How to Evaluate Your Account Receivables

How to Evaluate your Account Receivables:

Here are two ways to analyze your current A/R.

1. Averaging- Take your last 3 month’s total charges for the practice and average them to determine your current average monthly charges. Then take your Account Receivable and divide your total A/R by your current average monthly charges. (Source: provided by a billing consultant.)

If the results are:
1.5 Or Less- Stop reading, you do not need any help
Less than 2.0- Pretty good, can use some fine tuning
2.0 to 2.5- You’re starting to get in trouble
2.6 to 3.0- You need help
Over 3.0- Your A/R is out of control

2. Number of Weeks- Take your average week’s total charges for the practice and multiply them by 6 weeks or 7 weeks (ideally a 6 week A/R). This total should equal your current practice A/R. If it does not, increase the amount of weeks 8, 9, etc. until the totals match.
(source: a seminar on billing)

If the results are:
6-7 or less- Stop reading, you do not need any help
8-9- Pretty good, can use some fine tuning
10-11- You’re starting to get in trouble
12-13- You need help
14-15+ Your A/R is out of control

What the number means in both equations is how long it is actually taking your billing department to collect 100% of your charges.

The ideal composition of your Accounts Receivable would be something like this:

Current 50%
31 to 60 15-20%
61 to 90 15-20%
90+ Days 20%

If your A/R is not what it should be Medical Software & Services may be able to help you use your billing software more effectively. We can provide training on Medisoft and other products. For a nominal cost, we can do an audit of your billing process and provide a report making specific recommendations on how to improve your collections rate.


TJ Johnson
Senior Support Technician
Medical Software Tools
http://www.medicalsoftwaretools.com/

How can I prevent database corruptions?

If you have always dreamed of building your own log home check out: http://loghomeusa.com/

How can I prevent database corruptions?

Database corruptions can occur on virtually any software product that uses a database. The three biggest database killers are power problems, improper shutdown, and network problems.

1. Power Problems- Use a working Uninterruptible Power Supplies (UPS) on all computers. A UPS with a dead battery is just as likely to allow a database to be damaged as using none at all so it is important to test them periodically and make sure they are functional.
   
2. Improper Shutdown- No matter what version of Microsoft Windows™ you are using, it is imperative that you always shut both your software and your computer down properly. Turning the power off on your computer will eventually corrupt your windows installation but more importantly will very likely damage any databases that are open.
   
   To shut-down your computer properly, click on the Start button and select the Shut Down option. You must then select the option to Shut Down and click OK.
   
3. Network Problems- Improper network Setup or design can definitely cause data corruption. Some network protocols are not fault tolerant. This means that they don’t handle problems well. Have a qualified Network Engineer consult with you about networking issues.

In thinking about these kinds of problems there is no substitute for common sense. I was talking with an office manager one time who had experienced a Medisoft database corruption. She asked me about factors that could contribute to this kind of problem. After reviewing all the items listed above she declared that they had a UPS on every computer and never had power fluctuations. She told me that they always shut down the software properly and they recently had a technician check their network and were certain that it was configured correctly and functioning properly.

A few days later I was talking with this same office manager about an unrelated issue and I asked her about one of her computers. She told me that computer was her "smoker". I asked her why she called that computer her "smoker" and she told me that they had recently had to replace the power supply on that computer because it had caught fire one day while her biller was posting payments with her Medisoft software. I asked her when that had happened and she told me that it was right before their data corruption. She was shocked when I told her that this was the likely culprit behind her data failure. I had to explain that just having a UPS on the computer wasn't going to always prevent every possible power problem.

Mark Beans, MCSE, MCP+I
Medical Software Tools
http://MedicalSoftwareTools.com

Whose Data is it Anyway?

If you are a medical practice, who does the data in your medical software belong to? Does the data in your medical software belong to your patient? Yes. Does the data in your medical software belong to you? In a very real sense, yes. You created it, you control it and you are responsible for it (under the new HIPAA regulations you could be fined or be sent to jail if you don’t adequately protect it). Does the data in your medical software belong to your software vendor? We don’t think so!

HCFA and other governing entities charge you with the responsibility to guard and protect any patient data that you touch; but whose data is it anyhow? Why should any software vendor be able to hold you hostage?

One of the things that we have come to appreciate about Medisoft software is its open database architecture philosophy. Medisoft offers you a variety of ways to get YOUR data into or even out of their databases.

1) ODBC Connectivity- Open Database Connectivity (ODBC) allows you to access your data using other ODBC compliant programs such as Microsoft Access, Microsoft Excel, Crystal Reports, and many others. While there are many programs that are ODBC compliant, setting up and maintaining the drivers often requires a high level of technical expertise. In addition, writing to any billing database in this fashion can destroy its integrity and corrupt it beyond salvaging if done improperly. Writing back to a billing database using ODBC is not recommended unless you really, really know what you are doing. Even then it can be dangerous.

2) Medisoft Ports- Medical Software & Services has automated port utilities to import or export data into or out of the Medisoft database. These utilities allow us to import data from a standard comma delimited ASCII format into Medisoft. If you wish to migrate your data from another billing system to Medisoft call us for more information. If you believe that you have outgrown Medisoft and want to migrate your data to another system we can help you with that.

3) Medisoft Data Conversion– The technicians at Medical Software & Services have been reading and writing directly to the NDCHealth billing softwares and other databases for over ten years. Our programmers have years of experience in manipulating data and reading and writing data to billing systems.

Because it is difficult to be expert at every billing system on the market (there are thousands) we also have arrangements with contractors that specialize in many of the other popular billing systems on the market.

This is an EASY solution because Medical Software Tools handles the conversion for you. Normally, we do a trial conversion for you before you have to pay the full cost so that you can see for yourself that the data has been converted satisfactorily. In addition, Medical Software & Services and its contractors have already done conversions on a variety of Medical Billing Softwares and Electronic Medical Records systems so in many cases the conversion can be performed very quickly.

Who owns the data? Certainly medical data belongs to the patient, but when a medical provider renders services that data should be accessible to the provider. Don’t be held hostage by vendors. Choose wisely; it really is “your” data!

Mark Beans, MCSE, MCP+I
Medical Software Tools
http://MedicalSoftwareTools.com/