Prudent owners and managers in charge of the daily operations at medical practices make it their business to stay on top of changes in industry and governmental requirements regarding health care, such as the upcoming required shift from the International Classification of Diseases code version 9 to ICD-10. The United States government has announced that we must make the transition to ICD-10 by October 1, 2015. This is an extension to the due date, as we were formerly required to make the change in 2014. Many medical organizations had informed the government that they were simply not going to make the transition in time.

The team at Advanced Data Systems Corporation is relentlessly focused on helping our customers work more efficiently and improve operations overall at their medical practices. To that end, we want to showcase four ADSC tools that your business simply can’t live without. 1. FlowText In the interest of saving your staffers time and effort, we want you to know about Medics FlowText. Your physicians can use FlowText to generate letters or other documents such as reports with either voice recognition (powered by Dragon Medical transcription) or handwriting recognition. The information will automatically populate into the correct fields in the patient’s electronic health record.

How productive is your medical staff? Rather than being complacent about worker efficiency, it’s a good idea to encourage weekly habits in your staff to help them become more productive. It will make things easier for your patients and can help increase profits at the same time. 1. Continuing Education Learning is never finished, and this is especially true for such an important profession as medicine. You will want to encourage (or even mandate, depending on your particular organization’s circumstances) your medical staff to stay on top of developments in your field.

The following excerpt is from an article by Eugene Heslin. It originally appeared on U.S. News & World Report. As Kimberly Leonard points out in her article (“Doctors Say Electronic Records Waste Time,” Sept. 8, 2014), doctors are frustrated with the time it takes to use electronic health records. This is only natural. Moving from paper to digital communication is a different way of communicating and takes time to become proficient.

The following excerpt is from an article by Julie Bird. It originally appeared on Fierce EMR. Primary-care clinics recovered their financial investments in electronic health record (EHR) systems in 10 months on average, a recent study found, in part because EHRs allowed them to see more patients.

The following article is an excerpt from ICD-10 Monitor. It was written by Sherry Wilson and Tina Greene, co-chairs of the Workgroup for Electronic Data Interchange (WEDI) Property & Casualty Subworkgroup. Even Captain Obvious knows that you need to “book reservations” early for external ICD-10 testing. A successful organizational transition to ICD-10 by the compliance date of Oct. 1, 2015 will require good planning. Preparation is crucial to allow your organization to leverage its ICD-10 investments to meet compliance requirements and achieve a strategic testing advantage. It is highly likely that those stakeholders who do not engage in early external ICD-10 testing, including payers as well as other trading partners, will be faced with a last-minute rush of requests to test from multiple stakeholders.

Any healthcare entity mandated to comply with HIPAA regulations have to be ready to use the ICD-10 coding system on October 1, 2015. While hospitals and corporate-run practices are likely to have few issues making the transition because they have the budget and the people to dedicate to devising and implementing a transition plan, small clinics, group practices, and solo practitioners face challenges with the switch to ICD-10.

The following is an excerpt from an article by Carl Natale. This article originally appeared on Government Health IT. Next week marks another ICD-10 milestone: One year left to go. For those of you just deciding to take it seriously now, start with education. Educate Thyself You can start with some free resources to help you understand what the ICD-10 transition means for your medical practice.

Medical billing software provides increased convenience for providers, less tracking of paperwork, and a more streamlined office. Physicians no longer spend valuable administrative time looking for records and retrieving past patients medical records from off-site storage facilities. Medical billing software can save money by avoiding claim denials and avoid the possibility of submitting incorrectly formatted claims.

Electronic Health Records, known as EHR, are real-time, digitized versions of traditional paper-based medical files. Digital medical records are cloud-based systems, meaning that the information entered into the electronic medical records software is stored in secure, remote servers to ensure patient privacy and system reliability.