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Quarter 2 2019 •
Volume 24, Issue 2
Staying on Top of Compliance
President's Message
Mick Polo, CHBME, HBMA President
Our medical billing and revenue cycle management industry is evolving continually. Our companies must be adding expertise, implementing more technology, generating new ideas, and finding operational efficiencies to keep up with competition, pricing pressure, and ever growing client needs and demands. Click for more

HBMA News
News from around HBMA
By RCM Advisor Editors
Snapshot Survey on Data Security and Compliance; Are You Maximizing Your HBMA Membership?; New HBMA Members; CHBME Quiz Questions Click for more

Returned Mail
The Risk of Returned Mail and How to Properly Prepare for It.
By Bob Hedstrom
Any company engaged in healthcare that mails critical communications may run into challenges when it comes to returned mail. Click for more

How Data Analytics Can Revolutionize RCM
Even Among the Already Large Amount of Information In the Industry, Data Is the Way Out of the Problem.
By Nitin Somalwar
"When I first started out, you could mail out a bill and payers would cover 80-100 percent of what you billed,” says Josh Santillan, chief operations officer for Medical Billing Unlimited. “It was pretty straightforward. You didn’t have any denials.... Click for more

We Must Be More Than Just Aware of Our Offshore Vendors
Navigating regulations overseas.
By Chad Schiffman
The world we live in is being shaped by tech giants like Apple, Amazon, and Uber who are giving us access to more and more at our fingertips. Yet the healthcare industry has somehow managed to resist the digital revolution and continue to rely on inefficient paper processes. Click for more

Cybersecurity Risks for Billing Providers/Companies
During a period of growth, don't forget to stay ahead of data threats.
By Jeffery Daigrepont
Healthcare technology for revenue cycle management services is evolving at a rapid pace, and today’s billing providers/companies leverage these advances to reach more customers, deliver faster service, and gain a competitive advantage. Click for more

The Ever-Shifting Sands Beneath the Billing Enterprise
Electronic health record (EHR) systems aren't as safe as you might think.
By Reed D. Gelzer, MD, MPH
The records a billing company receives as outputs from EHR systems are commonly accepted on trust. However, now that nearly everyone is using EHRs, we’re finding that they aren’t “records” at all. Insurers and law enforcement professionals are increasingly recognizing that EHRs are well-suited for records counterfeiting, with predictable (and long-anticipated) results. Click for more

Could a Data Breach Be Lurking in Your Copier Room?
Three lessons to learn from the case of the Affinity Health Plan data breach.
By Mike Bamberger
As if you don’t have enough to worry about, now you have to worry about your photocopier. A $1.2 million settlement with the HHS by a New York not-for-profit managed care plan, in August 2013, was the result of a failure to delete protected health information from a leased photocopier before returning it to the leasing company. Click for more

Ransomware: How to Prepare and Minimize the Damage
Attacks can take a well-oiled business and completely sideline it in a matter of minutes.
By Terry Schladetzky
Ransomware has, without a doubt, been on the uptick over the last five years. We have seen it go from a nuisance in its early stages to becoming a critical disrupter of business. Click for more

Are Medical Record Numbers Considered Protected Health Information (PHI)?
Client Question
By RCM Advisor Editors
According to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), under the HIPAA Privacy Rule, identifiers such as names, telephone numbers, and license plate numbers are considered PHI and should be removed in order to de-identify information. Click for more

Compliance Checkup
Coding Corner
By Melody W. Mulaik, MSHS, RCC, CPC, CPC-H
The only constant is change. We have all heard this mantra for much of our lives. The speed in which we accept and embrace change varies significantly from person to person. Sometimes we get more accepting of change as we gain more experience (aka get older) and, other times, we find that is not the case. Click for more

Arrays Part IV
Software Talk
By Nate Moore, CPA, MBA, FACMPE
Now that we have worked through several examples with the syntax of arrays and have seen how arrays can make spreadsheets easier, this article goes even further. The most important thing to remember as you follow the examples in this article is to enter the formulas with Ctrl+Shift+Enter to get the curly braces that surround Excel formulas. Click for more

Developing Your Team Members
From the Road
By Dave Jakielo, CHBME
I realize it is getting a bit harder for medical billing companies to maintain the same profit margins today that we enjoyed just a decade ago. And where you spend your discretionary income takes more thought. Click for more

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