers frequently (perhaps secretly) wish their historical data were available in the new system. This is particularly true of clinical system records (EMR or EHR).

So, can the old data, once left behind, still be recovered and made useful again? The short answer is: maybe.

It costs nothing or very little to ask. Often the answer can be a qualified yes. The value of the old information as a measure against the cost of the conversion depends on several things: 1.quality and format of the data in the old system; 2. data integrity parameters of the new system; 3. skill of the conversion team.

 ADDING data to an existing, in-production system can be a challenge and if not done correctly can create retrieval issues and possibly system integrity problems. But it can be done and done well.

Clinical Conversions include Images

Image conversions are part of the clinical data conversion work we do. We now have tools that can reformat and/or make images viewable that have become corrupt

Managing AR in the Medical Office: People and Technology

The Accounts Receivable management opportunities are plentiful now and are likely to grow as costs continue to increase and margins get pushed for all businesses including the insurance companies.

The keys to successful AR management I believe are twofold. First, have solid technology in place that works, is timely, accurate and a staff that is well-trained in all your technology to get everything from the technology that is possible. This means electronic posting of EOBs, interface between systems to reduce manual labor and human error, and ready access for your clients to their AR. Regardless of the cost of people, your own or outsourced from a billing or collections company, the cost of errors is high.

Second, well-trained, experienced collections people who understand people, are trained in negotiations, have field experience with either an insurance company or a medical office or both. There is no substitute for hands on experience on the other side of the fence. I have found this to be abundantly clear in every profession I’ve worked in. It is true of the medical profession as well. Having lots of collection experience will not give you the edge to rise above the average.

Share EMR Data Among Clinics

I find the discussion about integration and sharing EMR information among clinics and hospitals interesting. However, I don’t see any specifics that demonstrate our collective ability to overcome the vast disparity between EMR systems. The methods chosen to categorize, store and represent various data vary widely from system to system. With clinical data we do not have decades of system development experience that we do with demographic and billing data, yet we still have problems sharing that data easily among various interested parties.

Our ability to effectively and accurately share clinical data among clinics and hospitals is in its infancy. There are no truly useable standards and those standards that do exist appear to fall way short of the need. I think we are kidding ourselves if we expect the exchange of data to contribute meaningfully to the bottom line of any medical facility. I am not a medical professional but looking in from the outside it seems the most important use of EMR data is internal, serving the patient better and more efficiently. As we become better at doing that, discussions about sharing data will be significantly more meaningful.

Creating a Dependency on Automation-Increase Medical Clinic Profits

Regardless of where medicine is practiced, efficiency and profitability are dependent upon processes and procedures. If the processes and procedures are automated, the Clinic becomes dependent upon automation to the degree that no alternative process is readily available. And yet, holding onto the “old way” for sake of avoiding dependency simply precludes the commitment necessary to engage improvements. The net result is change made for the sake of change.
We need to recognize that any change implemented by a practice will create a risk. The “old” way of doing things, i.e. writing letters on paper, will no longer be available or we won’t have stamps to post the letter. Automate every office function and process you can. Interconnect the functions you automate so one piece of data is entered manually only once. When data comes from a machine or device of some kind, an automated interface will eliminate manual data entry and with it every opportunity for human error. Depend on the defined process, tools and your people.
Whether the processes and procedures deliver efficiency at a level which produces a satisfactory profit depends on a number of variables. One of which is the process itself. For the purpose of this discussion, the process is the general category of automation, specifically Electronic Health Record software and Billing software with all their appendages and inter-connections. Create user friendly interfaces between automation and people. Give your people tasks that require thinking, experience and knowledge, supported to the fullest by automation and training.
Training can release you from unprofitable and therefore undesirable dependency. Better trained people not only do better work and more of it in less time, but they are happier and make the workplace for others enjoyable. Training is the most often overlooked and underused tool to increase efficiency and therefore profitability. Becoming dependent upon well trained staff, using any reasonably good software and other automated tools, is a good thing for business.
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KW Norris is an IT professional, consultant and Sales Executive. KW works with medical clinics and medical software vendors to provide the best technology solutions available to improve quality and efficiency in the medical office. If you need a technology solution, KW can help you find it.
KW Norris
Technology Consultants, Inc.
4125 SW 185th Avenue, Beaverton, OR 97006
503-356-4105 ext 11, 503-939-9223 cell phone, 503-356-4109 fax
kw@tech-consultants.com, http://www.tech-consultants.com

http://www.linkedin.com/in/kwnorris

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