The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) this week submitted a 357-page proposal for publication to the Federal Register detailing proposed changes to the Privacy Rule under the HIPAA & HITECH Act standards.

Is your practice accurately reporting the severity of illness for Medicare patients? If chronic conditions are not documented and coded annually, the health status of your patients is not accurately reflected in their care. 

Practice Management Instructor/Consultant Linda D’Spain is on the mend. Last summer she suffered a serious fall that fractured her pelvis. A casualty of warfare, she might say. But not the type you would think.

The CPT® Evaluation and Management (E/M) office visit codes (99201-99215) are the most-commonly billed codes in medicine, representing nearly a quarter of Medicare Part B spend annually. Changes to the visit codes for office visits become effective January 2021. They include extensive E/M guideline additions, and revisions.

You didn’t sign up to play referee or counselor to adults that don’t get along. But personality conflicts and unprofessional behavior in the workplace should not be taken lightly. It can destroy your medical office productivity, morale, and send good employees packing.

When the economy is strong, the retail industry experiences growth. However, that extra consumer cash does not always flow into the medical industry. That is because for most consumers, budgeting for healthcare is lower priority, and high deductibles put cost of care out of reach for many Americans. Consumers are more reserved when it comes to healthcare, often seeking the least expensive approach to care.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services’ recently announced that Evaluation and Management (E/M) visits will soon get some relief from burdensome coding and billing requirements. These billing and documentation requirements for E/M codes were established 20 years ago and have been subject to longstanding criticism from clinicians that they do not reflect current care practices and needs.

The rapid spread of the coronavirus across the U.S. and many parts of the globe has drawn quite a bit of attention to employee safety. As business leaders look over their employee policies and procedures, they may begin to wonder about legal risks that a pandemic may expose them to. Medical offices are no exception. OSHA requires every employer to have policies and procedures to address the pandemic spread of viral illnesses such as the flu or coronavirus. A review of your policies and response plans now is essential.

If you’ve worked in a medical office a while, then this staggering statistic may not surprise you: in 2017 medical paperwork in the U.S. costs $812 billion! Administrative paperwork has always been a necessary evil. Value-based care programs have elevated the paperwork conundrum to new levels.

With an above average salary base and an optimistic job forecast there’s no better time than now to consider a job in medical office management. The fact is medical offices and healthcare facilities cannot run smoothly without a great manager at the helm. The role of a medical office manager is critical in today’s fast-paced facilities where above board patient care and quality is expected.

If you are managing a busy medical office, then you probably spend most days just trying to keep your head above water. The struggle is real, but you don’t have to go down swinging. When it’s up to you to get it all done, consider specialized training to help lay the foundation for more efficient practice operations.

What if you could learn how to streamline and delegate more of your workload, and learn more effective ways to streamline your operations without hiring another FTE? Fortunately, continuing education programs like the Certified Medical Office Manager (CMOM) certification can help to further boost your skill level, so you can perform better in your role.  

Medical information is the number one prime target when it comes to cybersecurity hacks, FBI Computer Scientist Thomas Ervin at Practice Management Institute’s National Conference for Medical Office Professionals in December. A single click on a phishing email can turn a machine into a “slave,” as termed in the cybersecurity industry. Phishing email incidents are not new and have increased more than 200 percent. It has become so prevalent that the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Cybersecurity Division has set up a website to report phishing emails. Ervin, FBI Special Agent Raymond Martinez, and Cybersecurity Expert Richard Avery delivered an eye-opening demonstration to show how easy it can be for your personal and work data to be compromised by a hacker. Cybercriminals target all types of organizations and these experts warned that healthcare entities need to be especially vigilant.

Looking to start or advance your career in Medical Office Management? Earning a certification can be a huge bargaining chip when trying to snag a dream job or advance into a supervisory role with your current employer. In either case, you’ll want to weigh factors like the investment of time and money to know if a certification is right for you.

If you’ve been fortunate enough to assemble a team of medical office professionals that work well together to support the practice objectives, we applaud you! With today’s unemployment rates at an all-time low and medical jobs on the rise, cultivating a great team is hard work and can take months, even years to find the right fit.

If you break out in a sweat when it’s time to conduct employee performance reviews, you’re not alone.  For many medical office managers, this is a difficult but necessary step in developing your team. Your staff probably dreads it as much as you, but performance reviews are an important way to gauge your employees’ work successes and stressors, and create better overall communication.

The goal is to take a positive approach and avoid a few common errors. This will help put everyone at ease, including yourself. So, we put together some do’s and don’ts to use as a guide to help your next round of performance reviews go smoothly.