November 22, 2023
With the holidays right around the corner, medical practices may be scrambling to check off that end-of-year to-do list. And while the entirety of that list may vary based on practice location and specialty, we’ve come up with some common concerns and how MEDENT can help during the festive season.
Flu Vaccinations
Practices often encourage individuals to get their flu vaccines before the winter holidays.
Report patients ages 6 months plus who have not received or refused an influenza shot during the current flu season. Use the Send Portal Message action to send a flu shot reminder to patients with an active Patient Portal account.
Practices can use MEDENT’s Online Appointment Scheduling to set up a reason specific link for their website. Patients can then click this link to schedule a flu vaccination. These links can also be made location specific in the case of flu clinics.
COVID-19 Precautions
Healthcare facilities may continue to emphasize safety measures, such as mask-wearing and social distancing to reduce the risk of transmission.
Patients with enabled appointment types at enabled locations will receive a link via email and/or text that they can click to notify the practice of their arrival.
MEDENT’s Video Visits allow providers to conduct HIPAA-compliant virtual visits on a variety of devices, including laptop, tablet and smartphone. The visit takes place in the browser, so there is no need for additional apps or plug-ins.
An eVisit is an electronic visit done via MEDENT’s Patient Portal. MEDENT has a COVID-19/Lower Respiratory Infection eVisit template available.
Accurate Diagnoses
Medical practices may see an uptick in patients with seasonal illnesses like colds, coughs and respiratory infections. Practices may also want to review HCC Coding to ensure they’re getting credit for risk assessment.
MEDENT’s IMO – Intelligent Medical Objects interface lets users search for diagnoses with a clinically-focused set of terminology. Each IMO term fully represents a diagnosis, meaning it may map to multiple codes. This ensures each patient’s information is captured in the most comprehensive way possible, from both a clinical and a billing perspective.
MEDENT has partnered with VisualDx, a leading provider of diagnosis search and differential capabilities. Users can click the infobutton 
next to a specific problem or diagnosis and select the VisualDx link. This launches the VisualDx tool in the browser directly linked to the topic referenced within the MEDENT chart.
In MEDENT, HCC codes will highlight in yellow in various areas. This helps practices remember to select the HCC codes for patients so they get credit for the risk assessment.
Patient Education
The holiday season can be emotionally challenging for some individuals. Practices may want to share information on mental health support services, stress management techniques and nutritional guidelines.
The infobutton in MEDENT is used to access information from Medline Plus, a free source of patient education. Users can click the infobutton–which is available in the Problem List, Medications, Immunizations/Injections, Labs, and Diagnosis History–to either Browse Topic or, if the patient has an active portal account, Send to Portal.
Practices can use DM/HM Reports to send patient education via MEDENT’s Patient Portal.
Users can create and link documents to chart buttons. NOTE: Documents created from the Patient Education chart button will not count toward Promoting Interoperability (MIPS).
Revenue & Collections
Practices should closely examine their revenue and collections data to ensure they meet their annual financial goals. This involves tracking payments received, outstanding accounts receivable and addressing overdue balances.
MEDENT recommends several reports, including a Collection Report, Personal Charges, All Unapplied Payments, All Charges, All Non-Insurance Charges and Accounts Receivable. The A/R Summary Month by Month and A/R Trend Analysis reports can be used to compare charges, receipts and adjustments from last year to this year.
Month End Reports are run the same way for the last month of the year as for every other month. It is recommended that all Month End Reports are run at fiscal year end. NOTE: Any Open Item Report must be run after all posting is done and before new posting is started for the new year.
The A/R Summary gives MTD information, but the balance is cumulative.
The Practice Management Report when run without insurance information has YTD totals as well as MTD totals.
Guest Pay allows patients to pay online from the practice website without having to log into a Patient Portal account. This feature is part of MEDENT’s Global Payments Integrated interface. YTD totals as well as MTD totals.
Patients can be prompted to pay their copay and/or personal balance as one of the final steps of the self check-in kiosk. In order to collect credit card payments through the kiosk, the practice must be set up with Easy Pay Solutions or Global Payments Integrated.
The Patient Statements Text to Pay feature allows patients to receive statements via text or email (either in addition to or in lieu of a paper statement). Patients can simply click a link to pay the amount owed. This feature is part of MEDENT’s Global Payments Integrated interface.
MEDENT has partnered with a number of companies that help increase revenue and billing collections, including:
Compliance & Reporting
Practices need to ensure compliance with various healthcare regulations, including HIPAA, Medicare and Medicaid requirements. End-of-year audits and compliance reviews help identify and rectify any potential issues.
MEDENT has partnered with Patient360 to reduce the burden of MIPS reporting. With Patient360, clients can review, track and optimize data and submit directly to CMS.
The HIPAA One automated Risk Analysis software suite allows healthcare providers, payers and business associates of all sizes to focus on their important objectives: core competencies, improving compliance and reducing operating costs. As a trusted partner of MEDENT, HIPAA One guarantees your security risk analysis will pass an audit.
Coordination of Care
During the holidays, patients might receive care from multiple sources, such as urgent care facilities, emergency departments, or temporary healthcare providers.
MEDENT is a member of Carequality, which provides a national-level interoperability framework to enable exchange among health data sharing networks. When users enter Community Chart in MEDENT, the system automatically queries outside sources for patient data and health information.
N2N Direct enables practices to send and receive different types of electronic documents. A practice can send CCDs, simple email-type messages in the form of a MEDENT triage, and almost any document from their patients charts in the form of a C62 (Unstructured Document).
Alerts & Reminders
Healthcare providers may need to send alerts and reminders about critical patient information, upcoming appointments or necessary follow-ups.
This reports patients that have had a booked or eVisit appointment in the past 3 years but have not had a well visit in the past 12 months.
MEDENT’s Directlink Appointment Reminder feature stores information pertaining to future appointments scheduled by the office based on the Doctor, Location and Appointment Type. Confirmations can be made via phone call, text or email, and practices can customize the messages and outreach attempts.
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