Healthcare Technology Featured Article

March 30, 2015

Edelberg & Associates, ScribeAmerica Combine For New Innovation in Coding


Of all the parts of the healthcare system as we know it, medical coding may be the most important. Without medical coding, hospitals wouldn't be able to get invoices addressed in the fashion we know today. So keeping the coding system as we know it up and running becomes something of an imperative, and that's where Edelberg & Associates comes in as part of a partnership with ScribeAmerica.

The partnership announced a new breed of medical coding software platform that works in real time, allowing patients, doctors, medical coders and medical scribes to be almost immediately linked together right at the point in which the patient starts receiving services. This platform focuses on a new LiveCode method, which helps to smooth the flow of information and responses going from the doctor/patient relationship to the back office using a module known as CLEAR Summit.

This may sound a bit arcane, but it's already producing some impressive results. CLEAR Summit, at last report, is offering not only faster bill-drop times, but also better accuracy in patient billings. Physician time spent on correcting paperwork for proper coding has dropped—which in turn allows more time to be spent delivering the care being paid for in the first place—and allows for faster reimbursement thanks to fewer issues in the paperwork. By improving the quality of the coding by having all the information available in one place in real time, essentially, it improves the quality of billing, and the speed at which said bills are paid.

As Edelberg & Associates' CEO, Caral Edelberg, noted, the time gap between actually providing the care and the final submission of the bill took between six to 10 days, on average. Sometimes it actually went longer than that, and that sheer level of inefficiency meant big opportunity costs—not to mention actual costs—to healthcare providers. ScribeAmerica's CEO, Dr. Michael Murphy, also offered up some commentary on the new release, noting that CLEAR Summit was helping to provide better efficiency in a place in which such efficiency isn't always found: in the back office operation. While there was plenty of advancement in improving patient records and the like, coding often went without such augmentation, until now.

It's almost a truism that when a process is improved in business, when it takes even a minute less time to do something than it used to take, there's an improvement in the overall operation. CLEAR Summit looks to provide that, and as Dr. Murphy noted, such improvements have a way of branching out and touching other departments as well. Here paperwork can move more rapidly through the system and become revenue faster, and physicians have more time to spend on care. That means fewer costs and more revenue for the system, which in turn can be used to pass the savings on to the customer, making healthcare more accessible for all.

While one piece of software may not fix the entire healthcare system as we know it, every little bit helps. When it comes to CLEAR Summit, meanwhile, this is one little bit that adds more than its share of value.




Edited by Dominick Sorrentino
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