These patients are certain to be impressed by the quality of care and advanced treatments available, but a reliable and efficient online booking process is one part of the journey that’s been missing.

We’re putting that right, inspired by the technology that transformed the travel sector.

Believe it or not, booking a holiday used to be a stressful business. Agents, phone calls and long waits to confirm your reservation. The game-changer proved to be a Global Distribution System (GDS), a central hub which enabled different service providers to exchange information about services and availability in real time. This brought order to the chaos and dramatically improved the booking experience for everyone who could go online and make their own travel arrangements.

We wanted the same for private healthcare, while ensuring everyone could be confident in the high levels of data security that we build into all our products. ICE – our integrated channel exchange – is the GDS uniting the sector to deliver real-time online appointment booking. Put simply, ICE allows anyone offering healthcare services to share them with anyone who wants to search for them. It works like this:

Access: Everyone who wants to use ICE can do so through our flexible Application Programming Interfaces (APIs) based on the internationally recognised FHIR (Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources) messaging standards. This enables different booking sites to connect to multiple diaries through just a single interface.

Book: Information about services and appointment availability is shared in real time with the booking websites so users can use their preferred site to search for an available slot, using a range of search criteria such as specialty, location, time and service type. Bookings can be made 24/7.

Sync: Once the appointment is booked, the diary owner’s software synchronises the information removing the possibility of double-bookings.

Why sign up?

ICE brings compelling benefits whether you’re a practitioner, practice or clinic, hospital or insurer.  At a time when more people are considering private healthcare, it makes sense to have a central booking solution that’s smooth, convenient, efficient and secure. ICE makes this a reality – fantastic for patients who want access to great care and excellent news for the long-term prospects of our sector.

It was our technology, data and expertise that enabled us to start this booking revolution. Is it time for you to join us? 

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To find out how ICE, our online appointment booking solution, can transform your booking process, contact our Business Development team.

The post Appointment booking flows more smoothly over ICE appeared first on Healthcode.

Schoen Clinic’s Orthopaedic & Spinal Hospital in central London has achieved deserved recognition as a centre of excellence for treating musculoskeletal conditions and sports injuries. In addition to winning Hospital of the Year in 2019 at the LaingBuisson Awards, it was a finalist in 2021 and is part of an award-winning international group which treats more than 300,000 patients each year.   

With world class facilities including a high dependency unit, three operating theatres and a state-of-the-art imaging department, Schoen Clinic London provides the entire treatment pathway, including diagnosis, non-surgical and surgical treatments and rehabilitation. As well as self-funded patients and GP referrals, the hospital is one of a select number in the Healthcare Purchasing Alliance (HPA) which buys complete packages of care on behalf of Aviva and Vitality Health.

To maintain Schoen Clinic’s high standards, it’s important that the back-office admin is managed as effectively as the delivery of specialist care. Finance and Revenue Assurance Manager, Henry Muscatt, oversees this aspect of the business but says it would be virtually impossible without Healthcode services including pre-authorisation, membership enquiry and online invoicing.

“We’ve been using Healthcode since we opened in August 2018,” he says. “Overall, they’re fantastic and there simply isn’t anyone else that can do what they do. Submitting all our invoices manually, for example, would be a full-time job whereas we can raise them in-house, and submit them as XML files online. The whole process flows really well and it works for everyone: the insurers get the bill sooner; we get paid sooner; and our patients have peace of mind that the invoice has gone through and been sorted.”

The simplicity of electronic invoicing means Henry can focus on ensuring invoices are accurate and validated first time. Again, we’ve been the ideal support.

Henry explains: “When patients are referred by HPA (Aviva & Vitality), we use the online pre-authorisation service to obtain the data for that episode of care such as consultant, authorisation number, policy number and the patient’s name and date of birth. It’s really useful as it minimises how much information we have to get directly from patients and provides another layer of security as we have the correct details from the beginning.”

If Henry and his team don’t have an insured patient’s membership number, they use our Membership Enquiry service which checks their demographic details against the relevant insurer database. “Sometimes the number has been taken down wrong or it’s slightly out of date,” he says. “When this happens, I ask the admin team to use Healthcode’s Membership Enquiry service. Although it doesn’t always find a match, the service is straightforward to use: you just type in the patient’s details, hit refresh and the results are virtually instant. When we don’t have a valid membership number for the patient, we reach out to them directly but this can be a time-consuming process.”

“When an invoice doesn’t go through, it’s mostly because of a problem with the patient’s membership details although sometimes it can be a coding issue such as where a prosthesis isn’t mapped to an insurer. When this happens, I contact Healthcode’s Coding team who are really good,” says Henry.

Thanks to the performance dashboard on its account, Henry can see that around 80% of Schoen’s electronic invoices are validated first time, slightly higher than the industry average. However, Henry has a more ambitious target of 95% in mind and is keen to work with us to make this a reality. “I’d recommend hospitals use Healthcode services,” he concludes. “In fact, if a new hospital started up and they decided not to use them, I think they’d be in trouble!”

The post “The whole process flows really well and it works for everyone” – Henry Muscatt, Schoen Clinic appeared first on Healthcode.

While few practitioners have experience of running a business, the most successful are those who draw on the time management skills they learned early in their professional career. By identifying ways to work smarter and making the most of the latest practice management technology, they’ve been able to ‘steal back’ time to focus on patients and develop their practice.

Every practice has time-consuming tasks that could be managed more effectively, often by making better use of technology. Here are five of the most common admin ‘bottlenecks’ to address:

• Correspondence – Medical secretaries can spend their time typing, printing and dispatching letters to keep patients and their GPs informed about appointments, investigations and treatments. Streamline the process by using letter templates for common subjects which can be completed with the relevant patient details. Our ePractice Lite and Pro software also allows you to select and batch print multiple documents at a time.
• Patient insurance cover – Practices regularly need to call hospitals or insurers to confirm a patient’s insurance details, but this can be a time-consuming – and sometimes a frustrating – exercise. Our online membership enquiry feature enables you to instantly check patients’ policy numbers and address details against the insurers’ database.
• Invoicing – Electronic invoicing and clearing can save you money by eliminating printing, postage and manpower costs. Creating and submitting invoices to insurers – via our encrypted, secure service – takes a fraction of the time, improves accuracy and ensures the invoice is validated against the relevant insurer criteria – so it’s ready for processing and payment. This secure platform eliminates the risk of data breaches possible when sending invoices by post or email, plus you have the additional reassurance of knowing the invoice has been received by the insurer.
• Payment tracking – When payments arrive, every practice needs a system to record exactly what invoices are being paid and identify shortfalls. This can be time-consuming with a manual system and in some cases, practices have been obliged to write-off outstanding debts because payments have not been reconciled against the correct invoice. Our payment tracking tools will help you save time and money.
• Financial reports – Without access to accurate information it’s impossible to steer your business effectively. However, manual bookkeeping and accounting systems require expertise and time to prepare even basic reports such as an aged debtor analysis. Your practice management system should provide a range of real-time financial reports, so you can measure your performance, analyse your strengths and weaknesses and make informed decisions.

Discover more

Find out how ePractice Lite and Pro can help streamline your processes and avoid a bottleneck of admin tasks with the Healthcode Academy’s team of Service Delivery Associates. They’ll guide you using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

Discover what else you can do in ePractice by checking out our comprehensive  Help and Support articles.

To find out more about this or any other feature of ePractice Lite or Pro contact our Business Development team.

The post Working smarter with technology appeared first on Healthcode.

By validating each invoice in line with the criteria set by each insurer, we ensure they’re ready for processing and payment on receipt. More efficient all round. But sometimes invoices fail the process and need submitting again. When this happens during your invoicing run, it’s important to know exactly what’s gone wrong, how to correct it and hopefully prevent it recurring.

Our Premium level Financial Management Solutions for hospitals include the clever Failed Bills Management Tools to help you identify and fix issues in failed invoices, from one-off inaccuracies to persistent coding errors. By increasing accuracy and efficiency, you’ll quickly see improvements in your invoicing success rate. In fact, when we reviewed monthly failed invoice volumes over a twelve-month period, we found those on the Premium package had 42% fewer recurring failed invoices compared with those using the Standard package.

Our Premium package includes:

• Failed Bills Management Workflow which shows, at a glance, how many invoices have failed, categorised by reason. You don’t have to spend time opening and reviewing each invoice.  
• The ability to apply bulk fixes when an issue has affected multiple invoices and reprocess these at the same time.
• Filters to aid quick analysis. For example, you can focus on invoices to a particular insurer or zero in on failed charge lines within an invoice.
• Colour coded invoice categories – create and assign a colour to different invoice categories for better visibility and manage work flow.
• Failure Analysis Reports are available to increase visibility and manageability of the error handling process. This will help you to correct any issue within your patient administration system and resubmit the invoice.

Want to know more?

To find out how our tools can help you submit fully validated invoices to the insurers efficiently and improve your cash flow, contact our Business Development team.

The post Our invoicing tools point the way to success appeared first on Healthcode.

Healthcode’s Fiona Booth chaired the lively session, one of the first opportunities for hospital decision-makers to meet in person since the pandemic struck.

“After being restricted to virtual meetings for so long, it was great for everyone to meet and exchange ideas face-to-face,” Fiona commented. “Maintaining these strong personal connections across the sector is essential as we navigate the transition to a post-pandemic world because we are all facing similar challenges and we can best address them by working together.

“While technology gives us the means to deliver advanced medical treatments and services, we all agreed that healthcare has to be about human beings. Ultimately, the real strength of private hospitals rests in our people, their high-quality interactions with patients and the compassionate care they provide.”

The post Hospital leaders set post-pandemic agenda appeared first on Healthcode.

Here are the main categories of failures that can cause your bill to be rejected at the validation stage:

1. Patient insurance details 
2. Controlling specialist
3. Procedure code
4. Service date 
5. Service item provider number 

However, some of the failures are due to things such as codes not being mapped or the practitioner’s recognition not being updated by the insurer which will need to be followed up with Healthcode or the relevant insurer.

Failed bills are frustrating but they have more serious implications for you and your organisation as payment delays can have a serious impact on your cash flow and limit your working capital. What’s more, submitting an invoice which is incomplete, inaccurate or months old can make you seem disorganised or unprofessional.

The first step to creating bills that are fit for purpose is to include all the information the recipient needs about what they are being asked to pay and why. We recommend the following is included on all invoices as best practice:

• About the invoice – invoice number and data
• About you – full name, provider number, specialty, billing address, payment details
• About the patient – patient name, date of birth, insurance company, policy number, address, where applicable diagnosis code and description, plus lead practitioner’s name and provider number
• About the treatment – the type of care delivered, date of treatment, service delivered, procedure code, total amount

Invoice templates which meet these standards are available to download here. They can be used for invoicing organisations, insurers or self-paying patients.

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If you’re using ePractice to invoice, enhance your skills by signing up for our free online tutorials with the Healthcode Academy. The Academy’s team of Service Delivery Associates will guide you through our series of short personalised training sessions, using your own data to make the training as relevant as possible.

If you’re using a third-party system see if our Help and support articles can solve any problem you’re having.

Can’t resolve the issue? Contact our Customer Services team, who’ll be happy to help.

The post Do Your Bills Pass The Test? appeared first on Healthcode.