As part of its efforts to control costs and improve how we provide healthcare to people in the United States, the government established a program designed to open floodgates of information from medical organizations. The Physician Quality Reporting System or PQRS is a program through the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Doctors working in their own practice or in a group practice are encouraged to provide reports to show what quality of care they offer to patients through Medicare. This information is valuable and the government established incentives to encourage participation. With that in mind, read on to learn more about the importance of reporting PQRS data.

Efficiency should be the name of the game at your medical practice, but not at the expense of giving patients less time and attention, of course. Areas where you can make up the time include patient communications with staff, issuing lab results and carrying out data entry. For many busy medical practices that already have set up electronic health record software, adding a patient portal to the mix is an ideal way to streamline common procedures and save both staff and patients a lot of time and effort. If you have been on the fence about using an EHR and a portal, read on for three ways patient portals can improve your practice’s efficiency.

It has been a little more than a year since the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services or CMS began paying for chronic care management services separately under its Medicare Physician Fee Schedule. The new payment scheme began January 1, 2015. This is something worth paying attention to, since approximately two out of every three patients on Medicare are contending with at least two chronic conditions, according to a recent report from CMS.

The following excerpt is from an article found on Health Data Management. It was written by Joseph Goedert. -------------------------------------- Physician practices that implement new electronic health records/practice management system should use them to target a short list of efficiency goals and clinical outcomes to gain the biggest initial impact from their investment, an expert in implementing these systems advises.

The type of medical organization you run has a great deal to do with whether many of your patients will require transitional care management, but TCM is an issue you should stay on top no matter how often it comes up of because industry and government updates can influence the way you do business.

With the arrival of every new technological innovation, we have to create new terms to cover the devices and systems we develop and implement. This is especially the situation in the fields of medicine and healthcare, given the pace of developments and the often-crucial nature of the new items being created. A case in point has to do with the terms “telehealth” and “telemedicine.” With so many people using these words without bothering to be precise in their definitions, it’s no wonder that medical professionals and patients alike become confused when confronting either term.

We’re all in this together. The health of individuals is one thing to consider, while the health of an entire population is an entirely different matter and one that medical organizations must always keep in mind when examining and treating patients one at a time.

The following excerpt is from an article found on Revcycleintelligence.com. It was written by Kyle Murphy. ----------------------------------------------------- As organizations transition to value-based care and adapt to the ACA, they will need to enact several changes in order to maintain peak revenue cycle health. Healthcare consumers receive the highest quality of service when operational inefficiencies are reduced and business processes are aligned to the goal of that service. That’s true for consumers, but also for providers, third-party relationships, and other partners who depend on the value that healthcare organizations deliver. In fact, it’s true for internal members of the organization, too.

In a busy practice, you may get so far behind in finishing tasks that you give less attention and time to your patients than you’d prefer. The key to a thriving practice is to make sure you develop a good rapport between staffers and patients. To help you improve the situation, here are five steps to building a successful patient relationship that you can start taking today.

Shocking stories of major data breaches by computer criminals continue to appear in the news, with no end in sight. So many organizations fail to shore up their computer networks or apply the latest in security best practices that hackers from any location in the world with Internet access can penetrate their systems with relative ease.