EMIS Patient Access: Effective Patient Billing and Collection Process

Overview of EMIS Patient Access

Task:

EMIS provides online services for patient Access.  Patient Access includes a amount of voluntary features, including Examination, reservation and canceling appointments, medication checking and requesting for repeating medication, apprising your address data, including telephone and mail contact, message conveying and thus avoiding the need to make a call for all the routine questions.

Inaccurate billing and collection process are harmful to the healthcare practices administration. Over the past, healthcare practitioners have lost more than $17billion due to the neglect of the medical collection of patient data as by Farmer et al., (2018). The practitioners have the task of ensuring that all claims are submitted, and the medical billers will use such information to the bill.

When there are medical benefits offered the third- parties are taken care of. The checking of the compensation method, repayment process updating and provision o ideas on the change of the previous reimbursement and whether to request for more compensation is done by the patient Financial Services (PFS) as by Wright, (2017). Repayment can be carried out in various ways. Guaranteed Disclosing if the all the departments will ensure that the process function at an optimum capability. Points to be considered include:

1.Ensuring that you receive higher payment on time by checking in the policies of the third payer and making enquiries about the repayment.

2.examine organizational planning for bargaining healthcare contract with agreed care organizations.

“Timeliness and maximization of reimbursement” contain five important areas. The area is; Patient access, reduction of the denials through the use of accurate information, use of the eligibility tools, responsibilities of patients made more clearer, patients' tendency to paycheck, collection before any instance of care, and the strategies for financial triage.

To risk of non-payment by the patients can be reduced by the use of patient access. Patient access will help in preventing any occurrence errors before any claims are made. It also helps in the implementation of the effective eligibility tools, which will lead to acquiring visibility into the patients' monetary responsibilities, able to predict their tendency to pay. It will also help in the capturing of a bit of the patient's payment before anything else, which will help in accelerating the cash flow and reduce the accounts receivable (A/R) days outstanding as by Rich, et al., (2018).

When the information of the patients is input correctly; for example, the demographic information of the patients, it will help the hospital in receiving payment at a faster rate.
When a person indicates a \n effective and consistent follow-up, it is an indication that they were attentive during training. Following up is a way of indicating that you are serious, and the matter is important. When the management does not follow, the employee also won't do the follow up as they will be wondering why they should bother in the implementation of their new skill if their leaders are not doing the same. Follow-ups can be carried out in various ways.

The Importance of Accurate Patient Data Collection

Effective learning will take time and practice. It is, therefore, important to conduct a follow up on your employees after training. As according to Hser, et al., (2017) for an effective follow-up, the management should;

Carry out the follow-up when the training is still fresh on the trainee's mind.
Enquire from the employees how they would want the follow-up to be like.
Give the employees a chance to be creative in order to strengthen the drill and the skills that they learned. The management should be supportive of the employees.
Allow the employees to use the training materials and the tools available; there should be conducted an assessment of the different topics from the training periodically.
The managers, supervisors, and other employees should be encouraged to start using the skills learned immediately.

Karn, (2016) indicates the best strategy to involve the following steps;

Step:

1: Privacy and Security officer choosing.  The privacy and security officer are the people who will spearhead the compliance plan.

2: Carry out a risk assessment.  The assessment will require you to check whether the workplace and electronic devices are at any risk or have any vulnerabilities relating to confidentiality, integrity and the availability of the Electronic Protected Health Information (ePHI). Assessment can be handled individually, or another person is outsourced.

3: Privacy and Security Procedures and Policies. On completion of the assessment, you are required to produce a plan for an agreement plan. The blueprint should involve the policies and procedures that will ensure the confidentiality of protected health data and information about the security of the data. The guidelines deal with how the electronic PHI will protect the information. Policies and procedures require constant updates and the changes made should be documented clearly and communication made to the staff.

4: Get into agreement with business associates . The associates are the entities that are outside the company's workforce that have access to the patient's PHI when they are performing services on behalf of the hospital or the organization. An audit of the associates should be carried out before a contract is signed an agreement with them. Auditing is meant to look at the compliance plans of the associates.

Step 5: Training of the Employees. Employees need to be trained every year on the HIPAA rule and communication carried out on information about any update on the privacy and security policies and procedures.  Employees should be trained on the HIPAA law and the specific plan that you have created. A record of those who have been trained should be kept.

Financial strategy requires the managed care contracts. Attaining an agreement with the payer about managed care requires that preparations are made, collaborations, and compromise are considered. When an organization is open and appreciates the need for a payer, it makes it easier to negotiate.