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ONC-ACB Certification ID: 15.04.04.2705.Crit.04.00.1.191111 | Certification Date: Nov 11, 2019
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Case Study: NY Firefighter Heart & Lung

Case Study: NY Firefighter Heart & Lung

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How Criterions helps the New York Firefighter Heart & Lung Institute care for 9/11 First Responders

Background

Robert Brown started his career as a New York Firefighter in 1996 and is still an active Lieutenant at the New York Fire Department to present day, dedicating his life to helping others. He was amongst the First Responders after the horrific 9/11 event and saw firsthand how the hazardous toxic dust and chemicals effected the rescue and volunteer teams. They suffered tremendous damage to their physical and mental health during that time.

Mr. Brown wanted to give back to his firefighter community and founded the New York Firefighters Heart & Lung Institute in 2002. At that time, he was working for North Shore Cardiac Imaging as a Physician Assistant, and his newly founded institute was a part of the North Shore organization. New York Firefighters Heart & Lung is a medical center “designed by firefighters for firefighters” that offers the best healthcare experience for firefighter professionals and are dedicated to serving their needs and family’s needs every day. They specialize in cardiac and pulmonary testing, cancer screenings, orthopedics and much more.

Criterions Electronic Health Record and Practice Management solutions have been apart of their journey since 2014, making it possible for Mr. Brown to treat thousands of firefighters since. Mr. Brown separated New York Firefighters Heart & Lung from North Shore Cardiac Imaging in late 2022 and is now the sole provider at his institute, bringing the Criterions integrated EHR and PM solutions with him.

 

“Going into this and separating, I thought it was going to be really hard to get on board with an EMR and meeting all requirements we needed, but Criterions made it seamless and implementation got us up and running in no time.”

 

Long-Term Success

The costs to start a healthcare practice, large or small, are enormous. Affordability is a very important consideration when choosing the various software you need to run your office efficiently, especially when you are a sole provider like Mr. Brown who offers his services at minimal out of pocket expenses for his firemen and firewomen patients.

 

“It’s very affordable we think, even including features like bulk emailing and text messaging.”

For any practice to be successful in the long run, growth is essential. Expanding your services, hiring more office employees, or moving to a bigger office location, like Mr. Brown just did, are all crucial tactics for progressing your medical practice. When it comes to training new hires on EHR or PM systems, Criterions takes pride in providing an inclusive training program to our customers. Our training and education programs offer a variety of instructor-led training events and online resources to accommodate your needs, ensuring office staff members get the most out of utilizing our products.

 

“We like Criterions because it’s very easy to use and to train new hires on the software because it’s not as complex as other EHR systems. A lot of features and modules are easy to understand and make sense of in the Criterions system.”

 

Since implementing Criterions EHR & PM software, NY Firefighters Heart & Lung has been able to increase communication with their patients by utilizing the bulk email feature, email appointment reminders, and the patient portal. Their patients use the Criterions Patient Portal to view their medical records and results, schedule, and change their appointments online which has helped increase office workflow and patient engagement.

They’ve also seen a decrease of no-shows due to the flexibility of online scheduling capabilities for their firefighter patients, who are sometimes on duty in the firehouse for long shifts with limited time to call the practice during office hours if needing to reschedule or cancel their existing appointments.

 

“Overall, it’s been a good experience with Criterions. We almost never have any issues using the software. Support gets back to us in no time. Training department is always really helpful, and I would recommend their product.”

 

NY Firefighter Heart & Lung has helped thousands of firefighter professionals throughout their years and will continue to provide the best possible healthcare experiences for years to come. Together, Criterions will support their services as Mr. Brown grows his practice and takes on more patients by helping to improve patient engagement and experience, as well as increasing workflow efficiency for their office staff.

 

Fore more information on Mr. Brown's mission at The New York Firefighter Heart & Lung Institute, please visit their website at: https://www.fdnyheart.com/

 

 

Interested in learning how Criterions software can benefit your practice? Fill out the form below:

What is Practice Management Software

What is Practice Management Software

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What is Practice Management Software?

Practice management involves the decisions, actions and resources that ensure the day-to-day operations of your medical practice. Managing a healthcare practice can be arduous and time-consuming. In a single day, physicians and office staff may deal with administrative, regulatory, financial and technological tasks — on top of making sure patients get the best care possible. Practice Management Software helps manage your practice, patients, and is important with increasing workflow and patient engagement, but most importantly will help your office get paid.

Criterions cloud-based electronic health record comes fully integrated with practice management software you need to keep your office running efficiently. Whether you use a billing service or manage billing in-house, our EHR helps you receive payment faster.

Billing is streamlined with our electronic superbill, and our billing partners offer the best cloud-based billing solutions that can integrate directly with your EHR workflows. Intuitive charting, connections to labs and imaging centers, referrals, prescribing, document management, reporting, communication, and eligibility checks- Criterions does all this and more.

 

A few benefits of a cloud-based Practice Management Software includes:

 Help patients find your services and book appointments online

  • Patients can search for and book appointments online from your Criterions Patient Portal.
  • Once a patient books an appointment, automatic email or text reminders are sent to them to help reduce missed appointments and reduce the time your staff has to spend on the phone.

Check insurance eligibility for patients directly from your EHR

  • Get paid for the appointments you schedule with patient health insurance verification that includes real-time connections to over 300 payers, and automated eligibility checks before a scheduled appointment.

Certified for PQRS and Meaningful Use to help you avoid penalties

  • The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) offer EHR incentive payments for those who can attest to improving patient care with their Meaningful Use and PQRS programs — and payment penalties to those who cannot — if you are an eligible provider but haven't started participating in those programs.
  • To manage and report on criteria performance, Criterions has developed certified PQRS and Meaningful Use dashboards and reports.

Simplify your billing and increase revenue

  • Medical billing management and increasing revenue can be a challenge for any practice, but our cloud-based EHR and PM streamlines all these tasks so you can get paid faster and grow your practice.

 

 

Click here for more information on how Criterions Medical Practice Management Software makes delivering patient care easier for you and your staff, or please fill out the form below and a team member will be in touch shortly. 

 

Top 5 Claim Rejections (and How to Avoid Them!)

Top 5 Claim Rejections (and How to Avoid Them!)

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At Criterions, we want to help your practice optimize the claim lifecycle. That is why we have partnered with TriZetto Provider Solutions to help your practice improve your clean claim percentage and reduce processing delays. By analyzing claims submitted by Criterions clients, we have identified the top 5 reasons claims are rejected and ways to avoid them:

1. This provider is not approved to send electronic claims to this payer. Enrollment is pending.

When a rejection like this is received through any clearing house, this means that the client is not yet enrolled, or is not set up within the EHR. This can be avoided with a simple check from the enrollment team.

 

2. The COB information does not balance.

This type of rejection is common, but avoidable. When a provider sees this rejection, it typically means that the claim was submitted twice to the same payer after a payment was already issued. When this happens, it throws the balance off, causing the claim to reject.

In order to prevent a rejection like this, clients can check the patients claim ledger and review what claims are being sent.

 

3. Patient/Subscriber is not eligible. Please verify member ID/Insurance/Coverage.

This rejection states that the patient has either new insurance or that the ID is invalid.

To prevent this from happening, you must make sure that the patient has an active insurance, and that the member ID is valid. In order to verify this information, the patient must be contacted to confirm if any updates have been made to their insurance.

 

4. Claim Rejected as a duplicate.

Coming across a rejection like this means that the claim was sent twice.

The easiest way to make sure this does not happen again is to ensure you are not sending claims that have been sent within 24hrs, or else the claim will reject as a duplicate.

 

5. The Payer ID Number is required and must be valid.

A rejection that stated the Payer ID is invalid means that the insurance carrier you are billing has a Payer ID which is not valid with the clearing house, as each clearing house has their own payer IDs.

To avoid this, make sure all Payer IDs are up to date within the EHR. To check if they are correct, you can contact the clearing house directly by phone or see if the clearing house has a link on their website that will help you identify the correct Payer ID.

 

By keeping an eye out for common claim rejection reasons, your practice will be able to avoid them and lower your claims rejection rate. This means that you will be able to reduce delay and increase coding compliancy.

 

For more information on TriZetto Provider Services, click here or complete the form below. ​

Case Study: DocCare

Case Study: DocCare

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Background

Since the launch of Criterions TCMS product in 1997, DocCare has been utilizing Criterions’ software solutions to increase efficiency in their office. At that time, the practice had three office locations, but have since expanded to seven offices across New York. DocCare has over 23 physician providers who support 18 medical specialties, and operates under the guidance of Dr. Joel Hershey, who has been the with DocCare for over 20 years. In his role as Medical Director, Dr. Hershey oversees the physician staff in their mission to provide high-quality care to patients. After many years of utilizing paper for all patient and office records, the practice made the switch to electronic documentation in 2011 when they implemented Criterions EHR software.

Although there were hesitations moving from paper to an EHR, Dr. Hershey can’t imagine going back to the burdensome process of paper documentation. Over the years, DocCare has added many new features and enhancements to their EHR. Because DocCare is setup on the cloud, any updates made to the software are automatically shared with the entire team. Dr. Hershey says, “There is new functionality and upgrades added often and it's making huge difference for our practice.” These updates help DocCare continually improve the experience for both patients and administrative staff.

In 2011, Dr. Hershey was one of the first doctors involved with the federal and New York State Meaningful Use programs that were implemented. This support helped DocCare achieve government reporting requirements and improve overall quality of care for patients. He shares,

“The Product Manager at Criterions worked closely with me to rebuild our EHR so that it produced all the correct information in the format that the government required, and we were one of the first groups in New York state who began meaningful use.”

 

Long-Term Success

Over the years, Criterions EHR has continued to grow with the needs of DocCare. The staff love that they are able to easily customize the EHR system setup for each individual employee. Alex Hernandez, IT Manager at DocCare says,

“The training we received from the Criterions team was very helpful. They showed us exactly what the system can do and from there we've been able to customize templates for all positions easily.”

He shares that because they hire new practitioners frequently, it is helpful that the system is intuitive and only takes about a day or two to get used to.

DocCare also appreciates the success they have had using their EHR to adapt to the challenges of 2020. Because of the outbreak COVID-19, practices had to quickly shift from seeing patients in person to meeting virtually. Looking back on this transition, Dr. Hershey recounts, “Last year when we started doing a lot of telemedicine appointments because of COVID-19, we were able to get the appointment types up and running in the same day.”

In addition to optimizing their software to handle telemedicine calls, DocCare was also able to easily contact patients who were at the highest risk of contracting COVID-19 to determine who should be contacted about getting the vaccine.

“We are able to quickly pull reports and send email blasts to specific people based on certain diagnosis groups or age groups,” says Dr. Hershey.

The reporting and emailing options within the Criterions software helped DocCare increase communication with patients, and in turn, increase patient satisfaction. Dr. Hershey explains, “We were able to pull a report in one minute to quickly improve the quality of what we can do.”

DocCare continues to provide comprehensive high quality medical care with the support of Criterions software. Together, we will continue to grow and offer new solutions that will improve the patient experience as well as increase efficiency for DocCare’s administrative staff.

 

Interested in learning how Criterions software can benefit your practice? Fill out the form below:

Request a Demo!