GeBBS Healthcare Blog

ENGLEWOOD CLIFFS, NJ, May 08, 2013 -- GeBBS Healthcare Solutions, Inc., an industry leader in healthcare revenue cycle management outsourcing solutions, will be demonstrating its state-of-the-art coding platform, iCode, at the Radiology Business Management Association (RBMA) 2013 Radiology Summit, May 19-22 in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

Becoming an accountable care organization (ACO) requires that your facility adopt a completely new point of view when it comes to revenue cycle management. The goal of an ACO is to reduce costs by improving the quality of care provided to patients. Providers are encouraged to and boost preventative efforts that may ultimately reduce the future need for high-cost medical services such as hospital stays. As a reward for the collaborative efforts of the ACO, participating insurers such as Medicare will generally offer financial rewards for lowering costs and meeting quality care goals for their patients. On the down side, this also means that ACO providers are accountable to Medicare and may risk losing money if their costs run higher than expected. Costs will no longer just affect overall profitability; for example, they will be evaluated in conjunction with efficiency to determine reimbursement parameters. Healthcare organizations need to be able to collect the correct financial and quality data, compile accurate reports and run predictive analytics in order to meet ACO objectives of better care at lower costs.

For physicians, getting paid properly for the services they provide is extremely important. Between constantly changing coding rules and dozens of insurance contracts -- each with its own coverage, billing and payment terms -- many medical practices find it difficult to keep up. As a result, physicians too often are paid less than they actually should be which impacts their cash flow.

On October 1^st, 2014, the official use of and mandatory transition into ICD-10 in the United States will commence. In addition, it will be split into two systems: ICD-10-Clinical Modifications (CM) (a system that uses unique alphanumeric category classifications for the first time, includes more than 68,000 diagnostic codes, and has twice as many categories as ICD-9-CM), and ICD-10 procedure coding system (PCS) (a system for inpatient hospital procedure coding).