Sourdough, lots of sourdough; and from the empty flour shelves in the grocery store, I think there has been lots of additional baking as we all hunker down, and binge watch The Great British Baking show on Netflix.

COVID-19 is a once-in-a-generation event that has shifted the entire economy in a span of just a few short months. Our reaction must be equally fast and proportionally large to address the needs of the now and the new normal that lies ahead of us.

As a result of COVID-19 our telemedicine utilization has had unprecedented growth:

• Minutes have grown by 345% (compared to right before the outbreak)
• Minutes grew an additional 110% March to April
• Telemedicine mobile app downloads grew by 2,000% between March 14 to April 12

Telemedicine stability is my team’s chief priority followed by refining ‘sharp corners.’ We’re pleased to report we have expanded our use-cases to better understand your needs and expand our software’s capabilities. Many of the previous regulatory barriers we were required to have in place have been removed due to telemedicine reforms.

The product and engineering teams have made tremendous progress reducing telemedicine issues by improving performance. We are excited for more enhancements that are in the works. Every department in the company has been moving fast and working together to better serve you and your patients: provider education, patient education, internal education, marketing materials and sales scripts to ensure that your needs and your patients’ needs are addressed. I want to extend a massive thank you to everyone involved in these efforts.

As we anticipate the lasting effects of COVID-19 to be with us for a while, we recognize there are a number of stable trends and priorities that we are continuing to ‘bake.’ Across our entire Rhythm suite, we’re moving forward to remove workflow and information friction between clinical staff, administrative staff, billing staff and patients:

• The practice management has a new Referrals and Authorizations workflow to reduce redundant actions and reflect users’ real-world processes by supporting one-referral-to-many authorizations and the tracking of multiple procedures per authorization.
• The EHR received an upgraded ePrescribing feature that consolidates two major prescription workflows into a single one that is more efficient and modern.
• Our mobile app has implemented the new EHR dashboard which will allow providers to access the main EHR activities from anywhere.

This is only a small sampling of what we are working for in our upcoming releases.

Stay healthy, stay connected and keep mastering your sourdough.

Thanks,
Tim

P.S. Our sourdough start has been named Doughvid-19.

Meet Craig Adkins
Vice President of Revenue Cycle Management

My first job after college was managing a small Radiology billing office in Springfield, Ohio, with seven staff members. That was over 28 years ago and I still enjoy what I do, and I feel very fortunate to work in this business.

I enjoy working with people and technology and I thrive on problem solving and continuous improvement, which is always in ample supply in healthcare. For most of my career, I worked for privately-owned RCM companies and I spent about eight years working for large provider organizations.

Personally, my faith and my family are most important to me. I have five children and 5 grandchildren (so far) and I enjoy spending time with them as much as possible. I also enjoy reading, traveling and exploring new places, walking/hiking, and doing home improvement. I grew up in Ohio but graduated from Brigham Young University, so we are happy to be back in the mountains.

 

Rhythm Master Suite just got a Whole Lot Smoother

This Summer 2020 release further improves the core AdvancedMD user experience with more unified workflow across all our product tiers. Many features have been refined to give you and your staff faster access, better visibility and more control. All capabilities, features, and enhancements continue to give the foundation to support increased demand, improve revenue and collections, engage with patients and grow your practice. Check out our recent executive webinar where we discuss some of these new features as well as answering a few questions.

The following capabilities, features, and enhancements are being rolled out during our new tri-annual product release cycle:

Practice Management

• Unified card framework to match EHR (rollout in the next 1-2 months)
• Faster patient search to match EHR
• Bottom tabs moved to left side with ability to show and hide
• New mini cards to see the most important data points across patient demographics
• Cards can be set to appear on the left or the right
• System default lets you choose a required email address for the patient and responsible party for easier communications
• NPI numbers can be required in the referring provider master file
• Consolidated invoices and payments for entity care; all charges can be edited before creating invoices and invoices can be updated when balances or ICD codes have changed
• Allowable fee schedules are simplified; carrier takes priority over the existing allowable fee schedule tied to the financial class
• New payment reconciliation center matches insurance deposits from bank statement to the ERAs received

Patient Engagement

• Increased telehealth scheduling buffer for managing patient no-shows
• Telehealth refresh button and a checkbox to hide completed visits
• Collect co-pays from telehealth visits; collect fixed co-pay or a flat fee before visit
• Streamlined end-to-end intake process
• Smart filters configured to match patients with appropriate providers, facilities and carriers
• Patients can select preferred language
• Gather valuable information on how patients learned about your practice
• Easier setup and management of prescreening patients
• New health checker guides through setup for intake and online scheduling
• Intake provider setup master file includes configurable filtering for appointment type, facility and carrier
• Additional filtering in intake worklists (patient search and user sticky settings)
• Intake features include online scheduling and linking acceptable insurance carriers; patients can see default provider as initial provider choice
• Email, phone and SMS validation

EHR

• Improved clinical and mobile workflow for faster access and better visibility
• New patient chart Timeline view
• New Inbound CIE dashboard donut and worklist
• Ongoing regulatory updates

Mobile

• EHR dashboard available on mobile app as new home page
• HealthWatcher donut and worklist on the mobile app
• Access to online reviews and scores on the mobile app
• Brand new mobile administrator app