Productivity Improvement and Benchmarking

Without the appropriate systems in place, and without knowing how your practice works compared to others in your category, you face more administrative work and hassles to earn lower income than you otherwise could. In many cases, even with higher reimbursement, some physician owners see no increase to their take-home pay despite seeing ever greater numbers of patient visits.

In order to have the opportunity to increase profitability, it is essential to implement the best practice management tactics. Medical practices can streamline their practice management while still providing outstanding care and service. To do this properly, you need the training knowledge that Faber Healthcare Solutions' specialists can deliver.

With the assistance of Faber Healthcare Solutions, you can discover and put into effect the most profitable practice management tactics and strategies essential to increasing your income, including electronic medical records, billing and practice management tools and strategies, financial reports, reimbursement, insurer strategies, and much more. This can not only improve your bottom line, but also increase patient satisfaction with your practice's improved operations and processes.

 

Compliance with the Occupational Safety and Health Act (OSHA)

The Occupational and Safety Health Administration is a federal or state agency under the Department of Labor that publishes and enforces safety and health regulations for most businesses and industries in the United States. It interprets and enforces the Occupational and Safety Health Act (OSHA). OSHA's mission is to ensure that the safety and health concerns of American workers are being met. The agency has developed specific workplace standards and polices businesses to make sure these standards are being met. It also provides training and educational programs for small business owners and corporations and works to establish partnerships geared toward improving workplace safety and health.

According to OSHA, the agency's mission is to assure the safety and health of America's workers by setting and enforcing standards; providing training, outreach, and education; establishing partnerships; and encouraging continual improvement in workplace safety and health. There are more than two hundred OSHA offices that monitor workplace safety and health issues located throughout the United States.

Employers are required by OSHA to furnish each employee with a workplace that is free from recognized hazards, and to ensure that all employees comply with the many OSHA rules and regulations. Faber Healthcare Solutions experts will help ensure that your practice complies with OSHA, including a worksite analysis and identification of hazards, development of a hazard prevention and control program, development of safety materials and manuals, and safety and health training for your employees. Key points covered in this compliance package include airborne contaminants, electrical safety, emergency plans, fire prevention, hazard communication, first aid, personal protective equipment, chemical safety, signs and posters, injury prevention plan, accident logs and various written plans.

OSHA compliance plans vary by specialty, equipment and chemicals. Faber Healthcare Solutions' specialists have many years of experience with expert OSHA compliance for all specialties, including medical offices, dental offices and laboratories. Contact us if you are interested in learning more about Faber Healthcare Solutions' OSHA compliance services.

 

The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)

In 1996, Congress passed the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) to address multiple health care issues, including administrative simplification. Of particular importance to Faber Healthcare Solutions and its clients are the HIPAA regulations governing privacy of patient information, security of patient information, and submission of electronic claims. The HIPAA regulations generally apply to all health plans, healthcare providers who transmit any information in electronic form, and healthcare clearinghouses. HIPAA refers to these groups as covered entities.

Effective October 2002, claims submitted electronically to payors must be submitted in the HIPAA standard format. HIPAA applies not only to Medicare and Medicaid claims but also to commercial insurances, BC/BS plans and other payors. The HIPAA standard format contains certain required data elements, such as a payer responsibility sequence code (i.e., identifies the insurance carrier's level of responsibility-primary, secondary, etc.), a taxonomy/specialty code if the rendering provider is the same entity as the billing provider, and a greatly expanded section requiring a more specific designation of relationships between the patient and the insured.

Faber Healthcare Solutions has been proactively monitoring the HIPAA standards for electronic transactions for some time and is actively working on implementation of system changes to ensure a smooth transition for our clients. Faber Healthcare Solutions' clients can be assured that their electronic claims will be submitted in the required HIPAA format.

Effective April 2003, covered entities are required to be in compliance with the HIPAA privacy regulations. This regulation governs the internal use and external disclosure of protected health information ("PHI"). PHI includes not only paper and electronic records but oral statements as well. The HIPAA privacy regulations contain a number of requirements that will be imposed on covered entities as well as a number of rights that must be afforded patients. Physicians are required to provide patients a HIPAA notice setting forth the practice's privacy practices in a form meeting all of the HIPAA requirements. Physicians must also provide certain rights to patients such as providing access to information. Examples of steps that physicians must take include the appointment of a designated privacy officer, the development of HIPAA consent, notice and authorization forms, the development of HIPAA privacy policies and procedures, the identification of HIPAA Business Associates and execution of special HIPAA-compliant agreements with them regarding privacy, and HIPAA privacy education for all staff.

Faber Healthcare Solutions also has certain responsibilities under the HIPAA privacy regulations as a Business Associate of our clients. To this end, Faber Healthcare Solutions requires a HIPAA Business Associate agreement with all clients, for their protection and the protection of their patients. Contact us if you are interested in learning more about Faber Healthcare Solutions' HIPAA compliance services.

 

Clinical Laboratory Improvement Act (CLIA)

ongress passed CLIA as a means for the Secretary of Health to develop comprehensive, quality standards for all laboratory testing to ensure the accuracy, reliability and timeliness of patient test results regardless of where the test was performed. A laboratory is defined as any facility which performs laboratory testing on specimens derived from humans for the purpose of providing information for the diagnosis, prevention, treatment of disease, or impairment of, or assessment of health. This includes testing performed within a medical office, including urine pregnancy tests and KOH skin slides.

Even offices that perform only so-called CLIA Waived tests still must meet certain CLIA regulations and must have a valid CLIA license. CLIA is a user fee funded government program; therefore, all costs of administering the program must be covered by the regulated facilities. Facilities that do not accept Medicare or Medicaid or accept only cash must also be certified under CLIA. It is the act of performing a laboratory test that defines the requirement of certification and not how the test is paid for. Faber Healthcare Solutions will help ensure that your office laboratory is fully compliant with CLIA regulations.

 

Organizational Efficiency

Medical service demands collaboration and organizational effectiveness. We will help you recognize any weaknesses and identify opportunities for expenditure reduction. Your decision to use our services will bring your practice greater profitability, many times the cost of your investment, and will give you the peace of mind knowing that your business is operating at its optimum performance. Our consultants will assess your business operations and planning, your physician and staff productivity, your financial management, scheduling and patient flow, as well as intra-office communication.

 

Charting, Coding and Billing

Every work These three categories are the cornerstones of a successful medical business, and their importance cannot be overstated. If the visit is not properly charted, it cannot be properly coded. If the visit is not properly coded, it cannot be properly billed. And if the visit is not properly billed, the practice does not get properly paid, and may violate insurance fraud regulations!

Even physicians who have been practicing for decades may not be properly documenting their visits, and this can trip them up during a chart audit ... and be terribly expensive. Faber Healthcare Solutions' experts will evaluate your charts and review current charts with the physicians, to ensure that visits are being properly and thoroughly documented, to ensure that everything that transpired during the examination is adequately documented, to ensure that nothing is documented which did not transpire during the examination, and to ensure that the manner in which the chart is documented can result in the most legitimate and lucrative coding.

Then our experts will review the practice's coding and fee schedule, to optimize revenue maximization.

astly, the specialists of Faber Healthcare Solutions will review your practice's billing policies and procedures, EOB review and appeals process, patient statements, billing software and all aspects of your billing and collection mechanism. From this review our experts will recommend - and help you implement - improvements and changes, to help improve your bottom line.

 

Revenue Analysis

Revenue cycle analysis includes assessment from initial patient contact and registration, through check-in, service provision, check-out and all the procedures and policies of billing and collections. Staff and workload benchmarking, along with a review of the structures and tools supporting the revenue cycle, are indispensable components of this analysis. Our goal: to improve your bottom line.

 

Information Technology

Selecting medical technology systems require making crucial decisions regarding vendors, hardware, and software applications. Our consultants will provide guidance in selecting practice management and electronic medical records systems, help you analyze areas for improvement, and help you forecast your future IT needs. Services include vendor coordination, comparison and contrast of system capabilities and deficiencies, operational analysis to evaluate systems' interoperability with existing and future work flows, phased implementation of EMR, configuration assistance, electronic HIPAA compliance, review of purchase agreements and support agreements, negotiation of ongoing support agreements, and custom interfaces.

 

Customer Service

Patients expect straightforward appointment scheduling, provider availability in a timely manner, shorter waiting times, faster access to information, and staff who are able to address patient concerns appropriately. Through interactive seminars – one-hour, two-hour, or half-day sessions – we will train your office staff in the latest customer service techniques. To assess true customer contentment, our industry must go beyond boilerplate patient satisfaction tools, and our consultants will introduce your practice to new instruments, such as mystery patients (think mystery shoppers), complaint logs, observation, focus groups and telephone interviews.

 

Human Resources

Employees cannot be expected to perform their jobs properly, or even within the guidelines you expect, if they are not clearly aware of your needs and goals. In cases of employment termination for cause, proving that an employee has violated clearly established company guidelines can help you defend your company from a wrongful termination suit. Our consultants will assist you to establish employment guidelines and job descriptions, create an official Employee Handbook, and deliver a seminar to explain all components of this handbook to your employees, and ease its implementation at your practice.

 

The Verden Alert

Faber Healthcare Solutions is proud to be a Value Added Reseller of the Verden Alert. Every day the Verden Alert, an electronic managed care policy watchdog, monitors more than 70,000 web pages owned by over 170 managed care companies for changes to policies, cataloging information by specialty and classifying items into administrative, clinical, reimbursement and pharmaceutical categories. Every night Verden Alerts are automatically emailed to subscribers. Managed care policy changes are unmanageable, and the Verden Alert system makes sure that you receive the right information at the right time and that it reaches the right people in your organization.