SpectraSoft

Webinar: Avoid Medical Scheduling Mistakes That Cost You a Fortune

SpectraSoft — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 16:45:24 +0000

Chandler, AZ – March 21, 2012 – Hospitals and small clinics are constantly dealing with lower
reimbursements and more red tape. Medical appointment scheduling can be a constant and never-ending
challenge at your organization, but the solution to enhance your revenue all starts with your front desk.

On Thursday, March 29, SpectraSoft is offering a free webinar that will showcase simple, no-nonsense
methods to boost your staff productivity, increase patient satisfaction and even reduce payer denials.
We’re featuring the best practices for the front desk, entitled, 7 Scheduling Mistakes that Cost You a
Fortune.’ We’ll offer tips on how to: involve your patients in the scheduling process to reduce no shows,
prevent items from ‘’falling through the cracks,’’ enhance your ability to both measure activity and
manager your practice.

Check out the web-based patient scheduling software that helps you book appointments, reduce no-shows
and track productivity. SpectraSoft’s team provides scheduling software solutions to more than 5,000

hospitals and clinics across the country. It’s our industry knowledge and experience that guides these
best practices so you can make your facility more productive and ultimately improve outcomes.

Join Product Manager Al Fiandaca and Account Executive Steve Johnson as they discuss strategies
our clients have used, powered by SpectraSoft’s appointment scheduling products. We invite practice
owners, office managers, outpatient department directors and front office staff to sign up for this free
webinar scheduled for Thursday, March 29, at 1 pm ET/10 am PT.

About SpectraSoft
Founded in 1993, SpectraSoft designs powerful scheduling solutions to simplify workflow in hospital and
private practice settings. The company has more than 5,000 installations to date. In 2011, SpectraSoft
was acquired by MediServe, a company delivering solutions to the rehabilitation and respiratory care
communities for more than 25 years. Both companies are headquartered in Chandler, Arizona. For more
information, please visit our website at www.SpectraSoft.com

Media Contact:

Michelle Caldwell
MediServe
480.831.7800, ext.3183
mcaldwell@mediserve.com

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Are Appointment Reminders “HIPAA-Compliant?”

SpectraSoft — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 16:58:44 +0000

Automated reminder systems are a great way to reduce costly no-shows: you know every patient receives a text message, email, phone call and/or letter. However with all the changes in healthcare, you may wonder if these automated messages violate HIPAA rules for protecting patient privacy.

The short answer: you’re OK

HIPAA considers appointment reminders as a part of treatment; so they can be made without an authorization. However, both HIPAA regulations and common sense dictate that you take care in how you remind your patients. HIPAA also states that you should do what you can to accommodate a patient’s preferred method of communication — for example sending emails instead of postal mail. (Or not sending reminders at all.)

When you manage your schedule with AppointmentsEverywhere, you can remind clients by mail, email, text and phone, which is pretty “accommodating.” The intake screen includes a section where the patient can select which method(s) of reminders they want.

Use good judgement

You need to customize your reminders to your situation. For a pediatric practice sending reminders to parents, it may be just fine to include the time, date, location and provider in the appointment reminder. However when privacy concerns are extremely high, such as with an AIDS clinic, your text message might be as vague as, “You have an appointment coming up.”

Always remember: “What is my patient really forgetting?”

Beyond meeting privacy concerns, you should make sure your reminders are effective. Sometimes patients really do forget their appointments; more often they forget why they need to attend. Make sure to include a brief compliance message in your reminders. In essence: “here’s why it’s important to make your appointment.”

Have a question?

If you have a question or suggestion about appointment reminders, leave your comment below. We’d love to hear from you!

Webinar Provides Tools to Help Eliminate Patient No-Shows

SpectraSoft — Tue, 21 Feb 2012 20:45:42 +0000

Chandler, AZ – February 17, 2012 – One of the toughest challenges in an outpatient setting is to reduce patient no-shows. It can have a big affect on your practice’s bank account. How do you make your appointment reminders more effective and get your patients to show up on time? SpectraSoft is showcasing scheduling solutions to those problems with a webinar Thursday, March 1: “Proven Strategies to Reduce No-Shows.”

Product Manager Al Fiandaca and Account Executive Steve Johnson have worked with thousands of clients who have successfully cut down on no-shows at their hospital or clinic utilizing SpectraSoft’s appointment scheduling products.

The cutting-edge automation tools used in SpectraSoft’s medical scheduling solutions enhance patient communications and ultimately improve outcomes. Practice owners, managers and front office staff are invited to discover the newest ideas in tracking, analyzing, and addressing the specific reasons for no-shows in your organization. You’ll come away with more effective ways to manage appointment reminders, whether it’s by phone, email or text.

As you know, you only get paid when patients come through your door. Sign up to reserve your spot today and discover how you can reduce patient no-shows in your practice.

About SpectraSoft
Founded in 1993, SpectraSoft designs powerful scheduling solutions to simplify workflow in hospital and private practice settings. The Company has more than 5,000 installations to date. In 2012, SpectraSoft was acquired by MediServe, a Company delivering solutions to the rehabilitation and respiratory care communities for more than 25 years. Both Companies are headquartered in Chandler, Arizona. For more information, please visit our website at SpectraSoft.com.

Media Contact:
Michelle Caldwell
MediServe
480.831.7800, ext.3183
mcaldwell@mediserve.com

No-Shows: Do Patients Really “Forget” Appointments?

SpectraSoft — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 14:41:31 +0000

No-shows create staggering costs for any practice. Yet if your patients have recurring visits scheduled one or more times per week, do they really “forget” their appointments? PROBABLY NOT.

Remind patients about the “WHY” as well as the “WHEN”

Web-Based Scheduling

Sure, some patients forget an appointment now and then; but far more no-shows happen when patients forget WHY it’s important to attend the appointment.

Reminder calls, texts and emails only reduce no-shows if you remind your patients what they’ve actually forgotten: WHY it’s important to attend the appointment.

The “why” varies greatly depending on your field, your patient demographics and the nature of your patient’s diagnosis. Finances…conflicting priorities…pain…or simple frustration with a lack of progress can all lead to no-shows.

“We’re running a business here!”

There is nothing unprofessional about reminding clients that you are a professional. In fact, when you make it clear that YOU take your job seriously, your clients are far more likely to take YOUR CARE PLAN seriously.

When you remind patients about their appointment — whether it’s by phone, text message, email, letter or face-to-face — add these words at the end of your message:

“Please keep in mind that we have set aside rooms, equipment and paid personnel for your appointment, so it’s very important that we see you at this date and time.”

If you have a policy of charging for no-shows, include that in your message as well. Only when patients take your business seriously will you see a serious drop in no-shows.

SpectraSoft merges with MediServe

SpectraSoft — Tue, 04 Oct 2011 16:38:30 +0000

(CHANDLER, AZ) SpectraSoft, Inc. has merged with its longtime technology partner MediServe, Inc. SpectraSoft will continue to serve and support its customers under the SpectraSoft name.

The relationship between the two companies dates back to the 1980′s, when SpectraSoft CEO & Founder Steve Petrie worked at MediServe. The two companies have worked closely together ever since, and in recent years have shared the same building in Chandler, AZ.

As a Rehabilitation Software and Respiratory Software provider, MediServe brings new resources that will benefit all of SpectraSoft’s existing and future clients. MediServe’s 25+ year history, their extensive research and development team, and their commitment to customer support will allow SpectraSoft to focus on its strength in medical scheduling with even greater vigor.

SpectraSoft’s product offerings remain the same and will continue to be supported. Customer can contact the company at the same phone number: 1-800-889-0450.

Incorporating EMR into your PT care

SpectraSoft — Wed, 21 Sep 2011 22:58:44 +0000

As we work with PTs across the country, we’re often asked about the pros and cons of charting while you treat. Those against say it takes away from your focus on the patient. Those in favor point to increased accuracy and time savings. SpectraSoft has always argued in favor of bringing your rehab EMR system into the treatment room. In fact that’s a key design consideration of our DocuPRO Rehab Documentation System.

Declining reimbursements make it essential that you save as much time as possible and capture every billable treatment you provide. And the best way to meet those requirements is by incorporating your tablet, laptop or workstation into treatment.

Gain More Time for Patients

By completing your documentation as you treat the patient, you finish your paperwork faster and have more time for patient care. This might lead to an extra 30 minutes of billable time each day. It also leads to more referrals in the case of Dean Bessas, PT, Director of Natomas Physical Therapy:

“We can take the tablet with us during treatment, open the appropriate template and click through the case as we work with a patient. In most cases, the report is faxed to the referring physician as the patient leaves our office. This responsiveness has helped us build a loyal referral network, which is a big reason for our fast growth.”

When you document as you treat, even if you don’t fully complete a note as the patient leaves, you’ve finished the bulk of the work. Then a web-based EMR (or Windows system with syncing feature) allows you to clean up your paperwork any time it’s most convenient for you. And time-savings isn’t the only reason to incorporate your EMR into your patient encounter…

Enhance Your Care

A template-based documentation system can facilitate a systemic flow of the exam. So if you start down one path of inquiry, the template will remind you to go down the other paths required for a complete, thorough examination. Every time you come to a special test –- and with an orthopedic presentation there may be 20-30 different such tests — your EMR can reliably pull up a list of all those tests and speed entry of your findings. Templates also keep you on flow with those afflictions you only see occasionally. (So you don’t have to wrack your brain trying to recall that course you took on TMJ 10 years ago!)

Start with the right technology

If you have balked at charting during treatment up to now, here are two ways to make the switch easier. First, consider the treatment environment when evaluating a new EMR solution. Some interfaces are simply easier to use during the patient encounter.

Speed and performance also become more critical. If your system can’t keep up with you, you’re in trouble. Some web-based systems can be very slow, especially during peak usage times. One PT described a web-based EMR (not SpectraSoft) this way: “Sometimes it takes up to 2 minutes to load an eval, so I usually resort to taking paper notes then putting in the system later, which defeats the purpose for me.”

Talk to your vendor and find out what they have done to ensure fast performance of your web-based solution.

Practice your technique

Skip to 1:20 for a demonstration of how to
incorporate your EMR during treatment.

Second, make sure you have a tabletop or other workspace strategically placed in your treatment area. Some PTs install shelves or workstations to streamline the documentation process.

Once you have your workspace configured properly, practice with it. It may be a little frustrating at first, but you will quickly get the hang of it. In fact many PTs find their iPad is a great conversation-starter to build rapport with the patient.

The video at left shows how Todd Cadby of Rebound Physical Therapy smoothly incorporates his EMR into the eval.

Manage your practice like Warren Buffett

SpectraSoft — Tue, 16 Aug 2011 21:58:10 +0000

In today’s harsh healthcare environment, wouldn’t it be great to get practice management advice from a real expert? Someone who knows how to generate revenue and profits in good times and bad?

Billionaire Warren Buffett has compiled a pretty good track record. Based on his public comments and well-studied approach to investing, here is some of the advice he might give to an owner or manager looking to grow a practice…

1. Add value instead of cutting costs

Mr. Buffett is known as a classic ‘value investor’ – ”Buy a business, not its stock,” he often says. For a practice faced with shrinking reimbursements, the answer isn’t to cut care and resources. It’s to find cost-effective ways to add value. You may not have the funds to buy a fancy new piece of equipment, but for most practices, the opportunities to add value are everywhere.

Shorten wait times. Give more eye contact. Create less paperwork. Deliver better outcomes. Create no surprises. Offer plenty of personal, one-on-one time.

The way to create that added value is to lock in best practices throughout your office. For example, your front desk staff knows they should follow up with missed appointments, but do they every time? Your clinicians should get their documentation done within 24 hours, but how often does your A/R get held up?

Find the tracking and flagging features in your practice management system that lock in these best practices…AND USE THEM. (And if your system doesn’t have those features, give us a call.)

2. Choose substance over style

Mr. Buffett is famous for driving cheap, used cars. He’s never moved his headquarters from folksy Omaha, Nebraska. ‘‘The farther one gets from Wall Street, the more skepticism one will find as to the pretensions of stock-market forecasting,” he once said. Substance over style is a hallmark of his success. The same can work for you.

When other practices add fancy furniture and artwork to their waiting rooms, you can cut wait times with simple tools like an online patient portal. Instead of spending a fortune on letterhead and postage to remind patients about appointments, you can add a highly effective text messaging system. Remember that you’re not the only one worried about rising costs — your patients are paying higher premiums, deductibles and copays than ever. They are sure to appreciate a focus on simple efficiency.

3. Worry only about what you can control

Even a billionaire has his limits. Mr. Buffett can’t control the overall condition of the economy…so he doesn’t worry about it. ‘‘As far as I am concerned, the stock market doesn’t exist. It is there only as a reference to see if anybody is offering to do anything foolish.’’

In the same way, practice owners have little control over the horrific state of claim reimbursements. Yet they continue to fret over a situation that is out of their control. They switch from one billing system to the next, looking for a magic solution to denials and underpayments that simply doesn’t exist.

After all, even the best billing system can only generate claims for the work you’ve done. Real revenue comes from building a solid referral network…optimizing the value of every referral by eliminating no-shows and early discharges…and working more productively. Focus on the tools that can help you leverage the realities within your control – like a solid scheduling solution and EMR system.

4. Understand your practice

One key to Mr. Buffet’s success is the due diligence he puts into every investment decision he makes. ‘‘The market, like the Lord, helps those who help themselves,” he once said. “But unlike the Lord, the market does not forgive those who know not what they do.’’

In the heat of daily practice ownership, it’s easy to lose sight of the landmarks that should be guiding your most basic practice decisions: reimbursement rates by referrer, payor or procedure; no-show rates and the reasons behind them; wait times; outcomes; resource utilization. It’s understandable that practice owners don’t always have these numbers; it’s unforgivable when they don’t go out and get them.

Every patient that walks through your door offers you two incredible opportunities: the chance to enhance a person’s health and to get paid doing it. To the degree that you fail on either of those counts, you’ve missed out on an opportunity. Understanding when that happens — and why — makes your practice a better place for you, your patients and your staff.

Conclusion

Mr. Buffett is always careful to point out that what he has accomplished is not because of any unique skill other than the discipline to act rationally. “What we do is not beyond anybody else’s competence. It is just not necessary to do extraordinary things to get extraordinary results.’’

Amen to that!

AMA Report Card: Payors Aren’t Paying

SpectraSoft — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 19:04:01 +0000

As we first talked about in 2009, insurance companies have found that the best way to pad profits is simple: they just don’t pay. In fact the latest Report Card from the American Medical Association finds that the problem has actually gotten worse in the last year. Most payors only reimbursed 85% – 88% of their contracted fee schedules. One insurer paid just 61%!

Download your Free Guide to
increase PT practice revenue.

Other lowlights from the report:

Commercial health insurers have an average claims-processing error rate of 19.3 percent (nearly 1 in 5!);
Claim payment errors cost providers $17 billion;
Physicians received no payment at all from commercial health insurers on nearly 23% of claims they submitted.

Applying some common sense to these numbers only makes them more alarming: if MDs are experiencing these denial rates, what is happening in less politically-leveraged disciplines like physical therapy and behavioral health?

Surely the problem is even worse for these providers. The Report Card proves once again that “coding claims better” can only do so much to increase practice revenue.

Real gains in revenue come from building a solid referral network, optimizing the authorized care you provide to every patient and increasing your billable time with more efficient scheduling, documentation and management tools. Find out how by downloading our Free Product Guide, “The 5 Revenue Drivers of Your Physical Therapy Practice.”

7 Tools for High-Volume Scheduling

SpectraSoft — Thu, 19 May 2011 00:21:05 +0000

If you are in a medical specialty that sees patients for just a few minutes, you know how frantic the schedule can get. We frequently observe clinicians that schedule three or four patients at a time in a given time slot! This hectic level of scheduling can lead to problems if not managed carefully…

No-show patients fall through the cracks and never get rescheduled;
Patients who need to come back in six months also fall through the cracks;
It’s difficult to find open time slots that fit a patient’s schedule;
Patients arrive without following requirements (i.e. wearing cosmetics to a dermatology appointment or forgetting insurance information);
The number of front desk staff required to handle duties shoots though the roof;
Other vital front desk responsibilities are affected because the scheduling is so time-consuming.

If your practice faces problems like these, here are seven scheduling principles that can increase practice revenue and enhance your patient care and service.

1. Reduce billing errors with multi-column scheduling

Multi-column resource scheduling allows you to schedule multiple patients in the same time slot with the same clinician. Expand.

If you schedule several patients in the same time slot, odds are you do it by creating several scheduling columns for the same clinician. This makes it difficult to generate accurate reports on productivity and billing. It also may defeat the compliance-checking features of your EMR or billing system.

A better solution is to schedule with a system that supports multi-column scheduling. All of the appointments are scheduled with the same resource, to simplify reporting and billing. For example, SpectraSoft’s AppointmentsEverywhere online scheduling features columns that retract and expand as necessary for easy viewing of the entire schedule grid.

2. Find open time slots in a busy schedule with PC logic

A busy practice may be booked out for a month or more, with very few open time slots even after that date. Locating an appropriate opening on a traditional grid is very time consuming in these cases. A faster approach is ‘Find Appointment’ logic: you simply input the parameters of the appointment and let the system pull up the best available options. This is particularly valuable when booking recurring appointments, or visits involving multiple clinicians.

3. Eliminate human error from the check-in process

A robust check-in screen helps a busy front desk ensure that nothing falls through the cracks: you see all the co-pays to be collected, the no-shows that need to be rescheduled, and you can easily track arrived and seen times. Expand.

When a patient arrives, your front desk often has several responsibilities:

Mark the patient “arrived”
Check insurance information
Collect any co-pays
Confirm important details (i.e. ate no food before lab test)

Multiply all these requirement by dozens of patients per day (often arriving simultaneously) and you can see the potential for error and compromised care.

A unique check-in screen streamlines this process. All of the front desk’s responsibilities are summarized on this screen. In addition, you can track both ‘arrived’ and ‘seen’ times, allowing you to monitor average wait times and other aspects of patient care.

4. Increase patient retention with a Recall List

In many instances from melanoma patients to botox clients, you want to see the patient again at an appointed time in the future. Relying on the patient to remember the need to reschedule is not a best practice. An automated Recall List in your scheduling system locks in the process of reminding patients when they are due to schedule an appointment. This removes a large burden from your front desk and ensures these patients will indeed be rescheuled.

5. Free your front desk to work smarter with an Appointment History

The Appointment History instantly displays all past and future appointments. This is a great view to use when a patient needs to schedule a series of recurring appointments. Expand.

Your front desk is already swamped. The last thing they need is a phone call from a patient wondering, “When is my next appointment?” Again, this can be a frustrating, time-consuming search in many standard scheduling systems.

It pays to ensure you can instantly retrieve all of a patient’s past and future appointments with an Appointment History window. In seconds, your front desk can answer the caller’s question and refocus on tasks at hand.

6. Enhance patient service with online self-scheduling

For returning patients who want to schedule regularly occurring procedures like adjustments or dermabrasions, a patient portal not only reduces the workload on your staff, it also strengthens the relationship with the patient. Typically, you access the portal via link from your website. A patient can see upcoming appointments, read announcements from the practice and request or even set their own appointments.

The practice holds specific times in the scheduling system for these appointments, and only these times are made available to the patient. Confirmations pop automatically for both the front desk and the patient when an appointment is made or requested.

7. Reduce no-shows with automated text reminders

In a high-traffic practice, your front desk simply won’t be able to call every scheduled patient every day. Even if they could, the odds of reaching most people during the work day are slim. An automated text reminder system scans the schedule each day and sends texts to scheduled patients who have requested them. Texting has already proven to cut through the clutter better than the phone — even among much of the senior population.

Webinar: 7 Proven Strategies to Reduce No-Shows

SpectraSoft — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 23:10:10 +0000

One of the biggest strains on your practice is the problem of no-shows. SpectraSoft has spent nearly 20 years tackling this problem, and we will be sharing some of our most successful strategies in our April Webinar: “7 Proven Strategies to Reduce No-Shows.”

You will discover ways to enhance your patient communications… improve compliance with scheduled sessions… track and address the specific causes of no-shows in your organization… and much more. Here’s just some of what will be covered:

• Best practices when patients arrive and depart
• Correcting misperceptions patients have about no-shows
• Innovative ideas to make your reminders more effective
• What you should (and should NOT) say in a patient reminder
• Cancel/no-show analytics you need to monitor

Sign up for this FREE webinar and discover how your organization can save thousands of dollars by reducing no-shows and cancellations. It’s ideal for practice owners and managers concerned about practice revenue and patient satisfaction, or for front desk personnel responsible for scheduling and patient communications.