SISNWINC Announces Partnership with OCHIN

Spectrum Information Services NW, Inc. (SISNWINC) is happy to announce that they have entered into a long term agreement with OCHIN (ochin.org) to provide document conversion services and lockbox and EOB processing to its 1,200 member providers.

One of the nation’s largest and most successful health information networks, OCHIN is nationally recognized for its innovative use of Health IT to improve the integration and delivery of health care services across a wide variety of practices—with an emphasis on safety net clinics and small practices as well as critical access and rural hospitals.

According to Glenn Odell, SISNWINC's President, the partnership will benefit providers in OCHIN's network by providing them with a solution for making a rapid and seamless transition from paper medical records to electronic medical records while safeguarding patient information. Mr. Odell noted that SISNWINC's medical lockbox solution reduces expenses and virtually eliminates the possibility of fraud. This is of benefit to smaller health care providers that may not have the staffing available to implement checks and balances and separation of duties. Making Explanation of Benefits (EOB) forms fully searchable and archiving them for seven years greatly reduces administrative costs and ensures compliance.

SISNWINC is a provider of back office health care solutions that include medical lockbox, EOB scanning and indexing, medical record scanning, release of information, secure messaging, and receivables audits. SISNWINC is headquartered in Washington and has locations in Portland and Seattle.  For more information visit sisnwinc.com.

2012 WSMGMA Meeting

The 2012 WSMGMA meeting was a fantastic event with great educational presentations, inspirational keynote speakers, lots of networking opportunities, and some fun evening events.  SIS NW had a booth at the trade show.  We appreciate all the customers who stopped by to visit us and would like to congratulate Justin Pierce from Broadway Medical, the winner of the Kindle Fire grand prize in our drawing.  SIS NW is a strong supporter of WSMGMA and we are already looking forward to next year's meeting in Tacoma!

Lisa Swan, Art Fletcher, and Glenn Odell, President of SIS NW

Glenn Odell and Larry Jurgens

Justin Pierce and Glenn Odell

How much is your medical practice being underpaid?

According to the AMA, twenty percent of claims are not paid correctly (http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/news/news/ama-health-insurer-report-card.page).  According to their calculations, that results in $17 BILLION DOLLARS IN WASTE every year.

The costs to a medical practice aren't just the lost revenue from lower than contracted reimbursements, it's all of the added administrative time spent reviewing claims, fighting with the insurance companies, and exchanging information.

It's now possible to use advanced technology to scour data in electronic EOB forms to compile all of the CPT codes and the corresponding reimbursements and compare those to the contracted amounts with your payers.  Once that information is available, it's easy to calculate how much you've been underpaid.

The key to recovering the underpayments is having an experienced attorney that knows the ins and outs of the insurance industry and can do battle with the insurance companies on your behalf.  

This process doesn't cost anything to the medical practice, they simply share a portion of the recovered revenue.  Once the reimbursement process is tightened up, it will result in increased revenue and profitability by reducing the amount of staff time spent reviewing receivables.

If you'd like more information, please contact Glenn Odell at 503-715-0284.

Let's talk about Quality Control

So, you've decided to go "paperless" and scan your paper records.  As a result, you're going to be making a financial investment in these records.  

Quality control is kind of like car insurance.  You can pay for the minimum and hope you never need it or get full coverage and if the worst happens, you don't have to worry about anything.

What's the worst that could happen if you skimp on quality control?

If you keep the paper documents after they have been scanned, probably not much.  If you missed scanning a page or indexed it incorrectly, you can always go back to the paper files.  

But if you invested in scanning the paper, why would you keep it?  How much are you spending for off-site storage to keep that paper?  If it's still in your office, what could you do with the space that paper is eating up?

There may be legal reasons that you're forced to keep the paper, but one of the benefits of scanning is being able to get rid of large volumes of paper and eliminate ongoing monthly storage costs or to free up space in your office that could be used for revenue generating activities.

So let's assume that like most organizations, your goal is to go paperless.  Now the stakes become higher.  If you have lost a document in the scanning process your exposure could be anything from an unhappy customer, to legal action, to fines and penalties, or even jail time.

If someone tells you that they'll review a "sample" of your images, are you willing to take the risk that their statistical sampling will make sure that every single page was captured and legible?  Who is going to be liable if you can't reproduce an important record - the vendor or you?

There are a number of ways to ensure that data entry is accurate and that all pages have been captured and are legible.  Some records have less risk associated with them than others, so sometimes it can be acceptable to employ a less rigorous level of quality control.  It's important to work with someone that can help you "right size" your requirements to both your budget and your legal obligations.

Quality control is an important consideration and you need to make sure that you understand exactly what that entails when engaging with a scanning vendor or doing the scanning yourself.  We're available to provide free education on this subject and many others to help you with your document imaging needs.  Please contact us if you'd like more information.

NIST HIPAA Security Toolkit Application now available

This free downloadable application can help you assess your organization's HIPAA compliance:  http://scap.nist.gov/hipaa/

SIS NW at OCHIN O-HITEC Forum

SIS NW was invited to make a presentation at the 2011 OCHIN O-HITEC forum Nov 1-2, 2011.

The event was held at the Embassy Suites In Portland Oregon. The title of the event was "Something for Everyone"

The purpose of the forum is to bring together electronic health record (EHR) specific communities of medical practices focused on achieving Meaningful Use certification in support of transforming medical care.  Health care providers and healthcare information technology solution providers are undergoing  major transformation.  This year's OCHIN O-HITEC provided outstanding education to OCHIN's membership in the form of an experiential learning forum.

The forum was attended by approximately 300 medical professionals and providers from all over the United States.

SIS NW presented an educational track on the Revenue Management Cycle that included Medical Records Chart conversion strategies and Lockbox and EOB processing.  The presentation provided information about how to automate the business office by eliminating paper and converting paper documents into intelligent electronic data.

There was a great deal of interest generated when we unveiled our solution for auditing payment data for the medical practice to help providers determine if they are being underpaid by the insurance companies.

It was a fantastic event and a great educational opportunity for anyone that attended.

Proactive Customer Service

At Spectrum we are fanatics about customer service!  A successful scanning project depends on building a relationship with our customer and involving them throughout the process.

Our philosophy is to always be proactive about customer service and to bring issues to our customer's attention that might affect our ability to provide good quality, meet their timeline, or impact our service to them in any way.

Our Director of Operations, Jerry Miller, shares his philosophy about customer service.

As a service provider, it's critical that we remain vigilant about protecting our client’s documents, maintaining integrity within the capture process and providing high-quality results to the client.  We never assume results.  We work hard to build confidence and trust through ongoing customer communication to ensure that our clients are left without any doubts that we have done our best job.  Our best practices ensure that any anomaly that can have an impact on our service level or creeps outside of the original statement of work is addressed and resolved and that there is clear communication.  Often when we bring these issues to light it leads to refinements in our process (or sometimes the customer's process) that improve the end result.

We are always motivated to provide the best service.  We know that our clients depend on us to do it right the first time.