KPGRCM


KPG
Revenue Cycle Management

KPG Newsletter
July 2016

Kathy Puziak PMP CMPE
  Ready or Not, they're going on Vacation!
  
by The KPG RCM Team 


Happy belated 4th of July!  School is out, summer is in full bloom and you/your colleagues are eager to take vacation and spend time with family and friends. While that may sound great, it can be calamitous without the proper planning and preparation. Many people like to tie vacation time into holiday weekends such as Memorial Day, Independence Day and Labor Day, looking to maximize their vacation while minimizing the use of precious vacation time. That often leads to a bow wave of work for those left behind.
 
How many times have Suzie or Johnny returned from vacation to share wonderful photos and tales, and all you can think is...thank heavens they're back! The burden of the extra workload can be daunting if a plan is not put into place prior to vacation.
 
As an employee, client liaison or manager, this means it's up to you to do some up-front planning and minimize the adverse impacts to client support staff, overall mission and task accomplishment.  In today's work environment, it is fair to assume that most employees will take some vacation between Memorial Day and Labor Day, or over the period between Thanksgiving and New Year's. Planning for staffing is not limited to the summer months!
 
As a minimum, for adequate staffing support during periods of vacation absences, it is important to ensure personnel have the training, access and passwords required to cover the vacationer's job. 

The short checklist at the link below can help you plan for successful staff coverage during both summer and holiday peak vacation periods. 


Have a safe and wonderful vacation! 
 

 
 

  Summer means the Start of Camp, School & Sports Physicals
by Ellen Jakovich, 
KPG RCM Director of Training 


Getting paid for a child's well physical may be tricky, so know your payers, to figure out how to code them.  All comprehensive well visits should be billed with the CPTs 99381 - 99387 and 99391 - 99397, with the ICD-10 code Z02.5 (sports) or Z02.89 (camp or school), as long as the patient has not had one in the last 12 months.  But if the physical is not comprehensive, it should be coded 99201 - 99215 with the appropriate ICD-10 code for sport/camp/school.  Unfortunately, some payers automatically reject this coding for problem CPT with preventative ICD-10 codes.  Check the payer sites or contact your payers to know what they accept so you get paid the first time!
 
 



Know the Ins and Outs of Coded Notes vs. Sticky Notes 
 
The GE definition of Coded Notes: "Note codes are used to categorize, organize, secure, and display patient notes information. You can create different Note codes for different types of patient information." With that said, we need to make sure that the codes you create help with your sort and search options. It's also important to understand the difference between a Patient Coded Note and a Patient Sticky Note.
 
A Patient Coded Note should be built to easily search/sort for similar notes on a patient. Examples would be APPT for an appointment note or COLLECT for a patient collection note. Coded Notes can be added and appended for additional notes to make it easy to follow a particular issue within one note (all are date/time/user stamped). A Coded Note is information that should be stored for a patient that may need to be followed up on without being an alert.
 
Sticky Notes are notes that will alert the staff of important information concerning the patient that may be in the office or on the phone. This note appears every time the staff member pulls up the account and should be read and appended or ignored until the information can be obtained. An example of this would be BADADDR for patients that need a corrected address or INSUPD for insurance updates that must be obtained. Abusing the sticky note option drives the staff to ignore the message and not read or update the account.
 
Take a look at your coded notes; maybe it's time to update your codes. 

Special Program: Loadcnote 
  
    
      
by Kathy Puziak CMPE PMP
kathy.puziak@kpgrcm.com



Have you ever wanted to add a coded note (or a sticky note) to a subset of your patient accounts?

You could go and add notes one at a time to accounts, but that is a project that would die quickly as you consume staff time opening each account and posting the note.  There is a faster way - and, better yet, it is one of the special programs that GE provides as a core special program. The special program is "loadcnote". It lets you:
  • Use a custom report for account selection and customize the note with data elements from accounts. 
  • Enter the same message into the text area of the coded note to be created using an input screen or an ".ini" file.
An example of how many practices use "loadcnote" is to create a custom report when an account is sent to a collection agency. The report includes the dollar amount forwarded for collection. When you create the coded note, you designate it as a "sticky note" so users can easily identify accounts that are in collections and the dollar amount sent for collection.

GE Healthcare also has special programs (for purchase) that help you manage coded notes:
  • chgsticky - changes sticky notes to a non-sticky note
  • pendelcnote - pends coded notes for deletion based on note code and creation date
  For more information on using "loadcnote", contact KPG Revenue Cycle Management, Inc. at info@kpgrcm.com.

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