Open an X-Charge account by the end of November and receive a substantial bonus. To learn more click here

Open an X-Charge account by October 31 and receive a substantial bonus. To learn more click here

LTC has reduced their rates from $0.39 cents per claim to $0.35 cents per claim!

Im sure those of you who use LTC are very glad to hear this news.

Are you concerned about being excluded from the two (2) percent bonus for
Medicare Part-B professional services in 2011 and 2012? In 2010,
physicians who successfully use ePrescribing (as offered by DxScript) to meet the “meaningful use” requirement, may receive the bonus. In 2011-2012, the reward for ePrescribing will be one (1) percent, while the penalty for not ePrescribing begins in 2012.
(https://www.cms.gov/ERXincentive/01_overview.asp)

CMS has made changes in 2010 by only requiring eligible providers to
enter one G-code to show a visit resulted in an electronic prescription.
Simply add G-code G8553 to your Superbill to show the visit resulted in
you sending an e-prescription using a qualified electronic prescribing
system. Next, bill the G-code for at least 25 unique ambulatory visits
during the calendar year. It’s important that you do not enter 2009
G-codes or this will result in the loss of eligibility for the
incentives.

Give us a call or send an email request to get started today with ePrescribing and get the most out of the “meaningful use”
bonus program.

MedLook 3.0.160 has been posted to our site for you to download at your convenience. There have been no database updates since May 26, 2009 - Version 3.00.138. If you have a version since that time the update is very simple. If your version is older than this you will have to update your database(s) once you install this version. You can check the ReadMe at http://www.MedLookUSA.com/updates/readme.txt for details of recent changes. Hopefully this will be the last update before MedLook 4.0 is released.

We want to wish you all a great Labor Day weekend.

Just a quick note regarding ePrescribing.  We have a limited time, limited quantity offer for FREE ePrescribing for six months. Our solution is with a very good company servicing all 50 states.  Access is made via Internet Explorer or from a mobile device (iPhone, etc.).

Our solution will of course automatically upload all of your patient data from MedLook to DxScript, the ePrescribing solutions vendor, for convenient access. Any changes made to patient information from within MedLook will be made immediately available in DxScript.  Not long from now the medications, etc., will be sent back to MedLook where they will also be stored for easy access and review.  This is a first big, but easy, step towards an EMR/EHR implementation.

After the initial six months the fee will be $40/month/provider. Be sure to take advantage of this offer - you have nothing to lose. At the moment this is the only ePrescription vendor that we anticipate integrating with in 2010.

While MedLook provides a number of useful reports it is not uncommon to find a need for something MedLook does not directly provide.  However, we have accounted for this by allowing you to simply dump your data into a CSV (comma delimited) data file for easy use in Microsoft Excel.  For instance, perhaps you need to know how many patients between 30 and 40 years of age have visited the office for a particular service during a certain time period. The possibility of report requirements is amazing. By dumping the data into a CSV file you can easily generate virtually any report in a nice format.

The first thing is to determine what data to dump. Generally you will want to output services and payments. You can do this using several different “reports” under that patient list. The DOS [YTD/Last Year] Report, the Transactions [YTD/Last Year], and several others allow you to generate just such a file.  Click on the appropriate listing and then use File Save Display To File. If you select to automatically open the file then either Excel (Office) or Calc (Open Office) will automatically start up; otherwise double click the file and open it (or open your application and then load the file).

In this article we assume you will be using Excel. Rather than reproducing how to manipulate your data in Excel we will simply provide a link to a very useful website that has a great tutorial to demonstrate how to use Pivot Tables. Click on the link below and follow the tutorial.  Then return to your data and give it a try.

 http://www.howtogeek.com/howto/13336/working-with-pivottables-in-excel/

Another excellent source is to search the internet for “excel pivot table video tutorial” and watch some of the available video tutorials. In just a few minutes you’ll find you can create some really nice, very useful reports without doing a lot of redundant, tiresome work.

Generating reports like this requires two things.

1. Being able to get the right data out of MedLook and into a suitable file format.

2. The right software (Excel or Calc) to create custom reports via Pivot Tables.

Of course, a little know-how and ingenuity are necessary as well.

The chart number is a 20-digit field that can contain any printable characters.  The patient account number is really an internal number we use to keep everything relative to the patient grouped together.  The chart number is for external reference. The patient account number must be numeric whereas the chart number can be any combination of printable characters.

On the Edit Patient dialog the chart number will be automatically generated to match the account number. Once the user passes through the chart number field (with the mouse or tab) the chart number will no longer change for the patient at hand. It assumes you have validated the chart number as acceptable and not to be changed.

To help facilitate rapid, meaningful entry of a chart number we have implemented two very nice features: the chart # mask and the chart # prefix. Here’s how each works.

The Chart # Prefix is any set of printable characters that will be applied as a prefix to your Chart #.  The prefix is stored per database.  The default prefix is blank (empty). Once the field is entered it will be the default for each database unless a new value is entered. Each database can have it’s own prefix (and mask).

The Chart # Mask is a used to automatically generate a Chart # for a new patient. Once you have entered the Chart # field on the Edit Patient dialog it will no longer automatically change.  The Chart # Mask can is comprised of the letters FMLs and the number 0. Here’s what each means.

Wherever the letter F appears the next leftmost letter from the first name is used.  So FFF and the name JAMES would give JAM.

Using the letter M does the same for the middle name, L for the last name, and s for the SSN.

Finally a combination of 0’s can be used to 0 fill a number.  So 000 could create 001, or 002, 010, etc., MedLook will continue to increase the number portion of the mask until it finds a unique chart number or reaches all 9’s.

For illustration, if we use Harry S Truman and a mask of LLLFM000 we would have TRUHS001 (or 002, etc.). Or if we had a mask of FMLLL000 we might have HSTRU001.

You can do all sorts of crazy things with the mask but use it wisely to help you quickly and uniquely identify patients in a way meaningful to you.

Revision: 04/14/2010  ML 3.0.154

You can now use any number, not just 0, for the numeric mask.  This provides the capability of seeding the start number. For instance, 000 would start at 000.  Using 123 would start at 123.  Most people will want to use 000 or 001 (starting at 0 or 1).

The name mask has been enhanced.  If using HENRY T FORD with a mask of LLLLLL001 we would generate FORDHE001. The last name will be built using the last+first+mi and then using the mask we generate the name as shown.  The same holds for the first name with the name being constructed as first+mi+last.  Spaces are automatically removed.

MedLook has a built-in backup system.  By default it is enabled for every user.  Obviously the more backups you have the greater the likelihood you can restore to a reasonably good, recent backup.  In MedLook, the backup works daily and weekly and performs the backup upon startup.  It can also be initiated from the Start menu. Lastly, it can be activated by using the scheduler. 

The MedLook backup must first make a copy of the database before it makes the actual backup file.  Creating the copy often takes one or two times as long as actually making the backup. In addition, the Daily and Weekly backups prohibit any further activity from the user until the backup completes.  On small databases this backup procedure works fine and takes very little time. On a networked database with more data it can take over 10 minutes, maybe even 20 if the network is busy.

Even if you make your backups, a real concern is where to keep them?  By all means you need to keep a current backup on an external device.  If you have a power surge everything connected to the computer could be fried and you would possibly lose of your all backups.  That would be catastrophic.  At the very least you should be making a backup copy to an external hard drive (iPod, USB thumb drive, etc.) and disconnecting it from your network after completing the backup.

There is a better option though - on-line backups. There are a number of companies that offer this service.  Beware, they are not all equal. Some may or may not be HIPAA compliant.  They may make your backup easily enough but the restore process may be very painful (taking days, not minutes).  The fees also vary widely.

In our research we think we have found a very good solution in Offsite Computer Backup. The interface is excellent and can be managed from any internet connection or from the local computer itself. File restoration is also very easy.  The backup runs in the background and you won’t notice any performance degradation.  You can backup local drives, networked drives, and more.  You can schedule daily backups, multiple backups per day, and even do a continuous backup minimizing the amount of data (i.e. TIME) you can afford to lose.

There are two options with fees starting at $12/month (single computer, 6GB) or $20/month (multiple computers, 10GB).  We think both of these are a great value for the medical office. If you’ve ever lost your data you know that these modest fees are nothing in comparison to starting over.  Rest at ease - use an offsite backup service and know that if your office or home burns to the ground that your computer data (i.e. billing data and more) is safe and secure ready for you to access from another portal.

If $12/month is out of your price range (that’s one nice lunch a month), we are considering a $5 option which we administer and will only allow for your MedLook databases to be backed up and restoration may be at a cost.  Even so, your data is safe and IF you need to recover you don’t pay for that option until you actually need it. Hopefully you will never need to recover from a catastrophic event - but be prepared! This is only a consideration - we think any business should be able to afford the $12/month option.

Backups, backups, backups - make them often.  Save them offsite.  Be prepared for the worst and rest at ease knowing your data is safe and secure if you ever need to restore it.