Archive for the 'Healthcare Systems' Category

Supporting the release of stem cells from the bone marrow is one of the main factors in optimizing your capability to support optimal health . The bigger quantity of stem cells circulating in the blood equates to greater state of the organism . But , supporting the innate deliverance of stem cells is only component of this equation. for the purpose of fulfilling their role, stem cells must be able to reach each corner of the body . To get here , they are transferred through the body’s own transport mechanism answerable for the delivery of nutrients, oxygen and blood cells, the circulation system. Making sure this transport system is operating to its fullest potential is critical to our body’s capability to supply health.

Our circulatory system not just carries red blood cells and immune cells, it is also the transport network for the most essential piece to our body’s innate renewal system, our own adult stem cells. Scientific studies have shown that a greater quantity of circulating adult stem cells in the body is related to better health.

With so many deterrents to our ability to remain healthy and active, you should learn how to do all the possible to support your health on the appropriate level. By making a choice to join StemFlo and StemEnhance as part of your wellness program , you will be taking a giant step forward to increasing your body’s ability to cure itself.

As your age, the number and quality of stem cells that are flowing in your body gradually ceasing , leaving your body more susceptible to harm and other age-related health challenges. Just as antioxidants are important to protect your cells from “free radical” injury , stem cell enhancers are equally important to support your stem cells in maintaining proper organ and tissue working in your body. Recent research has found that they are at the core of your body’s natural renewal system.

There are 2 basic kinds of stem cells, and it’s important to understand the difference :

Embryonic Stem Cells. These are extracted from 8-10 day old Embryos-that’s why there’s so much disputes surrounding their exploration and use.

Adult Stem Cells. These are present in your organism from the day you are born and are naturally produced in your bone marrow. Stem cells can kind of cell in your organism . Without them, your body’s natural renewal procedure just could not take place!

Results of different scientific studies show that enlarging the number of circulating adult stem cells is perhaps the single most needed thing you can do to maintain optimal health.

StemFlo provides a triple-defence response to maintaining your body’s ability to easily renew itself. Consisted of a proprietary blend of all natural herbs and special nutrients, StemFlo makes better blood flow.

Read more about StemEnhance on this site with info about StemEnhance.

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Want to organize physician's handwritten notes and prescriptions into electronic documents without spending a fortune? A medical transcription service is the perfect solution for you.

All medical institutions require computerization of medical notes for clean and compact record-keeping, insurance claims processing, quick reference, conferencing and various other reasons. Hospitals and clinics have long been hiring full time transcriptionists to do the same. But this is an expensive option and not the ideal solution if you have varying volume of transcription needs. Alternatively, you can give transcription duties to other clerical staff or use voice recognition software. But these solutions can be quite inaccurate, putting the health of your patients at stake. Your clerical staff may not be well trained for medical transcription and accuracy of voice recognition usually is too low to be useful. A medical transcription service gives you the best combination of expense, quality and accuracy.

How does a medical tanscription service work?

* Physicians dictate their notes into a recording device, usually a toll-free phone line or handheld digital recorder. Most medical transcription services support both these methods. Some services also accept recorded cassettes. Mp3 is the preferred sound format when using digital recorders, though other formats can also be used.

* The recorded information is then sent to the medical transcription service provider. Information security during transfer is critical. Your patients' personal information must not be leaked out at any cost. Digital recordings are submitted via the Internet. This can be done using a secure web site and file transfer protocol (FTP) using custom software from the provider, or even through encrypted email. In case of a toll-free line, the information is directly recorded on the provider's servers.

* The recorded notes are then transcribed and returned to the hospital or clinic. Information is usually returned as word files, though other formats like pdf can also be specified. Delivery methods include secure web sites, FTP, custom software, encrypted email and in some cases fax.

More comprehensive medical transcription services are also available. They offer an online system that stores both the audio files and transcripts, organizes them by date, doctor, or patient, and keeps track of progress as they're being transcribed. These services are more expensive but offer substantial management benefits.

Important Considerations

Accuracy: The returned work must have accuracy close to 100 per cent. Select a medical transcription service that employs experienced and skilled medical transcriptionists and quality assurance professionals who review the transcriptions before delivering them to you. Your doctors should review and evaluate each transcript on delivery to prevent any damage to your patients' health and well-being.

Turnaround Time: It refers to the maximum time within which medical transcripts will be delivered to you after submitting the audio recordings. Most medical transcription services offer a turnaround time of 24 to 48 hours. Most also include a STAT service that allows you to specify a turnaround time of one-, two- or four-hours at an additional cost. Different types of notes can have different turnaround times.

Security: Medical transcription services are subject to HIPAA rules about patient confidentiality. The industry standard for internet security is 128-bit SSL security. Physical security at the provider location is also important. Careful employee screening and tracking is essential. Audit trails can assist in tracking employees. An audit trail keeps track of each individual who accesses a given set of notes and the modifications they make.

Sound Quality: Good quality of sound recording is essential for performance. Digital handheld recorders provide better sound, though they carry an additional hardware cost. Some medical transcription services charge lower prices if you provide them with better quality recordings.

Location of service: Many medical transcription services use both domestic and international transcriptionists. There is generally no difference in quality and accuracy between the domestic and outsourced services. Having transcription teams all around the world enables the service providers to meet deadlines. You will most like pay more for service if you insist on using medical transcriptionists located in a developed country like the US.

How much will you have to pay?

You are charged per line of text. The industry standard is 65 characters in a single line including spaces. Some service providers however, include lesser number of characters in a single line. Price usually ranges from $.05 to $.20 per line. Before you select a vendor, compare price quotes from multiple medical transcription companies.

Most medical transcription service providers offer free trial runs. Carefully assess the provider's ability to meet deadlines, the accuracy of transcripts, and ease of interaction with their customer service representatives during the trial run. Many providers assign a dedicated team of transcriptionists for long term contracts and also offer lower prices. Carefully evaluate your requirements, the providers and the available services before making a decision.

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Is X12 Format right for Healthcare?

In every corner, we hear about the rise of healthcare costs and how to reduce them. I would like to add one area where the cost can be reduced significantly.

We all agree that the cost can be reduced by automating certain procedures, such as the medical billing, electronic medical records, scheduling, reporting and Electronic Medical Records, EMR.

The first question I asked was, what if the cost of automation is so huge that it will raise even more the costs of healthcare.
So, how can we reduce the cost of the automation.
The scheduling, automation can be accomplished at very minimal cost.

The Electronic Medical Records is specialty dependent, but there is some common data that can be defined as "standard" for each practice.
The medical billing is the big elephant in the room. The cost of its automation is significant and its implementation is complex. We will look at two aspects:

* Medical Coding
* Claim Processing

Medical Coding specialists are in high demand because of rapid growth in the number of medical tests, treatments, and procedures that will be increasingly scrutinized by health insurance companies, regulators, courts, and consumers." (See U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics.) , It is probably the fastest growing profession withing the healthcare industry.

The 2005 statistics from the United States Department of Labor and Bureau of Statistics, showed the healthcare information industry is expected to grow faster than normal through 2014.

In practical terms, the medical coder adds cost to the clinician and that cost will be transferred to the patient. But this is required position that we may not be able to cut. So, where can we cut costs ?
We will look at how to reduce the cost HIPAA transactions processing.

HIPAA Transactions.
HIPAA defined a set of transactions to support Electronic data exchange:

* Health Care Claims or equivalent encounter information (837);
* Eligibility for a Health Plan (270/271);
* Referral Certification and Authorization (278 or NCPDP for retail pharmacy);
* Health Care Claim Status (276/277);
* Enrollment and Disenrollment in a Health Plan (834);
* Health Care Payment and Remittance Advice (835);
* Health Plan Premium Payments (20); and
* Coordination of Benefits (837 or NCPDP for retail pharmacy).

While many entities in the health sector have developed, or are in the process of developing, electronic data interchange (EDI) format standards, the lack of common, industry-wide standards is a major obstacle to realizing potential efficiency and savings.

The problem starts with the choice of EDI format, X12. For those who had some experience with X12, they know what I'm talking about. It is a complex format that is very hard to maintain and terribly complex to implement.

Today, the software industry offers other technologies that can actually reduce the cost of the implementation of the HIPAA transactions and HIPAA specifications. One of these technologies is XML Web services (Dont confuse it with a web site) that operates under SOAP (Simple Object Adapter Protocol) or REST.

The data for each transaction can be defined with an interface called WSDL (Web Service Definition Language) and the companies can implement the business behind each transaction independently.
This protocol is platform independent (Windows, Mac, Unix, Linux, MVS ...etc) and it can reduce the implementation costs by 500% and increase efficiency at every level of claim processing because this technology provides hooks to validate, secure, transport data. This reduction of cost in claim processing will imply reduction in insurance premiums as well as the reduction of the cost of billing systems.

Compared to EDI where the claims are submitted in batch format, the Web Service technology can submit the claims in realtime or immediate send or in batch mode. The number of errors will be reduced to under 1%.

The combination of efficient medical coding along with web services technology as the protocol of choice for HIPAA transactions will reduce the cost of claim processing by at 200%.

Conclusion

The ultimate goal is to take care of the patient at reduced cost. Many things need to come together in order to accomplish this goal. One of them is Mental Health Software System implemented at reasonable cost that offers the functions that will optimize the provider time and costs. I believe that it start by applying the right technology that can help the business.

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With healthcare reorganization in the forefront of everyone’s mind today, the existing healthcare programs for America’s older citizens are still limping down the road, but for how long?

Medicare, a component of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society” program signed into law in 1965, was never intended to be the all encompassing, everything for everybody program that it has grown into today. It was sold as a “short term program” for those low income people who had no access to healthcare otherwise. And, the price of the program was to be “modest” by Government standards.

Sound familiar?

How Medicare will be affected by President Obama’s revised universal healthcare plan, is anyone’s guess. The senior population of America is apparently expendable in political terms as the new programs take shape. European health programs, upon which the new Administration’s plan seems to be based, routinely truncate services to elderly patients when the economics of keeping someone alive outweighs the “value” that person adds to society. It is upsetting that, that kind of healthcare may be on the horizon for our own mature citizens soon.

Medicare is not a perfect system, but it has settled into a effective program for those seniors who otherwise would not have healthcare insurance. Broken into parts, A & B Medicare helps with the cost of health care, but it does not cover all medical expenses or the cost of most long-term care. Those eligible for free Medicare hospital insurance (Part A) may enroll in Medicare Part B by paying a monthly premium. There is also a prescription drug component (part D) and a program called Medicare Advantage (part C) which is an HMO or PPO preference for the Medicare program. Part B of the program is designed to pay doctors and suppliers that are not covered by hospital insurance.

Should seniors be wary of the new projected health care program? Will it replace the existing Medicare system, as we know it? Is it going to be more expensive to operate? Will the new system be less effective (even though Medicare is not all that efficient today)? Can we with confidence trust the Government to run the programs to our mutual benefit? Are we destined to copy the Government run health care programs found in Europe, Canada and elsewhere around the world?

The answers to those and many more questions have not been addressed by congress and in all probability will not be prior to enacting some kind of universal health care program. So, Medicare may very well be on the chopping block, at least Medicare as we know it.

Some form of health care for America’s seniors will surly come out of the new program. How it will come across and how it will work are two more very important unanswered questions. Unfortunately the questions may remain unanswered until it is simply too late to do anything about it.

Paul Woodall
Mansions Affordable Housing
Houston, Texas

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Individual health coverage provides reimbursement for health care. Certain policies might provide for payment of health expenses incurred on a reimbursement basis by paying benefits to the policy holder, payment on a service basis by paying those who provide the services directly, or payment of an indemnity by paying a fixed amount regardless of the sum charged for medical expenses. Medical expense or hospitalization insurance may possibly be written on an individual or group basis. Prescription assistance programs are generally available for patients that need help with prescriptions.

Even though there are countless types of benefits to be had, personal health expense insurance can commonly be categorized as basic health expense insurance, major medical coverage, comprehensive medical insurance, and special policies. A large amount of these policies have by and large been replaced by managed care policies and are no longer sold as stand-alone plans. These types of plans have been adapted and replaced in answer to changes in the health care field relative to cost control and market competition.

Basic coverage provided by a individual medical expense policy includes hospital expense, surgical expense and medical expense. These 3 basics could be sold together or separately. Often this is written as "first dollar" insurance, which means it does not include a deductible.

As the name implies, hospital expense health insurance offers benefits for bills incurred during hospitalization. Hospital indemnities are mostly classified into two broad groups:

• Room and board, as well as nursing care and special diets

• Miscellaneous health expenses, including x-rays, laboratory fees, prescription drugs, medical supplies, and operating and treatment rooms

In certain cases, surgical benefits may be incorporated for certain types of surgery and associated costs. Hospital expense medical insurance provides benefits for daily hospital room and board and various hospital bills whilst the insured individual is confined to the hospital. The plan could provide for a guaranteed dollar amount for the daily hospital room and board benefit, although the trend is in the direction of medical insurance of not more than the semiprivate room charge unless a private room is medically required. The room and board benefit could be paid on either an indemnity basis or a reimbursement basis, depending on the particular plan.

Indemnity policies are now and again called dollar amount policies. Room and board rates change by geographic location, however it is not abnormal to notice room and board rates ranging from $350 to $850 per day or more.

In general, the maximum number of days is from 50 to 20 . More commonly, room and board charges are paid on a reimbursement basis. This is also referred to as an expenses-incurred basis. Under this arrangement, the plan will pay in one of two methods.

• The actual expenses for a semiprivate room are covered.

• A percentage of the actual cost is paid, with no particular dollar limit.

Under the first reimbursement option, the insurance company will pay the full actual semiprivate room rate, regardless of what it is. Under the second reimbursement option, the healthcare insurance company pays a specific percentage, regardless of what the actual charges are. A familiar percentage is 80%. Help for prescriptions will frequently be included.

To summarize, under the actual charges type of reimbursement plan, the plan will pay the actual amount charged for a semiprivate room with no regard to a specific dollar limit. Under the percentage type of reimbursement plan, the policy will pay a specified percentage of the actual charges.

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