While there are conflicting perspectives on the physician shortage, there is resolute agreement that the demand for primary and specialty care is growing due to the expanding older population. Concurrently, the challenges for physician practices, which are needed to provide that care, are also increasing. Older patients require 2–3 times the amount of specialty and primary care to treat and manage chronic conditions and age-related illnesses. Unfortunately, in today’s ever-changing healthcare environment, many practices are struggling to survive.

As has never been experienced previously, practices are facing daunting obstacles to care delivery due to rising operating costs, regulatory burdens and barriers to receiving pay/reimbursement. The cost to operate a practice has increased at twice the rate as the consumer index due to increasing rent, malpractice insurance, liability coverage, health insurance and personnel expenses. Mounting regulatory requirements have not only served to increase overhead, but have also consumed valuable patient care time with oppressive documentation and administrative requirements for HIPAA, Meaningful Use, prior authorization and quality mandates.

Now in the wake of the time-consuming and costly protracted transition to ICD-10 and EHR implementation, physicians are struggling to get paid. In part, this is due to the ACA which has introduced reimbursement cuts and increased penalties. Last year, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) began to apply the value-based payment modifier to adjust reimbursement amounts to reflect the quality and cost of care provided. Those practices not meeting performance standards will receive less reimbursement. In addition, this year, the penalty for non-participation in the Physician Quality Reporting System (PQRS) increased to a 2% reduction in the CMS market basket update. Further, the increased number of patients with insurance provided through state exchanges or the Federal marketplace has exacerbated the payment problem. These patients typically have very high deductibles, along with a 90-day window to pay premiums, posing more obstacles to the collection of co-pays and out-of-pocket expenses. Notoriously, it should be noted that the CMS also takes longer to reimburse physicians as compared to private payers. Moreover, the ICD-10 transition has resulted in increased claims denials, resulting in labor-intensive, time-consuming efforts to overturn the same.

Confronted with these challenges, paradoxically, many physicians have had to reduce the number of patients they see, further eroding financial return. However, for those struggling practices, indiscriminate cost slashing is not the answer as physicians must finely balance improved operational efficiency with the achievement of the aims of quality patient care. This is where innovative technology can play a key role. Smart investment needs to target technology that is able to:

• Reduce operational expenses
• Ease regulatory compliance and the documentation demand
• Facilitate physician workflow
• Increase patient care time
• Generate more revenue

One such technology that meets the above criteria is mobile charge capture functionality within a secure messaging application. This would enable physicians to quickly and easily capture charges at the point of care and automatically and securely communicate this information to billing staff or a billing application.

To ensure there is no increased burden to physicians, this process must only take a couple “clicks” or a matter of seconds. For example, the application must have immediate accessible “favorite” codes composed of those services and diagnoses used most frequently and denoted by the terms most familiar to that particular practice, rather than formal codes and code definitions. Additionally, when needing to find a rarely used code not contained within favorites, the application should provide decision-support enabling the easy selection of the right ICD-10 code to be associated with the CPT code. Also, there should be code bundles available so multiple code combinations can be assigned to a patient in a single click.

This prompt and speedy process replaces the manual paper-and-pencil method in which physicians retrospectively attempt to make a note of the procedures performed —sometimes days or even weeks after the encounter. Consequently, quite often, not all services that were provided are recalled. These “notes” were then provided to the practice billing team who then must interpret the right procedure and identify the correct codes for billing purposes. Often because of the lack of detail within the notes, the specific details of the procedure are lost, reducing the amount of reimbursement received on top of the lost charges due to poor memory.

These issues could be virtually eliminated with smart mobile charge capture functionality. Additionally, this functionality enables the ability to easily add and document PQRS codes while facilitating patient rounding, with a customized patient list and direct access to previous charges, and with the ability to rapidly “clone” them for the day’s visit. This information would also be visible across the entire group of physicians, if desired.

By automating and expediting the charge capture process, there is a direct impact on the practice’s financial homeostasis:

• The elimination of lost charges and improved coding specificity directly translates into higher revenue.
• The coding decision support and the inability to mismatch CPT and ICD-10 codes mean reduced potential for costly and time-consuming audits and claims denials.
• The easy documentation of PQRS avoids the 2% CMS penalty and facilitates compliance.
• The immediate transmission of charges to billing staff speeds the time to billing, reducing the amount of time to payment received.
• The number of FTEs required to support the coding and billing process can be dramatically reduced markedly decreasing operational expenses.

Most importantly, such technology can allow physicians to spend more time doing what they want to do and what we need them to do—caring for and treating patients.

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