According to a new study, doctors are failing to cut cholesterol enough and millions may suffer from heart attacks or stroke due to that poor advice.  Scientist stated on March 11 that only about half of patients at high risk of heart disease are given right targets for cutting cholesterol.

German researchers said that over 10 years, around 50 to 80 heart attacks, strokes and heart disease-related deaths per 1,000 patients could be averted if all doctors correctly followed guidelines on cholesterol-lowering targets.

“The numbers highlight the enormous health implications … in our findings,” said Heribert Schunkert, who led the study into more than 25,000 patients in Germany.

Drugs called statins, like Pfizer’s Lipitor or AstraZeneca’s Crestor, which lower cholesterol and have been credited with preventing millions of heart attacks and strokes, are often prescribed to patients with high heart risk.

But Schunkert, of the University Clinic of Schleswig Holstein in Luebeck, said guidelines on how much cholesterol should be brought down in each type of patient may be too complex. Doctors often failed, especially with women patients, to recognize the risk and set the right goals, he said.

“Efforts should be made to make guidelines simpler and easier to understand and follow, instruments to identify high-risk patients more easily should be developed, and special attention should be paid to women,” he wrote in a commentary on the study, which was published in the European Heart Journal.

Heart disease is the number one killer of men and women Europe, the United States and other industrialized nations and high cholesterol in the blood plays a major part in it.

So-called “bad cholesterol,” or low-density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol is a fatty substance known as a lipid which is carried in the blood on proteins. Reducing high LDL cholesterol levels with drugs, diet and other lifestyle changes is an important step in trying to prevent heart attacks and strokes.

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Doctors are generally advised that the higher the patient’s heart disease risk, the lower the cholesterol target should be, but levels of risk are sometimes hard to establish.

Schunkert said patients in lower risk groups — who often have no known heart disease but have an accumulation of risk factors — “frequently … escape the notice of doctors for aggressive cholesterol-lowering treatment.”

The study of 25,250 patients and 907 doctors in Germany and found that only 55% of male patients and 49% of female patients were given correct LDL targets.

Schunkert said similar scenarios were likely to be found in other European countries and around the world and noted that similar data had been reported from Italy.

“The core question involves the perception of patient risk: for example, women are often perceived as having a lower cardiovascular risk … and this may lead to insufficient treatment,” he wrote. “We hope … our study will remind physicians of the need to observe relevant guidelines to calculate individually every patient’s target value, so that they can deliver the best possible care to all their patients.”

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My Take: Just great, now they have high cholesterol you get a take more medication than you already do.  I guess this means that physician diagnostics is going to get a little bit better.  Drs. are going to have to do lipid testing more often than they already do.  For those who don’t know, that is a fat and cholesterol test of your blood.

If you’re an athlete, you probably may not have to worry about it too much with all sports supplements you take.  I, myself, take organic multivitamins and plenty of garlic.  Garlic is an old-time remedy for what ails you.  I also take 1000 mg of vitamin C every help boost my immune system.

I do know that if you lose weight, your cholesterol and fat levels will go down.  I recently heard about a HCG weight loss program that is pretty good.  It is also very simple because all you have to do is put HCG drops under your tongue.  They also have an injectable version of the HCG.

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Clinic Credentials

If you are in search of DME accreditation, an accreditation consultant, or healthcare accreditation consultants, you just need to go online for what you are looking for. A healthcare certification consultant  is a qualified professional in all accreditation requirements for ambulatory or outpatient health care facilities.  This includes home medical equipment accreditation as well.

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You expect your friends and even some colleagues to talk about you in various ways.  Many may talk about you on FaceBook and other in social networking sites, which are a treasure trove of inappropriate and embarrassing photos and even breaches of confidentiality.  However, we do expect to find anything about yourself from your doctor?  The answer is quite simple — NO!

A new survey of medical-school deans finds that unprofessional conduct on blogs and social-networking sites is increasing among medical students. Although med students fully understand patient-confidentiality laws and are indoctrinated in the high ethical standards to which their white-coated profession is he or ld, many of them still use FaceBook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr and other sites to depict and discuss lewd behavior and sexual misconduct, make discriminatory statements and discuss patient cases in violation of confidentiality laws, according to the survey, which was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. Of the 80 medical-school deans questioned, 60% reported incidents involving unprofessional postings and 13% admitted to incidents that violated patient privacy.

“I didn’t expect to find so many incidents of unprofessional conduct,” says Dr. Katherine Chretien, medicine-clerkship director at the Washington, D.C., Veterans Administration hospital and the lead author of the study. As a physician responsible for counseling medical students and residents, Chretien says she assumed that students were “educated about professional conduct online and used better judgment.”

For those new doctors were just starting their practice and need medical equipment . . . Your main portal for access to products from the nation’s major pharmaceutical firms and medical diagnostic equipment makers, as well as an online source for physicians to purchase tools and office testing equipment is now available to you.  You can get such things as the Articulating Safe Ear Curette™, which is the only curette that articulates to assist in the removal of cerumen from the ear canal.  It works because of its unique living hinge at the tip and the split handle design.  You can also get something like the new Welch Allyn Spot Vital Signs® LXi, also called a vital signs monitor, that gives you more parameters and more options than any other spot-check device on the market, so you have the flexibility to customize it to meet your specific needs.

But medical students, it seems, are no different from the rest of us when it comes to posting drunken party pictures online or tweeting about their daily comings, goings and musings — however inappropriate they may be. Many students feel they are entitled to post what they wish on their personal profiles, maintaining that the information is in fact personal and not subject to the same policies and guidelines that govern their professional behavior on campus. Though medical students would agree that physicians — and other professionals, like teachers — should be held to a higher standard of integrity by society, the new study suggests that they’re confused by how rules apply, especially in cyberspace, once the white coat comes off. “They view their Facebook pages as their Internet persona,” says Dr. Neil Parker, senior associate dean for student affairs for graduate medical education at UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine. “They think it’s something only for their friends, even though it’s not private.”

That attitude is largely dictated by age, says Parker. In focus groups involving students, faculty, administrators and staff, the school has found a clear generational divide between those who tend to blur the line between their personal and professional lives and those who don’t. Younger students were more likely than older staff members to believe that their thoughts and opinions were valid to post online, regardless of their potentially damaging or discriminatory impact on others.

The issue is especially relevant when it comes to discussing patient cases. Laws prohibit doctors from talking about patients using individually identifiable information. However, as Chretien notes, sharing patient-care experiences can be a useful and powerful learning tool for medical students that encourages “reflection, empathy and understanding,” she writes in the paper. Although discussing their experiences online may be allowed, students must be made aware that identifying information is not limited to patients’ names and that divulging other characteristics and details often violates patient-privacy laws.

According to Chretien, medical schools need to change their curriculum to include a better explanation of what is and what is not covered under patient-privacy laws.  As well as making sure that all medical students are aware of privacy settings on social-networking sites.  A task force, that includes students, has the task of creating guidelines for students to follow to help them decide what to post and what to keep to themselves was created at UCLA by Parker. “It’s going to be difficult,” he says. “Most students want us to provide them with education and guidelines, but not policies. It is a different culture; we always say we have to be culture-sensitive to our patients, but we have to be culture-sensitive to our students as well.”

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My Take: In the education of medical professionals, this should be a priority!  A class that emphasizes patient privacy should include what a medical professional can discuss on any patient, anywhere including FaceBook or Twitter.  I do not think they should be discussing in detail or any other way what is wrong with a patient on any social-networking service.

I am sure that any of the interns would not appreciate another medical professional talking about their Fort Walton Beach hair replacement surgeon and how that doctor changed his looks or how a female intern went to a surgeon for Destin Florida breast implants to improve her parents.  In fact, they would probably be the first ones to complain about it.  Then they should stop to think how the patients must feel.

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Medical Accreditation

With the changes and new focus for the CMS, Medicare Program medical professionals nationwide are having a hard time keeping up with all the changes, thus, these healthcare accreditation consultants provide a Medicare package keeps them on top of these regulatory demands and maintains their safe and certified status with the Federal Medicare Program.  De-Certification with the Federal Medicare Program is one of their best and most effective services, getting the clients back into the certified status is just another way clients can utilize this accreditation consultant service in their business models.

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Students are a lot more vulnerable to the swine flu virus because it easily spreads in classrooms.  Because it takes a heavier toll on children and young adults, schools are desperate in many districts for school nurses.  Many districts have few or no nurses to handle or respond to a swine flu outbreak.

The shortage of school nurses could lead to more students falling ill from the H1N1 virus, which can be particularly dangerous for children with weakened immune systems or respiratory conditions such as asthma, experts say.

“It’s really irresponsible of the school district to not really provide medical oversight while kids are in school,” said Jamie Hintzke, who has two kids in Northern California’s Pleasanton Unified School District, including a son with severe food allergies. The district has one nurse for 15 schools and almost 15,000 students. “I’m playing Russian roulette every single day he goes to school.”

When the swine flu emerged last spring, it was a school nurse in New York City – Mary Pappas at St. Francis Preparatory School – who helped identify and curtail the country’s first major outbreak after she noticed large numbers of students complaining of high fevers and sore throats.  But many schools around the country don’t have a medical professional who can quickly diagnose students and detect outbreaks.

A 2008 survey by the National Association of School Nurses found that only 45% of public schools have their own full-time nurse, another 30% have a part-time nurse, and a quarter don’t have any nurses at all.

The average nurse-to-student ratio nationwide was one nurse for every 1,151 students, but in 14 states there was only one nurse for more than 2,000 students, according to the nurses association. States with the highest ratios include Oregon with one nurse for every 3,142 students, Michigan with one for every 4,204, and Utah with one for every 4,893.

Only 12 states, mostly in the Northeast, met the 1-to-750 ratio recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the association found.  In Michigan, severe financial problems prompted the Pontiac School District to lay off five of its six nurses, who played a key role in the district’s response to swine flu last spring.

“If H1N1 is anything like the prediction, schools without school nurses will be missing their front line of defense,” said Susan Zacharski, the district’s only remaining nurse. She now works in a center for special needs students who are legally entitled to a nurse, but there are no nurses to serve the district’s other 7,200 students.

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With swine flu cases rising with the new school year, districts are depending on teachers, principals and secretaries with little medical training to identify, isolate and send home sick children, as well as monitor absences and illnesses for signs of a wider outbreak.

“We’re asking so much more of untrained staff as far as providing medical management,” said Nina Fekaris, a nurse in the Oregon’s Beaverton School District who is responsible for four schools with 4,300 students. “It’s putting our kids at risk.”  Some teachers complain they haven’t received guidance or training on how to deal with swine flu.

“We really don’t know what symptoms to look for, how to caution our kids or how to protect ourselves,” said Robert Ellis, a first grade teacher at Washington Elementary School in Richmond, Calif. “I’m really concerned about it spreading in the classroom, how many kids will be impacted and the loss of educational time.”

Since it was first identified in April, the swine flu has infected more than 1 million Americans and killed nearly 600, the CDC estimates.  So far swine flu does not appear to be more dangerous than seasonal flu, which kills an estimated 36,000 Americans each year, but it appears to be more contagious and health officials are concerned that it could mutate and become deadlier.

Federal health officials are urging parents to have their kids vaccinated, but the H1N1 vaccine will not be ready until October.  In districts that have them, school nurses are developing plans to screen and quarantine sick students, teaching students proper classroom hygiene, urging parents to keep ill children at home, organizing vaccination campaigns and instructing teachers and school staff how to identify sick students.  In Utah’s Granite School District near Salt Lake City, officials have prepared a pandemic response plan, but the district only has 10 nurses for 89 schools with 68,000 students.

“It would be great to have a school nurse in each school. Unfortunately, we don’t have that luxury,” said district spokesman Ben Horsley.

In California, where there was one nurse for every 2,240 students last year, roughly half of the state’s 1,000 school districts do not have any nurses at all.  Among them is the Berkeley Unified School District, which has 17 schools with 9,000 students. The district has a partnership with the city health department to deal with school health issues, but has not had its own nurses for many years, said spokesman Mark Coplan.

“Parents have called to say, ‘Is there a new policy to deal with H1N1? We say, ‘No, it’s exactly the same as seasonal flu,’” Coplan said. “We really want to treat this as a normal situation.”

“What I’m concerned about is anyone thinking this won’t happen here,” Green said. “If there’s no plan in place and people are just acting in an ad hoc way, that’s risky.”

The problem is, there are only 19 states where a specific nurse–student ratio and very few states set money aside to pay for those nurses according to the nurses association.  The director for school health programs for the National School Boards Association, Brenda Green, has been urging school districts to partner with local health agencies, hospitals and nursing schools to prepare for the swine flu in their school districts.

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My Take: When I was in grade school there was always a school nurse at the school.  What is changed in the last 35 years?  Oh, I know, they would rather put the money into highways and government official pay raises.  I can remember in junior high and high school there was a nurse only so many days a week.  At that time, I never thought anything of it.

However, schools need to have a nurse on duty every day school is in!  A teacher cannot be expected to know everything about their students for health purposes.  Teachers have a hard enough job as it is with overcrowding in their classrooms.  As it is, I do not think teachers get paid enough to do the job they are doing!

And I know that many teachers do not like to hear it put this way, but, they are the babysitters for our children as well as their educators.  The funny thing of it is, parents pay their babysitters better than they do their teachers.  What does that say about our society?

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On September 22 the US Food and Drug Administration took the first steps in reining in the tobacco industry implementing a ban on candy, clove and other flavored cigarettes.  This ban required a law be passed earlier this year, gives the FDA more power over tobacco products in the hopes of preventing children and teenagers are starting to smoke.

“Candy and fruit flavored cigarettes are a gateway for many children and young adults to become regular tobacco users,” Dr. Lawrence Deyton, head of the FDA’s Center for Tobacco Products, told reporters in a conference call.

In June, President Barack Obama signed legislation allowing the FDA to oversee the manufacturing and marketing of cigarettes and other tobacco products, including regulating ingredients and limiting advertising. The agency must also approve any new tobacco products.

Still, the bill excludes any immediate action on menthol, or mint, flavored cigarettes that are used by as many as 12 million Americans, including most African-American smokers. Lawmakers instead called on the FDA to study the issue.  It is not immediately clear how effective the ban will be or what impact it will have on smoking habits.

“Although it will take time for it to have a 100 percent effect … it will have a dramatic effect on children and young women who are most likely to smoke these products,” said Diana Zuckerman, president of the National Research Center for Women & Families.

Children who already smoke may switch to regular cigarettes, but many will be reluctant try smoking if products don’t taste good, she said. “I think it does make it harder for companies to try to get away with anything,” she added.

The ban in unlikely to affect U.S. tobacco companies such as Altria Group Inc’s Philip Morris unit and Lorillard Inc’s Lorillard Tobacco Co, which do not make flavored cigarettes.  But some advocates have already expressed concern that smaller companies will simply shift their attention to cigars, snuff and other tobacco products not covered by the ban.

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The Campaign for Tobacco-Free Kids, which supported the FDA’s new oversight, said the nation’s top distributor of clove-flavored cigarettes, California-based Kretek International Inc., now sells clove cigars that look and taste like its clove cigarettes.

One company that imports its products, Kretek, could not be immediately reached for comment.  Another company Star scientific as well as others that make dissolvable smokeless tobacco products in various flavors they also be affected.  The agency said it would discuss other flavored products according to the FDA’s Deyton.

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My Take: As a smoker, I think this is a good thing.  However, I do not believe that menthol flavored cigarettes are a big threat.  If a child or teenager wants to smoke, they will.  It’s the same old adage of, tell them not to and they will.  Just like many smokers are told that they cannot smoke in certain places and they still try.

I do agree that smoking is not good for you and that I should not smoke.  However, I have other reasons for smoking it still are not good reasons and I still do it.  I do admit that I am trying to stop smoking by using an electronic cigarette.  It is helping me to reduce the amount of regular cigarettes that I smoke.

I think the main issue with smokers is that it is something that is done by choice and everybody has their freedom of choice.  Smoking has always been something people were allowed to do everywhere and only recently have restrictions been implemented.  Many of those restrictions smokers do not mind, but others they object to such as not being able to smoke and drive or smoke as they walk down the street.  Some cities have implemented a “no smoking allowed” within their city limits.  This may cause some problems and I am waiting to see what happens.

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It is a fact, that healthcare organizations can accelerate their revenue cycle by installing point-of-service payment processes.  There are many factors squeezing the revenues of hospitals and healthcare systems today that include shrinking patient volumes and decreased donations.  These factors also take a toll on providers need to make sure that they are efficiently collecting the money they are owed for services and treatment they provide as well as maintaining and enhancing patient relationships and satisfaction.

An area ripe for improvement in many healthcare organizations is the collection of the self-pay portion of payments, the out-of-pocket part of patients’ payments that falls outside of their insurance coverage, or the total payment for the growing number of uninsured consumers.

Today’s economy has caused consumer responsibilities to change. Consumers now have a greater financial risk associated with medical treatment as demonstrated by higher copays and deductibles. Also, according to a Healthcare Informatics Webinar, increased consumer financial responsibility does not equate to higher revenues for healthcare providers. To translate increased consumer financial responsibility into faster payment collection and avoid potentially decreased revenues, providers need to increase the ways and means of collecting payments from consumers, both in-person prior to treatment and online after treatment.  By improving the point-of-service process, providers may be able to reap more tangible financial benefits.

Capturing Payments

The increased need for point-of-service payments can be tied to the providers’ desire to receive payment prior to treatment, along with other trends such as a greater number of immigrant and uninsured patients who pay out of pocket, a growing contingent of companies that bypass their insurance providers and pay directly for their employees’ healthcare needs, and the increased use of high-deductible health plans and health savings accounts.

Payment types that can be collected at a point-of-service location fall into four categories. The three expected categories are the following:

1. cash and nonconvertible checks (travelers checks, corporate checks, drafts) that cannot be converted into electronic transactions at the point of sale;
2. checks that can be converted into electronic transactions at the point of sale; and
3. debit and credit card payments with real-time authentication.

And a surprising fourth one:

4. payroll deductions for employees, one of any healthcare facility’s largest constituencies.

To accept these point-of-service payments, providers need to have specific hardware and software in place. Electronic payment processing requires devices attached to workstations for swiping credit and debit cards and check scanners that convert checks to electronic transactions. To process cash payments, virtual cash drawers, department vaults, vault aggregation bank deposits, and cash reconciliation, including management and recording of over/shorts, are necessary.

After accepting payment from patients, the point-of-sale system submits payment information in posting files for both the patient accounting and general ledger systems so that all activity is automatically prepared for direct input. Point-of-sale information is also available for reporting and reconciliation processing for researching transactions, making adjustments, balancing bank deposits, and reconciling accounting systems posting files. Administrative features, such as creating departments and cost centers and reviewing inventory if used to handle non-patient payments, give hospital management the ability to monitor user activity.

Cash payments can be a real headache for healthcare facilities because cash must be manually handled, counted, and deposited. Cash registers for payments in retail environments are generally expensive and focused on higher volume transactions—something most hospitals do not require. Increased emphasis on the self-pay portion of bills places greater demands on cash-handling best practices, such as sufficient separation of duties.

Utilizing a user-specific real or virtual cash drawer system with master vaulting to track monetary assets, starting from the moment of receipt of cash to bank deposits, ensures that payments cannot be lost, misplaced, or stolen. To protect the security of cash payments, providers will install more safes, placing them out of public view and bolting them to the floor.

Credit card and check payments that can be converted into electronic transactions are both easier to deal with at point-of-service locations than cash. Electronically capturing card and check payments reduce “float,” speeds the inflow of funds to the bank account, and simplifies the entire deposit process.

Card swipe and check reader machines process credit card payments instantaneously and convert paper checks into electronic transactions for transmission through the automated clearinghouse network. Offering patients multiple payment methods, including deductions for hospital employees, makes the point-of-service process more like other commerce transactions that are well known by consumers.

Payroll deduction is an interesting point-of-service payment process because serving employees is big business for providers. It’s generally known throughout the industry that healthcare workers are among the biggest consumers of services because their familiarity with how to take proper care of their health leads to more demand.

Setting up payroll deductions from the point-of-service to support this demand involves verifying employee eligibility and creating payroll deduction orders that are fulfilled either once or on a recurring basis. (Recurring deductions need to be sensitive to payroll cycles.) A maintenance method also needs to be implemented to create alerts about payroll changes that affect how automated deductions are executed.

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Discovering Benefits

Benefits for this service touch many aspects of an organization, including streamlining payment processes, improving customer satisfaction, assisting with fundraising, and reducing systems training.  Point-of-service systems offer providers the following front- and back-office operational benefits:

• standardized payment processing across multiple healthcare entities;
• strengthened internal controls;
• reduced training costs;
• decreased printing and postage costs;
• detailed receipt content and sequential numbering;
• increased payment processing efficiencies through a paperless environment;
• reduced “touch” points for each transaction through integration with the general ledger, patient accounting systems, and other tracking systems such as incentive reporting; and
• reduced transaction service time by handling cash, cards, checks, and employee payroll deductions, including the conversion of eligible checks into electronic transactions.

A point-of-service system streamlines payment processing by standardizing the process and reducing the rekeying and rehandling a payment receives as it moves through deposit and posting—a major plus for multi-facility healthcare organizations that may have had disparate collection processes.

Accepting patient payments for any location creates additional collection opportunities. An ideal point-of-service system gives providers knowledge of whether a patient has unpaid bills at another facility and also provides a way to handle interorganization transfers.

Another service finding its way into the point-of-service process is the establishment of financing or payment plans prior to treatment. By creating these accounts ahead of time, providers can accelerate 60 to 90 days ahead of the current billing cycles that wait for adjudication and traditional paper billing to run its course.

Processing non-patient payments has a role as well. Items such as equipment rental fees or class registration can be similar to accepting patient payments except they post to the general ledger instead of the patient accounting system.

Accepting non-patient payments is also useful for processing charitable donations. Some organizations have used a virtual point-of-service system to process donations directly at galas and other fundraising events away from the traditional locations inside the healthcare facility.

In addition to organizational benefits, consumers respond positively to improved point-of-service payment capabilities. Take, for instance, refunds that can be processed electronically through the system rather than through a manual check process. Patients enjoy receiving refunds on the spot as opposed to waiting two to three weeks.

Implementation

Implementing a point-of-service payment system consists of setting up the organization records for specific regions, entities, and departments; establishing the general ledger accounts for offsets and over or short entries; and setting up and training users. Implementation can be tackled in phases, such as one facility at a time, to allow for infrastructure changes to be properly supported and absorbed before tackling the next entity.

The average cost of an implementation for a healthcare facility depends on the number of terminals purchased. For example, a combination check reader and card swipe device costs about $225, while a card swipe reader alone will cost about $85. Add another $200 per terminal for set-up and system configuration, plus there may be minimum fees and training expenses to consider as well.

Removing the analog phone line—which costs about $10 per month—that was used for dial-up credit card authorization terminals can often offset the cost of new devices in two years or less. Meanwhile, the ongoing operation costs consist of maintenance and payment click fees. These fees vary based on hospital size or number of users.

Studies indicate a small hospital (approximately 100 beds) can expect a 169% return on investment after three years. A medium hospital (300 beds) can expect a 288% gain, while a larger enterprise can see as much as a 360% windfall. The larger enterprises generate more savings because they frequently have more than one point-of-service payment process that can be centralized. Eliminating the additional redundancy ends up producing more savings.

Contributing to the successful return are the following factors: a reduction in the cost of taking payments, reduced training expenses, a decrease in exceptions and back-end processing and, naturally, accelerated cash flow. In addition, there are indirect benefits such as improved customer service and a higher quality of work/life for staff.

Avoiding Common Pitfalls

Moving forward, capturing and handling payments needs to occur in a more structured, streamlined manner in healthcare facilities. Proponents of real-time adjudication want to see the practice incorporated in this area because an adjudicated claim means the self-pay portion is now revealed. Furthermore, if the patient is to be fully empowered to review the financial impact of care prior to treatment, then the current method of insurance claim, adjudication, and settlement is in dire need of reform. This conclusion is not surprising due to the fact that the process is based on an antiquated batch-processing model conceived well before the Internet and the idea of real-time, peer-to-peer communication.

In the future, using point-of-service payment collection will be most effective when paired with real-time adjudication and transparent pricing. Lacking real-time adjudication, organizations created their own internal claim databases that forecast the self-pay portion based on the financial outcome of similar treatment. Healthcare organizations that provide reliable prices to consumers prior to treatment know what to collect at the point of service and can subsequently improve on how it is achieved.

Doing more with less staff is another concern for finance departments. The economy puts financial departments at a greater risk of staff cuts, especially among hospitals with 500 or more beds. Streamlining the payment process by automating point-of-service transactions and integrating them with other systems saves time and enables organizations to devote manpower to other areas.  Organizations must also remember that changing processes at the point of service cuts a wide swath. Be sure to leave enough time to prepare, plan, train, and implement changes.

Obtaining executive buy-in is an important step to beginning the path to more efficient point-of-service operations. However, it should be one of the easiest to achieve because of the obvious benefits in expense, control, and operations. Preparing a return-on-investment report can uncover numerous examples of waste that manual procedures have slowly layered into existing processes. Simple items, such as eliminating analog phone lines used for dial-up swipe terminals, all contribute to greater financial success.

Obtaining employee buy-in should likewise be easy to achieve. Consider that when an employee can improve customer satisfaction with the healthcare process, then job satisfaction is similarly improved. Surveys taken where customer satisfaction is measured on a formal basis reflect that automated point-of-service systems can result in a 15% improvement in how patients view their experience at a healthcare facility.

Introducing and actively using point-of-service payment collection processes can lead to a more efficient billing process and customer service satisfaction—two areas that can generate money and time savings.

Point-of-Service Self-Assessment

1. The following questions assess a healthcare organization’s ability to collect payments prior to or at the time of service:
2. Do you capture sufficient patient and, when necessary, guarantor contact information during the point-of-service process?
3. Do you share a list of prices for treatments and services with patients?
4. If you are a part of a multi&facility healthcare system, are you able to accept patient payments at any entity?
5. Can you accept non-patient payments, such as equipment rental fees or class registration, as you would patient payments?
6. Can you convert check payments into an electronic transaction at point-of-service locations?
7. Do you have separation of duties for staff members who accept payments and reconcile payments?
8. Do you have measures in place to protect cash payments?
9. Are you promoting the collection of payments at the point-of-service to your staff and the general public?

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My Take: I think it is strange that the healthcare industry has not embraced point-of-service before this.  I know they have been accepting credit cards for years, but the system seems a whole lot better.  It saves them money and can also save money for the patient.

For example, a retail business that needs new office equipment, but instead gets used copy machines to save money and then passes that savings on to their customers.  Used photo copiers are definitely cheaper than brand-new ones.  It is the same principle that the healthcare industry should be using.

It is going to take a long time for the healthcare industry to revamp itself.  They are trying to initiate EHRs, which would help patients across the country.  They are trying to reorganize health care insurance so that everyone has medical coverage.  This type of payment system would help alleviate a lot of their financial problems at least.

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