Healthcare providers know all too well how consumerism is affecting their bottom line. As high-deductible plans become more common and patients are responsible for a larger portion of their healthcare costs, hospitals and physician practices are finding it more difficult to collect the full portion of the patient responsibility. But the rise in healthcare costs
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By Stacy State With high-deductible health plans (HDHPs) continuing to be the plan-of-choice for employers and those purchasing insurance on the state exchanges, providers continue to need consumer-focused solutions and strategies. Patients now owe more out of pocket than ever before, and the challenges of effective, sustainable patient billing and collections are real—research shows that
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By Stacy State Discovering opportunities for improvement is among the most essential uses of RCM technology, and Baptist Health Medical Group (BHMG), one of the largest not-for-profit healthcare systems in Kentucky, was able to uncover areas for improvement and capitalize on them using several of ZirMed’s solutions. Upon initially forming BHMG, in which hundreds of
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By Michael Hiltzik The giant health insurance company UnitedHealth inspired lots of hand-wringing and hyperventilation last year when it announced that it had lost hundreds of millions of dollars on Affordable Care Act exchanges and was considering withdrawing from the market in 2017. Although that news prompted numerous Obamacare critics to declare the impending death of the
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by Carl Natale There are some mixed messages on how much claim denials have risen since Oct. 1. Some healthcare providers are reporting a few ICD-10 denials but not enough to worry about. On the other hand, a healthcare consultant found out that a California HMO was denying medical claims on a massive scale. And NCDs and LCDs
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