Should You Charge for Evaluations?

Doctors have two choices when it comes to initial appointments, often intended for evaluation or diagnostic purposes, with patients. They can either offer these consultations free of charge or they can charge for them. While it might seem like the smart choice would be to charge, many doctors find that they have better luck

recruiting new patients if they make the initial appointment free. Of course, you could end up wasting a lot of time on patients who never come back if you do offer these free evaluations, so it’s all about weighing the pros and cons for your practice.

Fortunately, whether you charge or not, you can utilize new tools for medical evaluation and management procedures. One great tool in the medical evaluation and management world is a special electronic device app known as the DeductorMD. This app allows healthcare professionals to easily record information from the evaluation and to code that information in such a way so as to make billing easier, and this can be used should you choose to charge for evals or when the patient returns. No matter what choice you make about your billing, know that this app can help.

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More Patients Demanding Aggressive Medical Treatment

English: SAN DIEGO (Oct. 13, 2010) A laptop is used to control a training mannequin's vital signs during a mock code blue drill at the pain management clinic at Naval Medical Center San Diego. Mannequins offer health care providers the opportunity to practice using simulated patients and sophisticated technology. (U.S. Navy Photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class Anastasia Puscian/Released) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When patients are in the late stages of a terminal illness, they generally have two choices: they can either pursue further medical evaluation and management or then pursue aggressive last-effort treatments, or they can simply opt for hospice care and pain management to help make their last days more comfortable.

A recent survey from the Pew Research Center revealed that, these days, more and more patients are choosing medical evaluation and management followed by aggressive care than simple pain management and palliative care. Back in 1990, only around 15% of those surveyed were supporters of aggressive care, while now, around 35% surveyed support aggressive care, even when there is no real reason to expect an improvement in their conditions. It appears that, as people are exposed to more and more medically related information, as they have been thanks to technological developments over the years, they feel more comfortable having their own medical opinions and voicing those opinions. 

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app, DeductorMD?

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Crazy Codes are Coming

People who work in the medical evaluation and management fields know that a change is coming, and most of them aren’t happy about it. There’s nothing they can do, however; come October of 2015, ICD-9 will be a thing of the past, and ICD-10 will be in charge! 

While most people are complaining about how much bigger and more intimidating ICD-10 is, others are just having a good laugh at some of the “crazy codes” that exist within this brand new guidebook. So, what are  some of the stranger codes?

Well, medical evaluation and management professionals will likely be surprised to know that one code is for when the client has been sucked into a jet engine…and it’s not the first time. There’s also another code for when a person gets attacked by wildebeasts.

While some of those codes may be downright ludicrous, the truth is that you’re going to have to learn them. And, the more you lighten your load, the easier those codes will be to learn. Take a lot of the edge and stress off by using DeductorMD.com’s billing app to assist you.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app, DeductorMD?

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Don't Make Preventable Mistakes

When it comes to performing tasks related to medical evaluation and management, you really can’t afford to make mistakes. Unfortunately, however, many healthcare professionals do make mistakes, and they do so quite regularly. In fact, a recent report estimates that eight out of every ten medical bills typically contain

some kind of error. And those errors aren’t harmless either; no, they actually end up costing patients and

insurance companies thousands of dollars annually.

One way to prevent mistakes is to always create itemized bills and then to carefully go through those itemized bills, one item at a time, to make sure everything on them is correct. Of course, the average healthcare professional just doesn’t have time for that. Luckily, though, there is a new, easy to use application that can take care of all medical evaluation and management needs practically on its own. Check it out at DeductorMD.com to make medical billing a whole lot easier!

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app, DeductorMD?

See a Doctor Before Exercising

The recent death of Atul Marya, a 42 year old Panchkula CBI special magistrate, has brought a serious issue to the forefront: patients should not begin new exercise programs of any kind before seeing a doctor. Marya thought that he was reasonably healthy and that he was making an effort to become even healthier by stepping on a treadmill, but in the end, his treadmill exercise spawned cardiac arrest and his eventual death. Medical evaluation and management related to exercise and fitness programs is important for all people, but it is especially important for those suffering from conditions, such as obesity or coronary heart disease, that could increase the risk of exercise-induced injury or death.

Doctors are encouraged to take medical evaluation and management related to exercise programs seriously and not to recommend vigorous exercise to patients lightly. All patients should be evaluated for overall health and physical fitness before an exercise program is recommended and, once the program has been started, they should be monitored and checked up on regularly to make sure the exercise is having the desired effect and that it is still safe for the patient to continue the exercise program.

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Keep Medical Errors at Bay

Medical billing errors are very common, and with the new coding system in place, they could become even more common in the near future. Online magazines and websites are even putting out checklists to help average people avoid paying big for a hospital or other medical facility’s mistakes.

It’s not just the patients who could use some help, however. Most of the tips that are being given out to them could also be useful to those working in the medical evaluation and management fields. 

So, before you send out a bill, check the following:

l  Is the patient’s name spelled correctly?

l  Is all of his or her personal information correct? Verify with the patient!

l  Have you billed for the correct procedure?

l  Are there duplicate charges on the bill by accident?

l  Did you correctly note the patient’s room type and bill it for the right number of days?

If more medical evaluation and management professionals would devote a little extra time to checking for these common errors, a lot of problems could be avoided. Of course, it’s always best to avoid making these and other errors in the first place. If you want the next bill you check to be completely correct, consider using a helpful billing app, such as the one offered by DeductorMD.com.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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New Guidelines for Kidney Stones

Localisation of pain caused by kidney stones (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The American Urological Association has recently released a new set of guidelines for the medical evaluation and management of kidney stones. While the new guidelines are full and detailed and should be thoroughly read by all practicing urologists, there are some general pieces of information to be aware of.

To begin with, when evaluating a patient for kidney stones, or kidney stone risk, healthcare professionals are encouraged to look at a wide range of factors, including:

l  Medical history

l  Dietary history

l  Serum chemistry

l  Urinalysis results

Clinicians are also advised to perform a test to determine the patient’s serum intact parathyroid hormone level in most cases. To read the guidelines in full, you can access a PDF document here.

As is always the case, understanding and complying with new guidelines can be difficult, but doing so is necessary when patients’ wellbeing is at risk.If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?

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Buying Time

Logo of the National Society of Certified Healthcare Business Consultants. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Professionals involved in the medical evaluation and management fields have been working themselves into a frenzy trying to prepare for the implementation of the new medical billing code, known as ICD-10. The new billing system, which has been in the development stages for close to a decade and is the first major update to the billing system since 1979, was originally scheduled to go into use in October of 2014.

Fortunately, however, congressional leaders have cut medical evaluation and management professionals some slack by putting off the code’s implementation for another year. A year goes fast, however, and in the grand scheme of things, really isn’t adequate time to learn a lot of new codes.

You can make the most of your year by studying the new coding system thoroughly and by utilizing apps that can improve your understanding of the system. A helpful app that can have you mastering the system well ahead of schedule is available at DeductorMD.com.

If you are a healthcare clinician, are you using todays new healthcare app for Medical Decision Making, DeductorMD?