Healthcare providers nationwide are waking up to the substantial benefits of electronic claim submission and reconciliation. According to the American Medical Association (AMA), tools like the electronic remittance advice (ERA) are saving medical practices approximately $10,000/year for each physician in the group.

The ERA (commonly referred to as the ANSI 835 file) is the electronic equivalent of a paper Explanation of Benefits (EOB). It indicates how much the insurer paid on the claim and identifies reasons for any denial of benefits. Prior to the ERA, staff would have to spend hours reviewing each claim, posting payments, and reconciling any errors. Now that entire process can be automated with the 835 ERA module from BillingTracker. This feature saves office staff from having to collect mail, file paper documents, manually post payments, and adjudicate claims with payors. Another advantage is that insurers pay electronic submissions faster, which improves your cash flow.

Maximize Your Time

Because working with paper remittance reports has always been a painstaking chore, agencies have been jumping at the opportunity to automate. According to studies on the benefits of using ERA, you will recoup your investment in just a few months, at most. In addition to the inevitable boost in operational efficiency, you will also eliminate errors, reduce staff time devoted to adjudicating claims, and improve cash flow.

Further Reading:

• http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/physician-resources/practice-management-center/knowledge-center/practice-management-toolkits/electronic-transactions-toolkit/remittance-advice.page
• http://medical-billing-blog.blogspot.com/2012/12/edi-functionality-in-medical-electronic.html

We have partnered with TransFirst to offer a service for processing credit card charges directly though ClinicTracker Connect. No more wasting time entering the information manually or through a standalone terminal. With a single card swipe, ClinicTracker acquires the credit card data, transmits the transaction to the payment gateway, and applies the payment to the patient's account. Patients can also pay their bills online through the Patient Portal.

Convenient Access System-Wide

You can collect copays and process credit cards at several different points within ClnicTracker:

• Patient Dashboard 
• Demographic Record
• Scheduler 
• BillingTracker
• Patient Portal

Payment Process

Wherever you access the payment system, you use the same method: On the Collect Copay screen, enter the amount due, payment method, reference number, and any comments you might want to store. When you swipe the credit card through the card reader, the card holder's name, card number, and expiration date will automatically populate the appropriate fields. If you are accepting a payment by phone, you would simply key in this information. The system automatically applies the specified payment amount to the patient's account.

If the transaction is approved, the patient receives a receipt by email. You can also print out a paper version immediately or suggest it be printed at home through the Patient Portal. Your clinic can also keep records of patient payments by running reports based on credit card transactions. 

Benefits

• Simple implementation and electronic enrollment process with no contract terms
• Makes it more convenient for the patient to pay bills
• Reduces the time staff spend collecting copays and processing post-adjudication balances
• Minimizes desk clutter (the card reader is compact)
• Eliminates redundancy and reduces errors by keeping the process entirely within ClinicTracker
• Assures transactions are processed using the latest digital security in a safe and secure environment
• Help is just a call away with TransFirst’s in-house, on-shore, 24/7 customer support

Integrated Credit Card Processing Saves Money

• Record keeping and reporting are easier because transactions are posted to your bank account before any fees are charged. Service fees are deducted in one lump sum at the end of the month
• Faster payment posting (two days versus the three-day industry standard)
• No charges for declined transactions because TransFirst waives declined authorization and batch header fees

As an added benefit, TransFirst offers potential customers a complimentary Efficiency Analysis that compares your current costs for processing credit cards with what they would charge. This analysis comes with a Meet or Beat promise - they will not charge you more than you are paying now. TransFirst's commitment to meet or beat pricing means that your payment processing will be more efficient and cost effective.

With BillingTracker, you can submit claims directly to a payor so you can cut out the middleman and save money. However, many of our clients prefer using a clearinghouse for claims processing. To address that need, we developed a relationship with industry leader TriZetto Provider Solutions (formerly Gateway EDI). Thanks to a direct flow of data from ClinicTracker, TriZetto can manage the claims process and provide you with full reporting capabilities regarding claim status and your accounts receivable. Their revenue management solution monitors every transaction, identifies errors and underpayments, and automates the appeal process - saving you and your staff time and money. In concert with BillingTracker's full-featured reporting capabilities, you will enjoy a comprehensive view of your entire billing process.

Check out an informative inforgraphic from Trizetto entitled: Beware the Hidden Costs of Free Clearinghouses. 

ClinicTracker is designed to streamline and integrate every aspect of appointment management. Between a high-powered Scheduler and the Appointment Reminder Service, you'll always know you have complete control over the process. Now add to those tools the ability for your clients to manage their appointments online (through the Patient Portal), and you've gained yet another way to make sure appointments happen as scheduled. Clients don't need to call your office to ask about upcoming appointments, as they can just check online whenever it's convenient for them. This both empowers the patient with access to important information and reduces the call volume at your agency.

By navigating to the My Schedule section of the Patient Portal, clients can see their upcoming scheduled appointments. If the appointment is within a certain (configurable) number of days, they can click a link to confirm or cancel their appointment. Whatever actions they take are logged immediately into ClinicTracker's Scheduler.

Research has demonstrated that providing clients with this type of access to chart information decreases a clinic's no-show rate. ClinicTracker paves the way for you to implement a system that offers everyone access to critical information when they need it.

Update: Patients can even schedule their own appointments through the Patient Portal. Click here for more information.

Many of your clients have come to expect online access to their medical records, scheduled appointments, and financial information. That’s how the patient-practice relationship has evolved in recent years (with ample encouragement from the government via HIPAA and the Meaningful Use program).

ClinicTracker's Patient Portal is designed to make it easy for your clients to interact with you and your agency securely over the web. When clients log into their portal, they have 24/7 access to information they can use to facilitate their treatment. They will also feel more connected with your agency. While improving patient engagement, you are simultaneously reducing routine phone calls, lowering your no-show rate, and improving your collections.

All aspects of the Patient Portal integrate seamlessly into our EHR. Through the portal, patients can:

• Register as a new patient and complete a registration packet your agency defines
• Access significant parts of their medical chart, including appointment history, medication lists, allergy information, and lab results
• Schedule an appointment
• View, confirm, or cancel upcoming appointments
• Attend telehealth appointments
• Complete forms your staff requests
• See the balance due, including insurance and patient responsibility
• Pay their bills online with a credit card (and print/email a receipt)
• Send messages to members of their treatment team or support staff
• Take advantage of educational resources clinicians can post
• Generate a portable medical record to view, download, or distribute

New Patient Registration

A Patient Portal embedded in an agency’s home page presents a rich opportunity to market clinical services and engage potential clients efficiently. By enabling them to register demographic information and schedule their first appointment online, you’ve made it simple for patients to connect with your services at any time. Patients who have stigmas about disclosing their health condition verbally or handwritten to your staff will benefit from the added privacy of the Patient Portal. You’ve also made it easier to enter required information in a way that’s guaranteed to provide legible data that flows directly into ClinicTracker EHR. Before the client arrives for that first appointment, you’ve got everything necessary to proceed with the intake – even insurance eligibility verification.

Scheduling

Because patients can see available openings in real time, they can make choices based on location, clinician, service, date, and time. Scheduling across time zones is possible too. Once the patient selects their preferred slot, the system automatically sends notifications to the clinician and appropriate members of your scheduling team. The patient will also receive an email confirmation. Patients can confirm or cancel upcoming appointments, search for new appointment availability, and choose to receive appointment reminders by phone or text message. Online scheduling allows patients to feel connected to your office, while eliminating unnecessary phone calls with your staff.

Form Completion

Clients can complete forms, tests, rating scales, and surveys whenever your staff requests. You simply send the patient a notification using the Secure Messaging system. When patients log into the portal, they will see a list of forms to complete, along with your notes and instructions. Clicking a link brings them to the form which they can then complete, revise, save, and submit (even with a digital signature). The information they provide goes directly into their patient record in ClinicTracker. The system also notifies the appropriate staff members when the data arrive.

What’s unique about ClinicTracker’s Patient Portal is that it can transmit forms that you can build using our powerful Form Builder utility. That means you devise just about any form you want for clients to complete via the web. Staff and administrators love that they can create a whole new world of possibilities for data gathering, tracking, and patient engagement – all seamlessly integrated into the ClinicTracker platform.

Online Bill Pay

ClinicTracker's built-in credit card processing significantly streamlines payment collections. Online Bill Pay takes it one step farther by allowing patients to pay their invoices online without any staff intervention. Clients appreciate this feature because it's private, convenient, and easy to follow. Here's how it works:

1. Log into the Patient Portal and click the My Account link
2. Review account status (including aging and insurer balances)
3. Press the Pay My Bill Online button
4. Choose which invoices to pay, either in full or in part
5. Enter credit card information and press the Submit button

The system will send an email receipt to the client (or authorized representative) and notify designated office staff. The payment is recorded immediately in both the Patient Portal (where the patient can view it or generate a receipt) as well as within BillingTracker. The process is completely automated.

Communication

Boost client engagement with modern client-office communication. Your patients can send and receive HIPAA-secure messages while interacting with their treatment team. When a new message arrives, the patient will be notified by email that it’s available on their portal account. For the staff’s convenience, messages from both patients and colleagues are organized in the Unified Messaging System within ClinicTracker. Composing a message to a patient is simple, with no email addresses to remember or complex security procedures involved. The system will also let you coordinate communications with the patient’s authorized representative.

Agency Branding

The Patient Portal also will improve your agency's branding. Clients will appreciate your dedication to making their lives easier and empowering them to take a degree of stewardship over their treatment experience. You can even style the portal with your own logo, color scheme, and contact information. It's a tangible way of upgrading your approach to client engagement.

You can extend ClinicTracker's ePrescribing module with a feature called EPCS (Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances) Gold. With EPCS Gold (powered by DrFirst), you can seamlessly send controlled substance prescriptions to retail or mail order pharmacies within the same workflow you use to prescribe legend drugs. It makes prescribing more efficient, advances patient medication adherence, and increases convenience for your patients. After an initial credentialing and identity-proofing process (mandated by the DEA), prescribers can begin ePrescribing Schedule II-V drugs. To avoid any confusion and eliminate guesswork by providers, EPCS Gold automatically detects which substances can be sent electronically.

High Caliber Security

• EPCS Gold is the first and foremost Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA)- and Surescripts-certified solution for e-prescribing
• Legal since 2010 at the Federal level, controlled substance e-prescribing is also approved in 49 U.S. States and the District of Columbia, and more than 40% of pharmacies nationwide accept controlled substance e-prescriptions (Read More).
• DEA mandated Two-Factor Authentication Protocol for all provider registrations (key-chain or soft-token)
• Provider authentication through third-party identity proofing process

Added Benefits

• Prevent prescription drug abuse
• Avoid patients who are doctor shopping
• Reduce fraud and abuse - no paper prescription pads to be stolen, altered, or forged
• Be audit-ready with management reports

Electronic Processing

• EPCS Signing Module lets you sign and submit Controlled Substance prescriptions electronically
• Displays DEA-mandated content
• Generates a digital signature for the prescription at the application level
• Transmits prescriptions in SCRIPT 8.1E format
• Receives and forwards prescription transmission responses, including status and error
• Logs all application activity for audit purposes

ClinicTracker Connect partners with DrFirst to deliver a fully integrated ePrescribing system for behavioral healthcare providers. This SureScripts certified solution offers a sophisticated digital platform for writing and tracking prescriptions for legend and schedule II-V drugs. With 49 states and the District of Columbia accepting ePrescriptions for controlled substances, our prescribers can take advantage of this faster and more secure approach to managing prescriptions electronically. 

Increase Patient Safety

• Reduced potential for adverse drug events caused by drug-drug/drug-allergy interactions
• Eliminate errors due to poor or misread handwriting
• Faster, more efficient patient notification in the event of an FDA safety alert

Enhance Productivity

• Online availability anytime, anywhere
• Real-time patient medication lists pulled from three Pharmacy Benefit Management Systems
• Faster, one-click, multi-script prescription renewal process (case studies suggest a savings of 1-2 hours/day for office staff)
• Fewer pharmacy call backs
• Less time spent with pharmacy questions and renewal requests
• Fully-integrated solution means that medications entered in ClinicTracker are available for interaction checking
• Prescriptions written in DrFirst are available for import into ClinicTracker Progress Notes
• With EPCS Gold (powered by DrFirst), you can seamlessly send controlled substance prescriptions to retail or mail order pharmacies within the same workflow you use to prescribe legend drugs
• Eliminates calls from patients requesting alternative covered medication, mail order submission, or prior authorizations

Improve Patient Experience

• Lower out-of-pocket costs because providers can identify medications with lower co-payments (an average savings of $20-25 per prescription)
• Less time spent waiting at the pharmacy since prescriptions are sent ahead
• Reduced potential for adverse drug events caused by drug-drug/drug-allergy interactions, mistaken handwriting, or incorrect quantity
• Increased treatment compliance because of more cost-effective and convenient care

White Coat of Quality Award from SureScripts

JAG Products has been awarded the White Coat of Quality award for 2012 and 2013 for our implementation of the DrFirst system within ClinicTracker Connect. The White Coat of Quality Award is SureScript’s highest recognition for software providers that uphold strict standards for clinical quality and best practices in ePrescribing.

Meaningful Use

ePrescribing is one of the key elements of the Meaningful Use program and will help you to meet six of the criteria. For more information about Meaningful Use and ClinicTracker's Stage 2 certification, click here.

New York Prescribers

New York State has initiated a program called Internet System for Tracking Over-Prescribing (I-STOP). DrFirst offers educational webinars on this program, the enrollment process, and how to ePrescribe controlled substances. 

Authenticating insurance coverage and checking eligibility are routine but tedious elements of your billing workflow. Insurance eligibility verification is easy with ClinicTracker because it automates the entire process. The process is fully integrated with the ClinicTracker Intake form, that way your staff can instantly confirm the validity of a patient's insurance.

With this user-friendly service, you have various options for checking eligibility requests:

• A totally automated system process will verify eligibility for all appointments scheduled within a designated time span. It will process the entire batch overnight so you can review the results when you come in the next morning
• Enter a date range and the service types you want to verify. You'll get instant responses for all patients who match those criteria
• Select an individual patient to verify eligibility
• The system saves all prior results; that means you can look up information about a patient's plan, coverage, deductibles, and more.

Instant Benefits

Insurance Eligibility Verification increases office staff productivity by:

• Minimizing lengthy calls to insurance providers
• Addressing insurance questions prior to appointments
• Exploring alternative payment methods for uninsured patients before they incur charges
• Simplifying insurance verification for walk-in patients or last minute appointments

The ClinicTracker Connect Insurance Eligibility Service eliminates the hassle of calling insurance companies for verification. This solution ensures faster payments, reduces wasted staff time, and guarantees that your patients will have a better experience with your office. For a small per transaction fee, this innovative service is affordable for any-sized agency.

You rarely have time to sift through pages of reports to understand how your organization is performing. With ClinicTracker's Executive Dashboard, you have at-a-glance views of your entire operation. Tell the system which performance metrics you want to follow and the system will provide continuously updated graphs for each one. Want instant views of your accounts receivable over the course of the past eight weeks not including weekends? No problem. Need to export those graphs so you can present them to a board meeting? Just click a button. 

Standard Metrics

The system comes with these pre-defined metrics. Plus, we can even add custom metrics for you upon request:

• Intakes
• Admissions
• Discharges
• Billing Generated
• Payments Received (All)
• Payments Received (Insurance)
• Payments Received (Patient)
• Kept Appointments
• Kept Appointment Rate
• Program Usage

We've designed dozens of detailed reports to help agency managers and directors track their financial operation. These built-in reports give you a whole new level of information and control of how your agency manages claims and payments. 

Reduce your Accounts Receivable Faster 

Customizable reporting provides all the information you need to stay on top of patient payments. These reports also help you project cash flow more accurately. At any time you can view:

• Claim Status
• Claim Activity
• Claims and Balances
• Aging by Patient, Clinician, or Insurer
• Collection Letters
• And more…

If ClinicTracker doesn't already store a report that has the information you need, create it with the Custom Report Builder or ask our support team to help.

Enhanced Business Intelligence

Other built-in reports break down claim activity and payments by patient, staff, location, payor, program, service, and more:

• Claim Detail by Insurer
• Payment Report
• Payment Application by Client or Clinician
• Payments by Transaction
• Payments by Claim
• Credit Balance Report
• And more...

Clinical Integration

An integrated system means that you can easily transition clinical appointments into billable claims. It also allows for information to flow between the clinical and financial aspects of your agency. For example, financial reports can include demographic or clinical information, while clinical staff can view a patient's open balance information. Relevant financial information is, therefore, accessible wherever it is needed.