On June 11, 2021, CMS released updated 2021 quality benchmarks via email. This blog post will provide an overview of quality benchmarks, impact of recent changes and tips on how to optimize your quality reporting in 2021 despite the changes. Additionally, we will explain these updates as well as how they will affect your Quality Improvement process for 2021.

After years of bipartisan support, the shift toward greater price transparency in healthcare made a lot of headway starting in 2019 when then-President Trump signed an executive order that required hospitals and healthcare facilities to publish their prices more openly. The idea behind this was that having healthcare facilities publish pricing lists would encourage competition that would in turn lower overall care prices and costs for consumers.

Performing a regular security risk analysis (SRA) helps your practice stay HIPAA-compliant and protect patient data. A MIPS SRA also boosts your Merit-based Incentive Payment System score, leading to a higher chance of receiving a Medicare reimbursement at the end of the year.

Here we are. Talking about ransomware. Again. And the truth is, whether we are tired of talking about it or not, the current ransomware situation (especially for those in healthcare) is only getting worse as this year goes on. Simply put—things are bad. How bad? Well… bad enough for the FBI director to compare the current nationwide surge in ransomware attacks in the U.S. to the September 11th attacks of 2001. You have to admit, that’s a pretty extreme comparison. However, it’s not too far off. As we’ve seen already with the recent Colonial Pipeline attack, ransomware has the potential to bring parts of our country’s infrastructure to a grinding halt and disrupt commerce, similar to the results of a physical terrorist attack.

As the pandemic winds down and cases of COVID-19 continue dropping in the United States, new rounds of regulatory changes should be expected as part of the return to normalcy. Among the most recent are new OSHA guidelines for healthcare workers per the U.S. Labor Department. In this blog, we will examine some of the main points of this new guidance.

Fraud is one of those topics that no one really enjoys talking about. It can be uncomfortable to think that someone in your practice, even someone you are close to and believe you have a strong relationship with, would steal from you. But it happens. And you need to be aware of it because fraud and theft are far more common in healthcare practices than you might expect.

Slow lead response times could be resulting in lost patients, and as a result, lost opportunities for future revenue. In fact, one study found that the odds of even being able to contact a potential lead decrease by over ten times in the first hour. In this blog, we will take a look at the importance of prompt lead response times and illustrate how failure to maintain them could be costing your practice new patients (and the future sales revenue that comes with them).

Without a doubt, the pandemic shined a big spotlight on the need for more online/digital solutions—not just for use in healthcare, but in nearly all forms of business. This included, of course, the need for better digital payment solutions. These digital payment solutions have become far more than just a convenience (though they are that, as well). In fact, they are quickly becoming the current and future standard for all financial transactions in every facet of commerce.