Benefits of an Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System

Your EHR system can be a powerful tool for improving your medical billing practices and boosting your revenue cycle. To maximize these benefits, you need an integrated EHR and medical billing system. Integration ensures that data flows seamlessly between your systems, helping you to bill more quickly and accurately. Here is how your practice can benefit from a tightly integrated EHR and medical billing system.

What Is an Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System?

When you integrate your EHR and medical billing systems, you allow data to flow between systems without duplication or manual copying. While you can integrate your EHR with legacy medical billing systems, the process is complex and requires technical expertise. This typically requires HL7 interfaces to exchange demographics, appointments, encounters, and charges. Another option is to use an EHR system that has associated practice management billing software and share the same database with no interfacing needed. For example, NextGen EHR is fully integrated with NextGen Practice Management (NextGen PM). In your integrated NextGen system, you can book appointments, document and code patient encounters, and bill payers all in one place. This approach reduces integration needs and helps ensure your practice’s data is consistent and accurate.  

An Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System Speeds Reimbursement

Your practice cannot function without revenue. Timely reimbursement is crucial for your long-term success. An integrated EHR and medical billing system can help you get paid faster by lessening redundancy and integration issues, automating simple billing functions, and boosting your A/R performance.

When you integrate your billing and EHR systems, you can quickly accept charges and diagnoses submitted from your physicians file electronic claims with payers with minimal oversight. An integrated system pulls coding and documentation directly from your patients’ medical records to complete electronic claims forms. This process takes far less time than either paper superbills or HL7 interfaces while reducing typos and other errors. Integration also reduces time-consuming manual data entry.

An integrated EHR and medical billing system can also help your practice automate simple billing tasks. Your EHR and practice management billing system can run claim edits, auto-fix common issues, and file electronic claims for payers. You can also run automated processes to check for common errors like missing documentation and inconsistencies in coding or patient information. By using automation where possible, you can free your medical billing specialists to focus on more complex tasks like researching frequent claims denials and following up with outstanding accounts receivable.

According to the American Association of Family Physicians, practices should aim for an accounts receivable timeframe of 50 days or fewer for all patients and payers. An integrated system can help your practice boost your A/R performance to achieve this benchmark. The NextGen EHR and PM system, for example, can combine data from your EHR and practice management billing system to create dashboards and reports to help you track your revenue cycle performance. TempDev’s Revenue Cycle Dashboard NextGen EPM Report includes metrics like A/R aging by financial class to help you identify slow payers and improve your billing processes to generate faster payment. Your billing staff can also use built-in NextGen tools to work outstanding accounts and bad debt. Additionally, customizable tools like TempDev’s Credit Flow help your billing staff work and clear credit balances, helping you balance your books.  

Reduce Claims Denials with an Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System

Claims denials are common. Payers frequently deny claims for avoidable errors like late filing, incorrect or inconsistent patient information, incomplete coding, or lacking supporting documentation. Your practice can reduce these costly denials by integrating your EHR with your medical billing system.

EHR systems like NextGen include tools to help providers document and code encounters during an office visit. Built-in alerts and reminders help ensure that providers record all relevant procedure codes, diagnosis codes, and supporting documentation in each patient’s medical record. With an integrated system, you can adjust these reminders to focus on key coding and documentation requirements for particular payers. This approach reduces the risk that payers will deny claims for missing documentation or incomplete coding. Your billing staff can then draw on this complete, accurate data when submitting electronic claims. This reduces the need for time-consuming adjustments to fill in missing data and meet payer requirements.

Your EHR system can also help you keep patient information up-to-date. An integrated EHR and practice management system can include patient check-in workflows that require verification of key details like insurance coverage and contact information. By updating this information before each visit and performing automated eligibility checks (in NextGen using RTS), you can reduce claims denials because of insurance changes or inconsistent patient information. Your integrated system can pull accurate, up-to-date patient information into your billing workflows to ensure your practice files claims correctly the first time.

An Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System Reduces Billing Workloads

With an integrated EHR and medical billing system, your billing staff can spend less time filing claims. An integrated system pulls visit coding and documentation directly from your EHR, saving copying time. Your EHR can also prompt physicians to complete coding and documentation requirements during visits. This reduces the need for after-visit work for your providers and billing staff. With complete coding and documentation already in the medical billing system, your medical billing specialists can submit claims more timely.

An integrated system can both save money and increase revenue. By reducing upfront billing workloads, you can free your billing staff to spend more time resubmitting denied claims and working delinquent accounts receivable, increasing revenue. You can also save your practice money by reducing the need for overtime and external billing support.

TempDev Can Help Your Practice Develop an Integrated EHR and Medical Billing System

TempDev can help you implement, upgrade, or customize an integrated NextGen EHR and practice management billing system. Our developers can also help you integrate your EHR with NextGen Practice Management billing software. If your practice struggles with claims denials or slow reimbursement, the TempDev Team can help. Our NextGen experts can help you integrate your systems and redesign your workflows to achieve your financial goals. Through TempBill, you can also get expert NextGen billers on-site to fill absences or addressing staffing shortages.

Call us at 888.TEMP.DEV or contact us here to get started integrating your EHR and medical billing systems.