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Alta
Partners News & Tips. Information to Improve your Practice |
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Table of Contents:
Don't
Become Decertified with the OHIO BWC!
The Ohio BWC has announced that you can be decertified as a BWC provider IF, during a rolling 24 month period, you submit a Physician’s Request for Medical Service or Recommendation for Additional Conditions for Industrial Injury or Occupational Disease (C-9 form) or if you submit the medical documentation retroactively more than three times without just cause. There are exceptions, but the penalty for many providers (decertification) for NOT submitting this information timely is severe. We advise that you please check your in-house billing procedures and determine if your practice could be at risk and quickly implement a revised set of procedures to eliminate retroactive submissions of the C-9 forms to the BWC. Managed care organizations (MCOs) will continue to send a letter to the provider each time it does not receive timely medical documentation, when it receives a retroactive C-9 after the treatment or when the MCO provides a service without just cause. Just cause reasons may include, but are not limited to:
*Emergency
treatment; The letters that the MCOs send are educational only, and they cannot be used to monitor occurrences to decertify a provider. At the time of implementation, BWC will review and confirm occurrences, and then send two warning notices to providers prior to proposing decertification if the non-compliant behavior continues. Based upon a conversation on Friday, August 31 with a representative from the Bureau of Workman’s Compensation, no timeframe has been established for formal enforcement of this policy change. Even though this is the case, we strongly recommend that you begin to follow this new guideline immediately to prevent any negative impacts to your BWC business in the future.
Please contact our
BWC specialist, Sharon Compton @ 440-808-3716, if you have
any questions or need additional information.
In Session 1, we will review of all of the reports that are currently provided to Practice Managers over the course of a year, and include detailed descriptions about how each of the reports can be used to assess your practice’s billing performance on a daily basis Session 2 will be an advanced lecture which will cover other reports the Practice Manager can run from the office to further analyze their business (Supplemental Client Reports) We are offering both morning and afternoon sessions. Because of the material to be covered, invitations are extended to the Practice Manager and/or Office Supervisor of our client practices only. Session #1
October 9, 8:30-11:30 Session #2
October 25, 12:30-3:30 Attendance of Session #1 is required in order to attend Session #2. ENLIST today to improve your bottom line tomorrow! For more
information or to enroll, please contact Jeff Kovacs @
440-808-3644 or
jpk@altapartnersllc.com
Seven years
ago, when Alta Partners was just starting, staff would shake
their heads and laugh as Stan would often “re-arrange”
employees and fill empty cubicles to make it “look” like we
were actually bigger than we were whenever a potential new
client came for a visit. We don’t have that problem
anymore. In an effort to better service our clients, Alta Partners has recently gone through a two phase office expansion at our Westlake location. In Phase I, we added 1,500 square feet of office space to accommodate our expanded Customer Service and Finance Departments. Phase II is currently under way and, when completed, will include an additional 1,400 square feet of space. When asked about the expansion, Dan Kasinec, Principal for Alta Partners states: “This additional space was an absolute necessity. We had no room left in our existing office to place even one more employee! As we have grown our business, we need to be able to provide our customers with the same level of excellence that they are used to receiving… and need additional staff to allow us to do just that! Please welcome our most recent additions to Alta Partners: Sharon Compton comes to us through an externship program at Remington College, where she graduated from the Medical Billing and Coding curriculum. As part of her curriculum, Sharon completed her externship at Alta Partners. Sharon specializes in managing the tedious worker’s compensation accounts receivable for all of our clients. Dena Ormstron has been in the Medical Billing and Coding business for the past 20 years, most recently with Premier Physicians Centers. Over the course of her career, Dena states that she “has done a little bit of everything; emergency medicine coding, payments, refunds, collections, AR, charge entry.... with different specialties; family medicine, neurology, cardiology, general surgery, and internal medicine.” At Alta, Dena will perform A/R follow up services for various clients. Another recent Remington College graduate, Malisa Cammarn comes to Alta Partners through the same externship route as did Sharon. When asked about her path to Alta, Malisa says she “feels lucky to be hired by Alta Partners immediately following her externship”. “It took a lot of pressure off knowing I had a job when my schooling was completed.” Malisa is currently doing A/R work for some of Alta’s OB/GYN practices. And yet another…….. Kathy Osborne also attended Remington College, for Medical Coding and Billing, and was sent to Alta Partners for her externship. Upon graduation in December of 2006, she immediately began working for Alta on a full time basis. Kathy will be handling the AR follow up for several primary care clients that we’ve recently added. Our newest Alta member comes to us from Parma Community General Hospital. Michael Moran has worked in various positions in healthcare for over 12 years. At Parma, Michael managed Wellpointe Pavilion (an outpatient Diagnostic Imaging, Physical Therapy, and Physician Center) in Broadview Heights. Prior to this, he worked as a clinician and manager in numerous Sports Medicine and Physical Therapy settings. At Alta, Michael will focus on Alta Partners growing consulting business. Please join us in welcoming these folks to the Alta Partners family!
In need of some extra help
in your practice? Willing to help train the Medical
Assistants of tomorrow? Look no further than Remington
College! Remington College provides occupational training with an emphasis on teaching the specific job-related skills that employers look for when they make hiring decisions. In the healthcare arena, Remington College offers diploma programs in Medical Insurance and Coding, Medical Assisting and in becoming a Pharmacy Technician. As part of the curriculum, all students are required to fulfill 144 hours of an unpaid externship with a local business in order to gain relevant, “hands-on” experience. Alta Partners has been accepting student externs from the Remington College Medical Insurance and Coding program for the past two years. Stan Kasmarcak has found that working with Remington has been very beneficial to his business. “It’s a great way to find talented individuals while getting a little extra manpower to help complete everyday administrative tasks that are needed to keep our business running. In addition, it gives us a great opportunity to observe the students and see if there might be a long term ‘fit’ within our organization without making a formal employment offer.” Proof in the program’s success is evident in the three Remington new hires that Alta has added over the past two years. If your organization is interested in partnering with Remington College to help educate Cleveland’s future Healthcare workforce, please contact Stacy Wozniak, Remington College’s Externship Coordinator at 440-777-2560, extension 229.
Email your ideas to Michael Moran @ mjm@altapartnersllc.com.
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