Dialysis patients are now required to have electronic health records (EHRs) - a computerized version of all of their health records that allows any physician who has access to the system to see their complete medical history. This helps both primary care physicians and nephrologists provide appropriate care, as well as make the billing process easier.
Guidelines related to unifying patient records requires dialysis systems to keep all health records for a patient together. For example, if a patient has seen five different doctors, the records from all five doctors are placed together in one computer file. This allows the patient's current doctor to see his entire medical history at a glance, as well as making it easier for outsourced medical billing facilities to determine what services to bill the patient.
The system usually allows doctors to input medical codes related to the patient's latest treatments and symptoms. This helps outsourced medical billing personnel as well, because the computer system assigns value to the codes and automatically does the billing. The billing department then just has to verify that the codes are correct and tell the computer to send the bill to the patient. If a patient or doctor claims there's a billing error, resolving the error is a simple matter of looking at the computerized record and determining whether the correct codes were entered into the system.
In addition to making invoicing easier, this kind of EHR is required by law. Medicare has required dialysis systems to provide an EHR for all patients for the past several years. Medicare personnel must be able to access these records to determine which services Medicare will cover for a given patient. In addition, The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health (HITECH) Act under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009 requires all doctor's offices, regardless of specialty, to provide these health records for each patient.
Unifying medical record files in accordance with these requirements has other benefits for dialysis patients unrelated to billing. Most EHR systems can prevent problems related to drug interactions or allergies. Information about the patient's current medications and known allergies are stored in the medical record, and the computer software alerts the physician of problems with proposed prescriptions. In addition, patients can more easily move between their primary care physician and their kidney specialist, because both physicians have access to all of their medical records. Patients can also look up their current bills and check to see how much their insurance has already covered.
Author is a freelance copywriter. For more information about outsourced medical billing, please visit http://www.HiiWeb.com
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