What is Electronic Health Record (EHR)
An Electronic Health Record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centered records that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. While an EHR does contain medical and treatment histories of patients, EHR systems are built to go beyond the standard clinical data collected in a provider’s office and can be inclusive broader view of a patient’s care.
Electronic Health Record and Mental Health
Mental health providers often look for EHR software that can be designed to fit their practice needs. With the need for mental health services continuously on the rise and services provided via telehealth, having an EHR that simplifies the process from scheduling to payment posting is imperative.
Advantages of an Electronic Health Record
EHRs and its ability to exchange health information electronically can help you provide higher quality and safer care for patients while creating tangible enhancements for your organization. EHRs help providers better manage care for patients and provide better health care by:
- Providing accurate, up-to-date, and complete information about patients at the point of care.
- Helping promote legible, complete documentation and accurate, streamlined coding and billing.
- One of the best ways to ensure you take full advantage of the benefits of Electronic Health Records is by achieving meaningful use, this allows you benefits beyond financial incentives.
- HIPPA Complaint
- Security
Electronic Health Record and Medical Billing
The EHR software assists medical billing by providing accurate patient information, insurance verification with eligibility, claim submission with scrubbing and reimbursement. While also assisting with denial management, and charge capture.
Common features amongst many EHR software for medical billing are:
- Reduction in data entry errors
- Increase in claim submission time.
- Increase in revenue.
What’s a Billing Module?
A billing module is an important piece to your medical billing and coding revenue. Having an efficient billing module will ensure the ability to generate electronic claims and send them to any of your government and commercial payers. Which will push data from your EHR software seamlessly from your charts to your billing module resulting in faster payment and increased revenue.
While building your billing module when purchasing a new or upgrading an existing EHR system there are several key features that you should consider. Such as:
- Claim creation
- Electronic submission
- Report management
- Claims rejection analysis
- Co-payment built into scheduling
- Automated billing code transcription
- Electronic eligibility verification
What’s a Clearinghouse?
A medical billing Clearinghouse takes claim information from a billing service or provider, reviews claim for errors, and sends the claim information electronically to insurance companies.
Many EHR software companies offer a built in Clearinghouse while others have you contract with a Clearinghouse vendor to link to their EHR software.
Benefits of a Clearinghouse:
- Claims sent electronically are paid much faster than paper claims.
- Allows medical billers to catch and fix errors quickly.
- Submits claims electronically which can reduce reimbursement times to under ten days.
- Eliminates the need to prepare claims and manually re-key transaction data over and over for each payer.
Direct Bill to Insurer
Another option for processing patients’ medical claims is direct billing. Direct billing is the process of a healthcare provider billing an insurance company directly for services rendered to the policyholder. Some benefits may include:
- Removal of claim processing fees that are charged by your EHR/Clearinghouse
- Faster payment
- Other tools that promote accurate clean claims
- Instant reasons for rejected claims
Secure Patient Portal/ Patient Payments
A secure patient portal is an important patient and medical provider feature. Using a private, secure, and protected patient portal is essential and gives patients 24-hour access to personal health information from anywhere. Patient benefits of a secure patient portal include:
- Username and password access to view health information
- Recent doctor visits summaries
- Discharge summaries
- Medications
- Lab results
- Securely message your doctor
- Update contact information
- Make payments
- Download and complete forms
There are many benefits a secure patient portal provides for the mental health provider and for your revenue. These benefits include:
- Efficient online bill pay
- Revenue cycle management
- Receive faster payments
- Review medical insurance benefits and coverage
- Review co-payment, co-insurance, or other related medical payments
- Easy and quick online payments for both medical biller and patient
Revenue Management Reporting
When it comes to analytics and reporting they are very similar in understanding and communicating data, but they do it differently.
Both analytics and reporting can help healthcare practices transform data into actionable insights, with such things as identifying patient diagnosis patterns, measuring appointment frequency, most billable insurance, and predicting future income trends.
The benefits of analytics for your mental health provider and revenue. Benefits include:
- Past and present financials
- Practice benchmarking
- Internal workflows
- Helps determine and plan for the future
Additional revenue information reporting includes:
- Insurance Payment Trend
- Insurance Collection Report
- Accounts Receivable Aging
Ability to Create Custom Analytics and Reporting with Exported Data
Date analytics and reporting are vital components to the revenue cycle process. Many EHR systems come with standard features that provide basic analytics and reporting. Additionally, custom analytics and reporting features are not always available with certain EHR software.
Somethings to consider with custom analytics and reporting features:
- Flat rate
- Cost per data capability
- Simplicity
- Multi mouse clicks
- Cluttered monitor display
Custom Features:
- A design that meets your practice needs
- Data based on specialty
- Custom analytic and reporting dashboard
- Ability to change frequently
Electronic Health Record Software Selecting
Now to the fun of selecting the best EHR software for your practice. Many practices select their EHR based on patient care. Our list of five EHR software companies is geared towards the needs of the medical biller and coder.
Our EHR software list includes:
- EHR Your Way
- Kareo Billing
- SimplePractice
- Theranest
- Therapynotes
| Top Five Comparion Chart | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | EHR Your Way | Kareo Billing | SimplePractice | Theranest | Therapynotes |
| Billing/Claims Management Features | |||||
| Insurance verification (is it included in the cost of EHR) | X | ||||
| Auto-create claim processing. (During check out or completion/signing of progress note) | X | X | X | ||
| Ability to create manual claims without going through schedule and progress notes. Example submitting claims for screenings and survey. | X | X | X | ||
| Ability for cosigned notes with “Incident to Billing”: rendering provider as the supervisee and billing provider as supervisor. With scheduling. | X | X | X | X | X |
| Notification of rejected claims | X | X | X | ||
| Coding and transmission claim scrubbing | X | X | X | X | |
| Auto payment posting (ERA posting) | X | X | X | X | X |
| Claim submission to secondary payers | X | X | X | X | |
| Current real-time claims status | X | ||||
| Ability to submit corrected claims per insurance guidelines | X | X | X | X | |
| Ability to bill Out of Network claims | X | X | X | X | X |
| Ability to email/print Superbills for self pay patients. | X | X | |||
| Ability to process credit cards for insurance and patient payments | X | X | X | X | |
| Copay collection and assign to correct date of service | X | X | X | X | |
| Patient statement generation and email option to patients | X | X | X | ||
Conclusion
In conclusion, we hope this guide has helped you consider the needs of your practice as you consider new EHR Software. If you are considering working with a medical billing company for all your practice needs, Neolytix offers a full selection of medical billing services. We collaborate with therapists and mental health professionals across the country to optimize their billing processes and boost their cash flow.
Reach out to us anytime or complete the form below for a free consultation.
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