This past December, shortly before adjourning for 2014, Congress passed an “Omnibus” federal funding bill—the Consolidated and Further Continuing Appropriations Act, 2015. Slipped into the bill was a provision to further delay the implementation of ICD-10. Various lobbies and special interest groups, on both sides of the ICD-10 debate, had already been hitting Congress with a barrage of letters (arguing their opposing points of view) during the latter months of 2014. Opponents of ICD-10 had hoped to use the appropriations bill to further delay the final implementation by as long as two years. Supporters of ICD-10, however, argued that another delay would be both unnecessary and costly.

Having the best and most up-to-date Electronic Medical Records (EMR) software will significantly ease the ICD-10 transition, allowing for better familiarity, faster adoption, and less disruption in cash flow after the deadline. Specific EMR features and functionalities exist within these software systems that can assist healthcare providers with ICD-10-CM as they train and integrate these codes into their specialty-specific practice. Here are four must-have, key EMR features to look for when purchasing or updating their software to fulfill ICD-10 and Meaningful Use requirements.

Whether your practice has been preparing for ICD-10 for some time now or are just beginning to prepare for the imminent changes, it's imperative that you ensure you're entirely set for the introduction of the new code regulations. While your staff may have already read countless articles on how to adjust their day-to-day practices and understanding of billing and coding to fit the ICD-10 transition, you may want to take a high-level look at your practice or clinic to be positive everything is in place. If you're seeking some helpful advice on getting ready for the arrival of ICD-10, take a look at these tips:

The Ebola Virus Continues to Spread Ever since cases of the virus first showed up in Guinea back in March 2014, newsfeeds have been regularly flooded with stories about the West Africa Ebola outbreak, and even more so when the infection briefly appeared in the United States. The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) claims that “The risk of an Ebola outbreak affecting multiple people in the U.S. is very low.” While this is true, the outbreak continues to spread abroad, and the CDC has declared the 2014 Ebola epidemic as “the largest in history, affecting multiple countries in West Africa.” While the virus can only be spread through direct contact with the blood and/or bodily fluids of a symptomatic person, Ebola is still very contagious. It also has a high mortality rate of approximately 53% (to give some perspective, the mortality rate recorded during the last outbreak of the SARS virus was just shy of 10%).

Revenue management is essential to the health care industry, as it helps manage claims, and controls payment and cash flow. It ensures that the billing process goes smoothly to generate adequate revenue to invest further in your business. Therefore, your practice should always be striving to improve revenue cycle management. Here are a few ways you can better revenue management to build a more profitable practice: 1. Keep track of Medicare payments It's not unusual for Medicare to delay payments to providers, which could result in money lost for your practice. The reason behind the delay could be due to a claim that was improperly coded or insufficient documentation. Be sure to identify the exact date that Medicare stops or delays payment. This way, your practice can take the appropriate steps to receive those payments that are due. Your practice can enroll in a medical review program, which consists of a clinician or certified coder reviewing Medicare claims to reduce payment error. They identify and address billing errors regarding coverage and coding.

Hello and welcome to our video blog, aimed to help your practice with anything from electronic medical records to revenue management.

Most top tier EMR/EHR software systems will include an ICD-10 General Equivalency Mapping (GEM) tool to assist you and your administrative personnel with side-by-side medical coding. The software’s GEM functionality translates diagnostic and procedural codes from ICD-9 to ICD-10 and offers other critical information that connects codes in ICD-9 to codes in ICD-10, such as:

It's now 2015, and all Medicare providers will soon be required to at least begin demonstrating compliance with meaningful use of Electronic Health Records (EHR). Failing to meet this requirement will start to come with a penalty cost, as of the New Year, triggering a +1% reduction in Medicare reimbursement every year through at least 2017 and possibly later. In 2015, CMS requires Stage Two Meaningful Use compliance by providers who have already fulfilled the Stage One requirements during the previous 2-3 years. The core requirements for Stage Two compliance are dependent upon successful installation and mastery of sophisticated information systems that can support EHR exchange between providers and patients as well as between providers and other providers. Some of these are: