Affordable patient-centric bed management software solutions facilitate efficient transportation and enhance staff productivity, time management strategies and process automation. An ideal package provides tools to achieve measurable return on investment. Physicians often complain that patients have to spend too much time waiting in the office or a pre-admitting room for an available hospital bed. Bed management software has myriad benefits for practice managers, including reducing wait times and improving discharge processes.

In the digitally connected, technology rich healthcare environment, physicians can connect with their practice and access valuable information from anywhere in the world, whether it is an obstetrician in route to deliver a preterm baby or oncologist on call for the local emergency room who gets a call on the 17th hole of his favorite course. There are many ways, like the ones below, to stay connected in our mobile society.

In a perfect world, your medical practice would routinely submit claims after seeing patients and then receive payment in a timely fashion, with nary a hiccup affecting your cash flow and bottom line. You would spend more time focusing on delivering high quality medical care and less time worrying about the financial aspects of the practice. Most managers of medical practices are aware of the need to automate processes as much as possible, and to that end, they will gladly implement electronic health record and practice management software for improved efficiency.

A 2012 survey published by Oracle revealed hospitals lose an average of 15%, roughly $72 million dollars, of additional revenue for each year because they fail to exploit collected information. Almost two-thirds, 63%, of polled respondents recognized the need to translate data into actionable insight, but felt overwhelmed by the volume of information.

Health rule challenges continue, even as October 1, 2015 looms. Individual insurance benefits fluctuate as employers scramble to control costs, making it increasingly difficult for hospitals and physicians to stay on top of diverse policy provisions and exclusions. Myriad new regulations and mandates for providers and employers also means more responsibility for paying for health care services falls into the hands of patients.

Successful medical practices must take advantage of the latest developments in software and computers if they want to position themselves as a leader in their service area. This means, for example, that they will reject old ways of doing things when presented with a more modern and efficient method for finishing tasks. A good example of this is practice management software. Organizations that managed to get by without this kind of software in the past, relying on paper based systems or a cobbled together collection of applications from unrelated developers will quickly see that practice management software will shorten the revenue cycle and keep the office humming along, running as efficiently as possible.

You’ve experienced problems in the past with how you billed your patients, leading to missed payments as well as a much longer revenue cycle for those that do pay. Now you are growing more serious about finally using dedicated software that was built with your organization’s needs in mind. As you and your staff prepare to bring a new medical billing system into your practice, you will likely have some pressing questions that need answering before you can make your selection. Here are the answers to your top five medical billing system questions.

Managing highly-specialized implementation, such as the shift to ICD-10, requires highly-skilled team members. Over the past few years, hospitals and health systems have invested hundreds of millions of dollars collectively to prepare for the complex implementation. And, while physicians have not faced the arduous challenges that vendors, payers and hospitals have experienced, they can benefit from the lessons learned. For example, outsourcing medical coding and billing services may be the key to managing a healthy revenue stream and improving your practice as a whole.

The following excerpt is from our recent whitepaper, "Practice Management for Your Anesthesiology Practice." Today’s medical practices have a wealth of software solutions at their disposal to help them better manage their workflow and billing. Specialty organizations such as anesthesiology practices are no exception to this in that a “wealth” of software solutions are available, including many “one-size-fits-all” practice management applications that may be in use by anesthesiology practices, but which are not ideally geared toward anesthesiology and all of its billing nuances. For that reason, anesthesiology practice managers or owners will want to implement the most appropriate application for that particular specialty.

In a busy medical office, staffers don’t have time to waste when it comes to the billing cycle. The faster you can submit claims, the shorter the turnaround time should be, of course. Organizations with an eye on their bottom line require medical billing software companies that will fully meet their particular needs, especially in terms of speed, accuracy and ease of use for their staffers. If you are displeased with your current medical software company or are starting up a new practice and need to quickly select and implement billing software, you should know that not all medical billing software companies are created equal.