Month: February 2019

Calling for Backup!
By Veronica Scoot

Calling for Backup!

PulseIT today reported that Melbourne Health Group, a specialist cardiology practice located at Cabrini Health’s hospital at Malvern, was hit by a ransomware attack that encrypted their practice data. It’s not the first time we have seen this lapse in patient data security and it won’t be the last. So how is your practice data backup health?

Do you know the when, what, how, where and who of your practice backup?

When does your backup take place? Is it scheduled regularly enough that you could recover adequately if your datafile was lost?

What data is included? Does your backup include multiple copies of your practice data?

How is it collected? Do you have to run it manually? Does it warn you if it doesn’t proceed successfully?
How far back does it go? If you lost yesterday’s datafile, could you go back to an earlier copy?

Where is it stored? Is your only backup copy located on your network, where it is vulnerable to cyber-attack? Is it in the cloud – and if so, does its storage comply with the Australian Privacy laws?

Who is responsible for monitoring it? Many IT set and forget. Many practices assume the backup is working and only when disaster strikes do they realise their error.

Your backup is YOUR responsibility, but there is help available to ensure you have good processes in place to keep things safe and running smoothly. It is all part of having a good disaster recovery plan in your Practice Manual.

For a practice health check to improve your patient data security, contact Practice Management Plus for guidance and implementation support.

One single change…
By Fiona Stopp

One single change…

We love giving tips to help medical practices thrive with Genie software. So, what is the one single change we could make to our processes which would increase income, decrease expenses, improve efficiencies, and decrease rejections?

This is the most exciting question I have been asked in 16 years as a software trainer of Genie software and here is the answer.

Choose the correct CATEGORY in the Genie Address Book.

Now, I can feel your disbelief but read on.

The CATEGORY determines the duration of the referral.

When the CATEGORY is blank, Genie allocates a 12-month duration to the referral by default. This is the beginning of your problems.

If the referrer is a specialist, the referral expires in 3 months but your records show it as valid, so it may be another 9 months before you or your staff are alerted.

Consider the following scenarios

  • Your patient is bulk-billed: If “Referral expired” exception messages are dismissed without investigating further, you may see a patient for a year without getting paid.
  • Your patient pays the account in full: The patient will not receive the Medicare rebate. They may not contact you to alert you to the problem.

Will this discourage patients to use your services?

How will this impact your surgical billing?

Now consider this scenario:

  1. Every referring doctor in your address book has the correct Category
  2. Correct durations are allocated when referrals are added to the patient record
  3. The ‘Check Forward Referrals’ report is run each week to show each appointment in the selected date range that needs a new referral
  4. Use the ‘Show in Patient List’ option to send an SMS reminder to the patient to obtain a referral from their GP
  5. Invoices transmit with accurate details
  6. Rebates are paid correctly
    1. Bulk bill amounts pay to the Provider without error
    2. Fully paid patient claims rebates pay to the patient without error
  7. As a result, your staff have more time, and less stress
  8. The practice sees an increase of income, a decrease of expenses, an improvement of efficiencies, and a significant decrease in rejections and exceptions.

Have you enjoyed this simple tip? This is only one of the changes that Practice Management Plus can implement with Genie software at your practice. Contact us to learn how we can help you move from survive to thrive.