Ease the Way - Gebauer Patient Comfort Blog | Healthcare Administration (8)

What Is a Medical Practice Management System?

By: Bethany Nock | On: May 31, 2017

While every physician shares the primary responsibility of providing the best possible care to their patients, private practice physicians have the added challenge of running a business.

Managing a private practice can be expensive and exhausting, which is why physicians carefully choose their support staff — they want to make sure the clinic is filled with a team who can handle the administrative burdens so they can focus on patient care.

Once a physician has hired the best personnel for their clinic, the next step to ensuring the practice is run as efficiently as possible is to adopt a medical practice management system. A medical practice management system is a type of healthcare software that manages the day-to-day operations of a clinic, such as appointment scheduling, billing and other administrative tasks.

Here's what private practice physicians need to know about the basic components of a medical practice management system.

3 Ways Nurses Can Enhance Hospital Patient Safety

By: Sue Zagula | On: May 25, 2017

While a modern hospital may not have much in common with the locations where Florence Nightingale practiced, the mission remains the same: provide the highest quality of care in an environment focused on patient health and safety.

What can today’s nurses do to support this goal? Here are three ways staff nurses and nurse leaders can enhance hospital patient safety.

5 Most Common Medical Billing and Coding Errors

By: Bethany Nock | On: May 11, 2017

How accurate are the claims submitted by your medical billing department? Given the complexities of the medical coding system, it’s not surprising that mistakes are made.

Unfortunately, even small errors can lead to claim denials and payment delays.

A March 2016 NBC News report noted an error rate of 7 percent to 75 percent in medical claims, depending on the source of the statistics. In 2010, the Office of the Inspector General reported that 42 percent of Medicare claims were improperly coded and 19 percent lacked sufficient documentation.

Whether the true error rate is closer to 7 or 75 percent, billing mistakes can have a big impact on your bottom line.

In addition to being costly for your hospital, these types of mistakes can also affect your relationship with patients. Avoiding common medical billing and coding mistakes will help reduce your error rate and keep your patients happy.

Here are five errors commonly made by hospital medical billers.

3 Ways Hospital Admins Can Improve Healthcare Efficiency

By: Bethany Nock | On: May 3, 2017

From organizing regular meetings between departments to scheduling procedures throughout the week, there are dozens of ways hospital admins can increase efficiency.

Regardless of the industry, it can be tempting to maintain the same processes that have been in place for years, but just as the healthcare industry is constantly evolving so too must a hospital administrator’s approach to managing their facility.

Here are three cutting-edge ways hospital admins can improve healthcare efficiency.

3 Benefits of Creating a Nurse Residency Program at Your Hospital

By: Bethany Nock | On: April 25, 2017

New graduates are often eager to leave the world of classes and studying behind, and jump feet first into their career. With a significant number of the current nursing workforce reaching retirement age, projected at 1 million by 2025, hospitals are adding more recent grads to the employment pipeline just to keep up.

Finding ways to develop these novice nurses into the best practitioners they can be by advancing their professional development often falls on the administrators’ shoulders.

A Nurse Residency Program (NRP) is one option intended to make the leap from student to practicing nurse smoother for everyone by focusing on leadership, patient safety, and interdisciplinary care. Below we’ll explore why your hospital should consider implementing this type of program and what benefits can be expected.