Making sure your practice gets paid promptly and properly is arguably your most important job duty. To strengthen your practice-and your role in its growth-it's also important to find new ways of enhancing the revenue cycle.

No one wants to work for the first practice investigated for federal privacy violations by the Office for Civil Rights.

And even though you may think that your practice is immune to a violation, keep your medical records safe from the prying eyes of patients and staff by following the guidelines set up by the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA).

The negotiating meeting between your practice representatives and the managed care organization (MCO) is an important one.

You will need a team with enough marketing muscle to compete with the MCO at the negotiating table. Your practice administrator, business manager, and one or two lead physicians should go to the table well-prepared.

Physicians can save money and put the kibosh on government’s revenue cowNew government guidelines this year are giving Medicare carriers the green light to go after providers for false claims and overpayments. Carriers are using so-called probe letters to reopen claims for medical review. And sample sizes for these claims reviews are not the petite versions on the old insurance racks. They’re much broader. This means carriers could discover more mistakes, even a hint of fraud, and possibly forward your case to the Office of Inspector General.“But these reviews are sen

State laws are actually tougher than the federal privacy law in more than a handful of situations, according to a Midwest law firm now comparing the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA) to local regulations. Law firms in other states are toiling away on similar comparisons. Call your state medical society or department of insurance to see whether they have anything on file from a firm.Comparisons for Indiana and Michigan are complete, according to Hall, Render, Killian, Heath & Lyman, an Indianapolis-based firm that discovered medical records rules an

Multi-colored codes ease billing, waiver rulesThe fraud-hunting Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) are on the prowl for providers who don’t use modifiers and advance beneficiary notices (ABN) correctly, or at all, an agency official said in May. Several clinics are reworking internal policies to comply. Meanwhile, billing specialist Denese Foltz of the Ankle & Foot Clinic in Everett, WA, suggests these color-coded tips:• Flip through your HCPCS Level II 2002 books. “Our book is color-coded. Any codes in red are not valid for Medicare, so you know

Morale was no better here at Summit Ophthalmology than on Akron High School’s 0-19 basketball team. And Dr. Richard Ellison knew it. Ellison is managing partner of this two-site, seven surgeon practice in Akron, OH. At 125 patients a day, business should have been booming in the late ’90s. But it wasn’t. The practice meandered along a river of claims denial. Incorrectly entered birth dates, genders, Social Security numbers, and patient addresses spit out denials, stifling productivity. Nagging DOS software problems weighed heavily on the administrative staff.Ellison a

Interpreters, waiting room videos help doctors understand patient painWendy Funk, MD, would probably drive her patients to the drug store if she had the time. It’s not Southern hospitality; just compassionate medicine. Funk knows that good patient relations and communication skills could be the difference in getting her a job over an equally qualified candidate when she finishes residency in five years.The threat of lawsuits from minority patients will skyrocket if doctors and nurses don’t sharpen their communication skills and meet people halfway, ac cording to a new study