Author: SOS Blog

Bits of News for Behavioral Health Providers

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I have recently noticed several pieces of news that I thought would be of interest to providers of behavioral health services and others.

1. The National Council Public Policy Update of April 8, 2010 pointed out an important change in timely filing requirements for Medicare claims:

Requirements of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act makes (sic) several changes to the Medicare timely filing requirements. Under the new law, all claims from before Jan. 1, 2010 must be filed by Dec. 31, 2010. Beginning on Jan. 1, 2010, all claims must be filed within one year after the date of service in order to be considered timely.

Sec. 6404 of the law details the requirements. This is a change from the former allowance of 3 calendar years to file a claim. Be clear about this: you now have 1 calendar year after the date of service to file a timely claim for payment for those services.  Now might be a good time to use your billing software to learn which old Medicare claims have not been paid (the claims may have been lost) and if there are any Medicare services that have not been billed. If these are not already three years old, you have only until the end of 2010 to file them, and with services that are new in 2010, you have one calendar year to file a claim for the services.

2. Seth recently posted a message on our User Group about the potential privacy and security problems that can be caused by data left on newer copiers and multifunction machines. NJAMHAA Newswire of May 3, 2010 also commented on the possibility of HIPAA violations that can result from careless use of these machines. Seth’s comments follow:

Now that you finally got all your computer hard drives encrypted and you are feeling pretty smug, here comes another headache — thousands of images containing PHI stored on a hard drive hidden inside other office machines. Take a peek at this investigative report by CBS news:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pIFUOav2xE

This is a pretty big vulnerability. If you have one of these higher end digital copiers, printers, or multifunction machines and it is stolen — or you neglect to remove or wipe the hard drive before selling or trading it in, you have a reportable security breach. Nobody would be likely to have a list of the patient documents that had been copied over the years, so you
would have to assume that EVERYONE’s protected information was at risk. That means reporting to the Feds, taking out the newspaper ad announcing your negligence, and the rest of the breach notification nightmare!

Apparently all major manufacturers offer security add-ons of some sort. Now would be a good time to inventory your document devices to determine if they contain hard drives and whether you can retrofit appropriate security add-ons to avoid a potentially disastrous situation in the future.

3. The National Council on April 23 published a review of Parity Act implementation that will allow you to determine whether your insurer or the payer with which you are dealing is in compliance with the Parity Act. Is your insurer in compliance with the Parity Act? will help you ask the right questions and provides resources to help you answer the question.

4. On April 22, FierceEMR and other sources reported that hospital-based doctors are now eligible for ARRA incentive payments for meaningful use of certified EHR technology, and that a bill has been introduced by Rep. Patrick Kennedy (D-RI) and Rep. Tim Murphy (R-PA) seeking to include mental health professionals, Community Behavioral Health Organizations (CBHOs), psychiatric hospitals and chemical dependency programs in the ARRA incentives. Time will tell what will fly.

5. And finally, the Mercom Capital HIT Report of May 3 indicated that HHS is seeking comment on the anticipated impact the stricter disclosure reporting requirements included in the HITECH Act will have on providers.

To help guide the Health and Human Services Department in tightening rules for health information privacy, HHS has asked providers, payers and consumers to comment on the benefits and burdens of accounting for the disclosure of protected health information, even if the data is intended for treatment and billing purposes. The HITECH Act called for HHS to strengthen the privacy rule of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA). With the changes, providers, plans and their business partners will have to account for disclosures of patient information contained in an electronic health record, even if the data is for healthcare provision and payment. 

HHS’ Office of Civil Rights (OCR), which oversees health information privacy, published a request for comments in the May 3 Federal Register 
“to inform our regulations under the HITECH Act,” according to the announcement. Under HIPAA, providers and plans currently do not have to report releases of protected data when the disclosures are related to patient treatment, payment and healthcare operations. HHS said in the notice that it will remove the exemption for those disclosures when it involves an electronic health record (EHR).

Needless to say, there is a great deal going on in the world of behavioral health care and health care in general. Please feel free to share news items you discover that might be useful to other readers.

Don’t forget, your comments are always welcome. Please share them below.

Resources for Behavioral Health Providers

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I read lots of articles online…or I download the articles and read them in .pdf format. Seth found a free tool that is going to make this whole reading and organizing process easier for me. It is called PDF-XChange Viewer and it can be downloaded for FREE! If you like to highlight and make notes as you go, this is a great tool.

That resource is really just a lead-in. In case you have not already collected some of the following sources from my references to them in other articles, I am going to put them all in one place. These are newsletters and web sites that are chock full of information that can help you stay informed about changes in the health care and regulatory world.

  1. My favorite by far is The National Council (NCCBH). This organization produces regular newsletters on varied topics, but I find their Public Policy Update to be an invaluable source of information on laws and regulations, policy trends and how you can address them. I have also greatly enjoyed their Webinars. Ordinarily, I would have already registered for the program coming up on Friday, May 14, What is an Accountable Care Organization and Why Should I Care? Since I will be out of town, I won’t be able to attend when it is broadcast; instead, I will watch it at a later date from the web site. The best part is that these programs are free and you do not need to be a member to participate in them. They are provided as a service to the behavioral health community.
  2. Every Monday, I receive a free multi-paged newsletter from the Mercom Capital Group, LLC of Austin, TX and Bangalore, India. This newsletter pulls capsules of information from a large variety of sources providing a quick overview of events in the domain of health care technology and health care policy. If you are interested in trying it out, send your email address to Raj at HIT@mercomcapital.com. 
  3. Open Minds is a longstanding and thorough source of industry information and strategy specifically for behavioral health provider organizations. While there are an abundance of workshops, webinars and premium programs, the Open Minds Circle is a free-for-the-registering newsletter from founder Monica Oss and others at Open Minds.
  4. Behavioral Healthcare and Healthcare Informatics (products of the Vendome Group), the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology all have mass quantities of information to offer you, all available online.

The amazing thing to me is that this is just a small list. If you were to add in blogs, the amount of free, high-quality information available to you on the web is overwhelming. Choose wisely…and use that free .pdf markup tool to make it easier!

Please share with the rest of our readers sources of behavioral health industry information upon which you rely. Just enter your comments in the box below.

License to……

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Every two years around this time I am busy completing my Continuing Education Units (CEUs) so I can renew my license as a psychologist. I have done this every biennium since 1980, even though I retired from practice 17 years ago. In Florida, the license is both a practice and title act…to represent myself to the public as a psychologist, I need to be licensed. This was the first year I have even vaguely questioned why I continue to do so.

The decision to renew has usually been an easy one for me to make even though I do not practice and have no plan to return to work as a psychologist. I have a strong identification as a psychologist. I knew since early high school that I wanted a Ph.D. in clinical psychology; I always wanted to practice independently.

Even when we decided to relocate to central Florida and I took the opportunity to close my practice and work with SOS full time, I never considered dropping my license. After all, we have always told you that we provide software by psychologists for psychologists (and all other behavioral health providers). And anyway, who knows what time and politics will bring!

Usually my reading is a way to meet my CEU requirements and keep up with the clinical side of psychology. This year I was surprised; two of the articles I read this weekend were actually quite interesting to me; they were articles on personal or life coaching and Positive Psychology. Both of these areas have roots in the personal growth and Humanistic Psychology movements of the 1970’s, but are 21st century, mainstream ways of implementing growth-oriented interventions.

As the healthcare arena changes over the course of the next few years, it is highly likely that some organizations will seek to provide pure healthcare services. Others will choose to diversify their services in a variety of ways…and even to provide their services in unique fashion. Open Minds recently discussed both telehealth delivery of services and the use of virtual reality interventions to treat certain problems.

What new kinds of therapy has your organization considered? Do you continue to provide the same services you have always performed, or are you on the lookout for ways to diversify? What criteria do you use to decide if a particular service or technique should be added to your bag of tricks?

Please share your comments. We would love to know how you expand the services your organization provides. Just enter your comment in the box below. If you do not see a box, click on the title of the article and scroll down to the comment box. Thanks for reading!

Spring Fever Has Always Been Real for Me

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Spring has finally arrived in central Florida. It has become warm enough not to need to wear cool weather clothing but cool enough to keep windows and doors open for most of the day. This is the time of year when I want to be outdoors even though the air is full of pollens. I experience a strong need to get my hands in the soil and new plants into the ground or into my hydroponic gardening units…or out riding a bicycle.

The biggest difficulty Spring provides for me is that it is hard for me to stay task-focused. This has been the case since I was a child. I just don’t much feel like being indoors, so working on indoor responsibilities comes much harder. As an adult, work is no exception. It is hard for me to focus on tasks that need to be accomplished. I would much rather be playing….or at least doing different work.

As a result of this year’s Spring fever, it was not difficult to decide that the celebration of Synergistic Office Solutions‘ 25th anniversary should happen at home rather than in a restaurant. It may cost me a bit more work, but it is not my usual work. I get to have a party instead of focusing on the changes I need to make to our web site or some other such task.

Yes, our software company has now been around for 25 years. Seth started doing consulting to other psychologists in 1985. Our billing software for mental health and medical practitioners followed in the next year. Florida psychologists were our first customers, but we started selling nationally in 1988 or 1989. Our electronic clinical record product was released in 1990. We made the transition from full-time practice of psychology to full-time software business in 1992-1993. Sometimes I am sure we jumped from the frying pan into the fire!

The primary benefit of the change from providing services to mental health clients to providing products and services to mental health providers has been that we have met so many wonderful folks who embody in their work their mission to care for others. Behavioral health providers and service organizations are the BEST! We are grateful for the opportunity we have had over the past 25 years to work with so many talented and caring people. Thanks to each and every one of you!

As you can see, my Spring Fever is so bad this year that I could not even write a blog article that would have the usual links to information you could use. It contains nothing about behavioral health electronic medical records or HIPAA or HITECH. Oh well, maybe next week will allow a return to those serious issues.

How do you respond to the appearance of Spring? Are you one of those wonderfully responsible people who can just put your head down and keep on taking care of business? Will you share with me how you do that? Or maybe you are just like me and want to have a party!

Please enter your comment in the box at the bottom of this article. If you don’t see one, double click on the title of the article, then scroll down to the box to make your comment.

New Phone Systems: Frustrations of an impatient newbie

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The last two weeks have been extremely challenging for me. As many of you know, I am not a techie; I am an end user. Without excellent in-house and outside product and computer support, I would not be a happy computer user most of the time.

We have been using a hosted PBX-style telephone system (Onebox) for the last couple of years. This service gives us the general functionality of a PBX system without the cost. We have extension numbers for each phone. We have automated attendants with different messages at different times of the day and night, as well as for Technical Support vs. Sales and Customer Service. We have multiple voicemail boxes at which customers can leave messages. We told the company what we wanted. They set it up for us. We use it.

Our one frustration has been the length of time needed to transfer a call from one person to another within our organization. It takes so long customers sometimes hang up. And sometimes transferring just does not work at all.

In 2009 and 2010 we have been cost saving fanatics. Since long distance telephone calls and numerous telephone lines are among our biggest expenses, we began to research options other than land lines and long distance contracts. About a year ago, we started using Voice over Internet Protocol (VOIP) telephone service through T-Mobile for our outgoing technical support calls. It has mostly done the job at a fraction of the cost of long distance service, so this month Seth started to research moving our entire telephone system to a hosted VOIP solution. After a couple of days of intense research, he decided that we should try Vocalocity, a company that focuses on small businesses.

Then Manon, our lead technical support staff person, left for vacation and my headache began. You see, Seth assists with doing tech support when one of our primary staffers is out. That meant the VOIP project was handed over to me…and oh what a mistake that was….because, remember, I am technologically impaired. Much of my other work has been on hold while I tried to make this work.

Seth had begun to set up our Auto Attendants, but they were not working properly. He emailed our phone system flow chart to a support representative at Vocalocity so they would know what we wanted to accomplish. Then, I needed to work with the support representative to make it happen. Over the course of three days, an excellent representative named Nathaniel worked with me to make changes in the setup of our account. It was much more complicated than either Seth or I realized. There were some things that had to be initiated on their end to accomplish our goals; they were not end user configurable. Finally, on Monday we tested all the work Nathaniel had done and the system appears to do what we want it to in the way we want. It even lets us transfer calls from one extension to another without a long wait time.

Today I called our telephone service provider and had our main line forwarded to the number assigned to us by Vocalocity. Tomorrow I expect to start receiving calls on the new system. We will let you know the outcome.

The moral of this story is this: using new technology may be just the way to save your organization lots of money; however, have your most tech-savvy person work to accomplish the goal. Giving the task to a less-than-patient person who just wants the darned thing to work is not the most effective way to adopt the new technology….no matter how cool the technology is.

What technology implementation stories do you have to share? Has your experience taught you some things about how to most effectively adopt new technology in your organization?

Just enter your comment in the box at the bottom of the page. If you don’t see a box, double click on the title of the article then scroll back down to the box to enter your comment. Please share your experience. I must get better at this!