If your organization depends on medical billing software in any capacity, it’s important to know how the medical billing software landscape is evolving… because it is, and quickly!
What’s out there? What new features are there? How are best practices changing to meet organizational needs when it comes to medical billing solutions?
Mobile Access
The mobile nature of the health industry, whether it involves traveling to treat patients, home health nursing, or just constantly being on the move between exam rooms means that mobile medical billing has a lot of appeal. It helps streamline paperwork tasks throughout the day, and keeps professionals from feeling tied to a desktop, and from the hassle of lugging a laptop around. Does every medical billing software service offer an integrated mobile suite? Not yet, but it’s definitely a rising trend if only because the demand is so high!
Stronger Security
More mobility, of course, means the need for stronger security. The increasing popularity of medical billing from home jobs is another aspect of the industry pushing for greater security, in an industry where privacy and security are already hugely important. HIPAA violations are something every practice wants to avoid, and not just because they lead to crippling fines. It’s also because patient trust, which is so important in a healthcare scenario, depends upon keeping patient information safe and secure.
As patients become more aware of EHR (electronic health records) and the mobility offered by today’s technology, they’ll want to be reassured that their data is still being safeguarded. And practitioners need to be assured of that as well.
So you’ll see more medical software solution vendors hyping up new and improved security measures. In fact, this is one of the major factors driving software upgrades for many facilities—as data security improves in new software, older software makes a more tempting target for malicious hackers.
This is one trend we highly recommend staying on the leading edge of.
Software Integrated Coding
ICD-10 preparedness is a major motivator for this trend, but it’s not the only one. It’s also one trend that serves as a benchmark for providers looking for software that they can depend on. Software that has a solid history of integrated coding and manages to remain consistently up to date is a tool that helps to smooth difficult coding transitions. Software that doesn’t can make transitioning to new coding practices a nightmare.
So, on the one hand, of course clinics and doctors want the convenience of integrated coding with their medical billing software. It saves time and money and helps practices avoid billing mistakes—which makes everyone happy.
On the other hand, even if a small practice doesn’t necessarily require software integrated coding, it can help them—and having up to date coding integration is a great indicator that a software vendor is committed to staying on the cutting edge of medical billing software solution trends.
Integration with EHR
When coding, billing, and EHR are all digitized, fully integrating all three sounds like a great idea. That’s about as streamlined as things can get! Of course, it’s not that simple, due to security and compatibility issues—which is why some of the most popular and reliable vendors have taken on the challenge of providing this feature.
Web Based Services
Medical professionals aren’t IT techs, and that’s probably a large part of the reason that many small to medium sized practices have already begun the migration to web-based medical billing software solutions. Of course, we’re also seeing larger facilities making the change, as well. But it’s most obvious in the smaller sectors where a practice can’t afford to keep IT staff on full time.
Another huge advantage of web based services is their security. First, the onus for providing server security is off of the practice, which is great. Second, it’s the responsibility of a company that is fully prepared to take it on with the most advanced tech available to them. Web based services are more likely to keep security measures updated and to have stronger protections in place than a single server being managed by an individual facility.
And naturally, the typical cloud-based service bonuses, like less down time, less risk of a catastrophic data loss, easier back ups, less vulnerability to physical disasters like flood and fire, etc.
