THE STEPS TO ICD-10 In our last installment, we discussed the merits of using dbtech tools to mitigate ICD-10 report discovery. Here, we will go deeper into the project plan to analyze the benefits of chart analysis, financial contingency planning, and forms inventory. While ICD-10 project plans may differ slightly based on size, infrastructure and services, all projects will include the following major task categories:

Here at dbtech, we wish your organization all the luck in the world as you complete your 5010 project plans and move forward with ICD-10 projects. It’s a formidable task, but with dbtech’s solutions, you can help ease the implementation.

For more information about IDC-10 planning, please contact us.

THE PAPERLESS OFFICE

While detractors have derailed the idea as impossible, dbtech has always chased the promise of the paperless office. We believe this progression is not only possible, but that it can be achieved by eliminating paper with technology and workflow redesigns that fit patient expectations.

Dbtech’s newest enhancements, eForms Interactive Forms and Signature Capture provide significant steps towards creating a paperless office, eliminating the expenses and inefficiencies of paper forms, while expanding your options for collecting structured data.

Until now, paper-based waivers and releases were signed by patients at registration. These forms come from a desk drawer or are printed on-demand through the eForms module. Either way, the patient still picks up a pen, signs a document, then returns it to the registrar for scanning into a document imaging platform (hopefully Rasi!).

Today, many hospitals are moving from this workflow towards ones that eliminate paper and provide an experience patients are well familiar with in other industries. Whether at the pharmacy, a local bank or a favorite automobile repair shop, consumers have grown accustomed to signing documents electronically. Many now even perceive ink-to-paper signatures as antiquated – and a sign of a technologically-stunted business.

USING INTERACTIVE eForms

When you pair a Topaz signature device with Interactive eForms and Signature Capture software, ink or wet signatures are eliminated, paper is removed and processes move smoothly.

And, the benefits do not end at registration. Throughout your facility, Interactive Forms eliminates inefficient paper forms while allowing you to leverage form data in new ways. For instance, many hospitals routinely utilize Case Managers and Financial Councilors to assist patients with financial aid through charity care programs. These programs often require multiple forms with data existing nowhere else in their information systems. With Interactive eForms, these paper forms are eliminated, inputs are validated, and form data is repurposed in XML format.

INTERACTIVE eForms & THE HOME HEALTH WORKER

When we began designing Interactive eForms, the initial goal was to address a home health workers’ need to collect data while in the field – specifically at the patient’s home. Using Rasi and eForms, we developed a workflow where interactive patient forms are emailed to homecare nurses. The nurse simply opens and completes forms at the patient’s home. Once the nurse reconnects to the internet, the form, and its data, is transmitted. This workflow modification saves days of work by eliminating the process of printing, writing and faxing forms between central offices and the homecare nurse.

Throughout the process, our development team focused on creating an interactive forms environment where data would be actionable, validated and used by any user without incremental cost. The forms had to be easy to create using a toolkit with which many IT analysts were already familiar. Thus, we selected Adobe Acrobat and PDF (the most widely-accepted and platform-agnostic file type in the healthcare industry) for creating and delivering forms.

Ask us about Interactive eForms and Signature Capture to start creating your paperless office today!

By now you’re likely wrapping up 5010 efforts and well into designing a project plan for ICD-10.

In this two-part post, we’ll illustrate how dbtech Ras is addressing these industry events to help you have a profitable and worry-free 2012.

A GIFT FROM THE OESS On November 17th, the CMS Office of E-Health Standards and Services (OESS) presented an early gift to the healthcare industry by delaying enforcement action on ASC X12 Version 5010 transaction standards. Providers must still meet the January 1st, 2012 deadline – but, those having issues with the process will not be penalized until after March 31st, 2012. You will be able to file complaints, but will need to show data illustrating a genuine effort to meet compliance requirements.

SO WHY THE DELAY?

Feedback indicates that the number of submitters, the volume of transactions, and other testing data used as indicators of the industry’s readiness to comply with the new standards have been low across some industry sectors. OESS has also received reports that many covered entities are still awaiting software upgrades!

Early adopters of dbtech’s Ras X12 5010 module are already capturing, converting and automating tasks related to payment and remittance transaction since May 2011. Dbtech has been working with ASC X 12 technologies since early in the process, and has always been ready to assist our clients in these transformative events.

But, 5010 is only a prelude to an even more momentous industry transformation! Most of us in healthcare today have never known a world other than that of ICD-9. On October 1^st, 2013, all of this will change. What’s more, ICD-10 will arguably be the largest and most costly change to healthcare in the last 30 years – much larger than even Y2K.

If you haven’t started your ICD-10 project by now, you’d better get moving … and fast.




THE STEPS TO ICD-10

While ICD-10 project plans may differ slightly based on size, infrastructure and services, all projects will include the following major task categories:

In the next installment we’ll cover the remaining steps critical to the success of your ICD-10 project plan. From interfaces, customer/employee marketing and education to contract negotiations, chart analysis, contingency planning and forms redesign, we’ll walk you through ICD-10 implementation. Stay tuned for part two!

For more information about IDC-10 planning, please contact us.

SIMPLICITY Dbtech has always given our customers the tools needed to simplify burdensome workflows and save time and money. This has been our goal since the early 90’s when we initially developed Ras to help customers reduce paper expenses and manual distribution methods. Ras has changed significantly from those early days, but our core principles have never changed; easy-to-use solutions that are simple to manage and present information to users in the best possible way. Administrative simplification and intuitive user interfaces have led dbtech to develop the Ras API.

TRANSPARENCY

Customers expect enterprise content in Ras be accessible to users and platforms with the least amount of manual steps possible. The problem is that many applications do not have the ability to store images or to import them from foreign platforms. The other problem is that many platforms may come delivered with their own document management solution, leaving your IT staff with three or more different platforms to support.

Your users want access to the insurance card, driver’s license and other documents without leaving the screens they are currently viewing.

The Ras API enables transparency by integrating Ras functionality into all of your existing platforms. Here is an illustration. A user may spend ninety percent of their day working accounts in your financial application, but for 5 percent of the day they need access to supporting documents like a scanned waiver, insurance card or payer verification document.

Until now, customers would login to Ras, find the patient account and open the document needed.

Ras API

The Ras Application Programming Interface, or Ras API, allows for improved workflows. While a user works a patient account in your primary financial application, they launch the Ras API with a singular click of a button. The Ras API is designed to know which patient you are viewing and which documents are needed based on the screen from which it is launched. This means that needed documents are just a click away with no navigating, no searching and no additional logins and passwords.

Users feel like the images are stored directly in their applications.

PERSISTENCE

Ras API will work with Siemens, Meditech, McKesson, Cerner, EPIC, NextGen and Keane. The fact is that the Ras API will work with ANY and ALL commercial applications as well as home-grown applications and websites.

	Will the Ras API to work with all EHRs to deliver scanned registration documents?
	Will it work with HR systems to delivery employee reviews?
	Will it deliver clinical documents to your web-based physician portal?

The examples of how the Ras API can simplify and extend your existing platforms are infinite.
Just give us a call to find out how the Ras API can simplify life for you and your users.

Or, download a PDF and learn more about the Ras API.

The clock is ticking down to January 1, 2012, and IT project managers are struggling with HIPAA X12 5010 compliance.  Some HIT vendors are not ready, many payers are transmitting in non-compliant versions and claims scrubbers are choking on translations between vendors, payers and varying transaction set standards. So why is this so important? Adhering to the X12 EDI 5010 requirements allows for larger field size of ICD-10-CM as well as other improvements, and is a critical preliminary step towards achieving success on October 1, 2013 when ICD-10 becomes the standard for documenting diagnoses and procedures.  This is the largest and most enterprise encompassing healthcare projects in over twenty years.

Ras X12 customers gain tremendous benefits by capturing, converting and automating tasks related to payment and remittance transaction sets.  For instance, many providers have reported problems with insurance payers transmitting non-standard transaction sets.  With the Ras X12 module and 5010 support, customers will be able to test their payers against specification standards. 

It is common for healthcare providers to create multiple versions of their 837/5010 EDI Health Care Claim Transactions, one directly from their billing systems, another from their billing scrubber and perhaps a third from their clearinghouses.  The edits between these versions can become confusing when trying to QA payer reported errors.  Ras customers with X12/5010 can easily track multiple versions of their EDI 837 files prior to transmittal.  These transaction sets are maintained in their original X12 format as well as a human-readable format.  Keep everything you need in Ras for as long as you need without fear of over-utilizing disk space on your network or within your claims scrubber application.

It’s very simple.  Place an X12 837 or 835 Health Care Claim Payment/Advice Transaction (EOB) into a Ras Capture Source.  You can also have Ras automatically retrieve transactions directly from your payer’s FTP sites when you use the Ras FTP module. 

Don’t worry about which system created these transactions.  Ras X12/5010 works with every HIT vendor and every payer.  

Once Ras recognizes the data it parses it into a readable format customized to your specifications.  In fact, many Ras customers have opted to convert 837 transactions into UB04 formats.  This is extremely useful to patient account billing personnel and is an integral component to your electronic patient record.  Ras customers can use their 835 data to populate decision support applications for long-term payer analysis.  This is critical intelligence your organization needs to determine denial trends between various payers and lines of care. 

Now that you have a readable format of your X12 EDI files in Ras, you can automate a number of manual processes.  Automate the extraction of 835 denials into an excel spreadsheet and have Ras email the spreadsheet to your billing supervisor.  Ras can even automate the printing of your 837 transaction as UB04 paper bill forms. 

So keep it easy and keep it in Ras.