In a perfect world, medical providers would simply focus on delivering the best possible service to all their patients, and the financial aspects of their practice would take care of themselves. Happy patients and a staff with high morale would be sufficient to ensure an adequate revenue stream. However, some medical practices could do better with how they handle their business operations in terms of efficiency, denied claims, and unpaid claims. Here are the three biggest reasons why most medical practices typically fail when it comes to maximizing their revenue.

Not every patient will be polite, well-behaved, and pleasant during interactions with you and the rest of the staff at your medical practice. Some patients will have anxiety, pain, and fear about their condition or have something else going on in their lives that can cause problems. Your medical organization may see patients who fail to show up for their appointments on a regular basis, for example, or use abusive language or behave in an offensive manner. Staffers and other patients could also be contending with patients who continuously show anger or appear extremely frightened. Here are five tips for doctors and medical practices for handling patients who aren’t easy to deal with.

Savvy owners and managers of medical practices are always on the lookout for ways to improve all aspects of their operations. In the highly competitive medical industry, it’s important to use the latest technology and software to achieve higher levels of efficiency, which leads to improved patient care, as well as maintaining staff morale. If your organization has been relying on paper-based systems to manage your collective efforts, you will want to read on about how practice management software can improve your office today.

With the advent of increasingly inexpensive computer systems and cheaper data storage systems, radiology practices are able to work faster and more efficiently thanks to Radiology Information Systems software. Whether you are new to using RIS software or have integrated it into your practice and already have some experience, there are always new things to learn to get the most out of the application. Here are eight quick tips for using RIS software that you and your team will find beneficial.

Regardless of whether your practice has or has not yet transitioned to EMR, you may still have questions about how they work. EMR enables easily controlled access to patient records. Now, instead of locking filing cabinets and needing to have the “key person” open them as needed, protocols can be established as to the levels of patient medical information (“role based”) each system user can or cannot access. One of the most important questions that you may be wondering about is what kinds of information you might find in electronic medical records.

There is a lot of talk these days about CMS’ impending required change from ICD-9 to ICD-10. The coming change, due to occur on October 1, 2015, is designed to let medical organizations take advantage of a greatly expanded and much more detailed code set. ICD was created and is maintained by the World Health Organization (WHO), as the codes are used to communicate medical information worldwide.

In healthcare, change is constant. New methods for diagnosing and assessing medical problems are constantly being developed and improved upon, as are new techniques and treatments to help patients. Healthcare software is very much in the “change” mix as well, a current example of which is CMS’ announcing of the switch to ICD-10 by October 1, 2015.

It’s not always clear how new software will help an organization in any industry, especially if you are entering into unknown territory. Such is the case with medical organizations and Practice Management Software. It’s prudent to work with a software company that has the experience and knowledge to develop and regularly upgrade its medical applications.

Like many managers or owners of a thriving medical practice, you have heard about the benefits of using electronic health records software and are interested in implementing an EHR in your organization. You can assume that many, if not all, of your nearby competitors are using EHR, and the more effective they are in using this software, the better they will be able to attract and keep patients.

Is your medical practice still relying on a paper-based system to process and maintain patient records? An increasingly growing number of medical organizations are coming to realize the benefits of switching to an electronic system, particularly because of the greater efficiencies and cost savings. If this is the case for your organization, you may have been considering switching over to a Radiological Information System, also referred to as RIS. To help make the case for transitioning to RIS, it’s a good idea to learn how using RIS software can save your practice money.