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Archive for June, 2009

Meet the Wellness Team

Posted by Lisa Velasquez in Fi-Med News

Fi-Med's Wellness Team-Tonique Shirley, Mary Wiczynski, Willie Roby, Nou Xiong, Karla Brown and Rosa Rodriguez

Fi-Med's Wellness Team-Tonique Shirley, Mary Wiczynski, Willie Roby, Nou Xiong, Karla Brown and Rosa Rodriguez

Our Wellness Team is made up of a volunteer group of dedicated employees on a mission to motivate the staff to take a proactive approach to improving their health. Working toward a goal of 100% participation, the Wellness Team meets frequently to create fun ways to get the staff involved. They recently kicked off their own version of NBC’s The Biggest Loser contest with cash prize incentives for those who lose the most weight. Another great idea was the announcment that Fi-Med would participate in the Vince Lombardi run/walk for cancer. The Wellness Team designed Fi-Med t-shirts for the employees to wear and had a great turnout. Everyone who participated really enjoyed spending the day with family and friends for such a great cause.

Sometimes it’s the little things that can make a big difference. In order to pursuade people to make healthier snack choices, they placed a basket of fruit where for just .50 cents(to replenish the supply) employees can help themselves to a wide variety of fresh fruit in season. Always looking for opportunities to encourage people to get up and move around, it is not unusual for the Wellness Team to invite others to join them in a power walk during their breaks!

Recently, Fi-Med became a member of the Wisconsin Wellness Council, an affiliate of  the Wellness Councils of America. Members are dedicated to building healthier communities in Wisconsin through health promotion programs at the worksite.

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June 23rd, 2009 | No Comments »

NCCI Updates-Version 15.2

Posted by Lisa Velasquez in Hot Topics, Industry Updates, Webinars

The National CCI database now contains 626,582 edit pairs of procedure codes that, when billed at the same time for the same patient by the same doctor on the same day, either will not be paid at all or will be paid at a reduced rate. Within the database are some hidden data points that could be critical to your reimbursement and/or compliance, such as duplicates, triplicates, reversals, etc. The data you download from the CMS website does not contain these data points nor can you always determine new and terminated pairs for a given period by just looking at dates. This quarter, there are over 5,000 edit pairs that have been terminated retroactively to April, 2009.

In this short, free webinar, Frank Cohen, analyst and developer of the most popular CCI search engines, will walk you through a brief introduction to the NCCI policy but more importantly, will show you the updated data pairs and the data points that are most often missed. Registered attendees will receive a list of worksheets that contain the duplicates, triplicates, reversals, additions and terminations for Version 15.2, which are effective July 1, 2009

Space is limited. Reserve your webinar now by visiting Frank’s website.

Did you find this information helpful? If you have information that you think would be valuable to the medical community and would like me to post the information on our blog, please submit your request for review to my attention at (or via DM on Twitter @fimed).

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June 22nd, 2009 | No Comments »

Red Flags Rules Delayed Until August 1st, 2009

Posted by J. Paul Spencer, CPC, CPC-H in Fi-Med Services, Hot Topics, J. Paul Spencer, CPC CPC-H

Days before the once-delayed implementation date of May 1st, 2009, the Federal Trade Commission halted the enforcement of the Red Flags Rules for Identity Theft. The new enforcement date will be August 1st, 2009.

This latest 3-month delay allows time for entities falling under a non-traditional definition of “creditor”, such as doctors and hospitals, to further strengthen their existing compliance plans to include processes to avoid and detect identity theft.

June 12th, 2009 | No Comments »

Fi-Med Focuses On Big Losses For a Healthy Bottom Line in 2009

Posted by Lisa Velasquez in Fi-Med News, In the Press

PRESS RELEASE

Managing an organization’s health doesn’t end with finances, and employees of Fi-Med Management, Inc., a Wisconsin-based medical-industry financial management firm, are taking that message to the streets on Saturday, June 13, 2009 for the 22nd Annual Lombardi Walk/Run for Cancer at Milwaukee County Zoo.

Fi-Med’s new Wellness Team kicked off a weight loss competition earlier this month as an in-house spinoff on NBC’s “The Biggest Loser.” The competition runs from June 1 through August 31, with cash and other prizes for participants who lose the largest percentage of weight.

“Really, everybody wins when we focus on health,” says Mary Wiczynski, EDI manager at Fi-Med, who heard about the cause through a friend whose family had grappled with cancer. “We’ve gotten a lot of motivating information on health, nutrition and exercise in the last few weeks, and now we’re excited to put that motivation to use for a good cause.”

More than 60 Fi-Med staff and family members will converge on the Milwaukee County Zoo, donning blue team shirts and ready to rally for the community, for charity and for cancer this Saturday at the 22nd Annual Lombardi Walk/Run for Cancer. The event starts at 7:45 a.m. with a 10k run, with a 5k option beginning at 8:30.

“Our job is to manage financial health for our clients, but health is much more holistic than just straight numbers,” says Fi-Med President Adrian Velasquez. “It seems fitting that we get out there and walk the talk by promoting health for our team, and for the communities we do business in.”

Proceeds for the event benefit Vince Lombardi Charitable Funds, a 39-year old fundraising  organization for cancer research, education, patient care and early detection for the Vince Lombardi Cancer Clinic at Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

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Fi-Med Management Inc., founded in 1993, provides billing, receivables management, lockbox services, collections, credentialing services, e-prescription and other financial management and reporting services to independent physicians, labs and medical centers across the country. Fi-Med’s unique combination of technology and expertise has helped increase cash flow and reduce compliance risk for its clients, and its success has earned the company numerous local and national recognition and business growth awards. http://www.fimed.com

June 12th, 2009 | 2 Comments »

PDSA (Plan, Do, Study, Act)

Posted by Lisa Velasquez in Industry Updates, Webinars

There has been quite a bit of interest surrounding Frank Cohen’s webinars and so I would like to tell you about the next one he has scheduled for Thursday, June 18th, from 1:00-2:00pm EDT. What I like about these webinars is how current and practical the topics are. I also appreciate Frank’s ability to make even the most complex topics relatively easy to understand, and at no charge they are a great value! I would recommend attending the webinar live so that you can participate in Q. and A. but if for some reason there is a schedule conflict, they are made available on his website. Here is some more information about the upcoming topic:

“If change is the only thing that is consistent in our lives, how come we never get used to it? Healthcare is a dynamic industry with a constantly changing landscape in technology, management, regulations and economics. Being able to adapt to change is a necessity for survival. Being able to lead change is the single best way to thrive and ensure profitability. Process improvement techniques such as Lean and Six Sigma have proven themselves to be the most effective change models out there and for these to work in the medical practice, we need a way to deploy change in a fast, efficient and cost effective way.

“The solution is PDSA; Plan, Do, Study, Act. Not only is it the single most effective rapid change platform available, it is required by some specialties for recertification, enforcing its importance as both a clinical and business improvement strategy. In this session, Frank Cohen, statistician, Six Sigma Black Belt and Lean instructor, will introduce you to the concept of process improvement and the steps in the PDSA platform.”

When finished, attendees will have obtained the basic knowledge necessary to plan their own PDSA improvement projects. You can find more information or register for the webinar.

Did you find this information helpful? If you have information that you think would be valuable to the medical community and would like me to post the information on our blog, please submit your request for review to my attention at (or via DM on Twitter @fimed).

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June 11th, 2009 | No Comments »

Coding for the Non-Coder

Posted by Lisa Velasquez in Fi-Med Services, Industry Updates, Webinars

For over 30 years, Frank Cohen has worked as a health care data analyst, knowledge engineer and consultant. He has written many books and is the Senior Analyst for MIT Solutions. I have attended several of Franks webinars, which are scheduled 3-4 times a month, covering such topics as coding, code and modifier utilization, cost accounting, work RVUs, etc. This is a great resource that I want to share with all of you and best of all it’s free! Here is a brief intro to one of his webinars that I particularly liked: Coding for the Non-Coder

“Health care, like other industries, has its own language; and not just from a clinical perspective, either. Diagnosis and treatment codes are necessary in order to get paid for the services you provide and determine your level of compliance with the myriad of complex rules and regulations we face day to day. As the industry continues to tighten up with respect to finances  and regulation, physicians, practice managers, consultants, advisors and others are finding that understanding the relationship of coding to other areas of the practice has reached critical mass. You don’t have to be a coder to acquire a basic, foundational understanding of medical coding; the language of the business of medicine. Coding for the Non-Coder was specifically designed with the non-coder in mind.

In this short (and free) webinar, Frank Cohen (a non-coder himself) will help you understand the relationship between coding, billing, reimbursement and compliance without teaching you how to become a coder. It focuses on the big picture; understanding the language of coding, its importance within the medical practice and most importantly, how to identify and understand coding problems; from the common to the arcane.”

Although this webinar has already been presented, it is available to view by going to Frank’s website.

Did you find this information helpful? If you have information that you think would be valuable to the medical community and would like me to post the information on our blog, please submit your request for review to my attention at (or via DM on Twitter @fimed).

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June 10th, 2009 | No Comments »

Fi-Med Book Club: “Simple Solutions: Harness the Power of Passion and Simplicity to Get Results” by Thomas Schmitt

Posted by admin in Company Sponsored Events

I’ve gotten a little bit of a late start on making comments on our Q2 book but I am going to try and highlight points from every chapter. Any additional comments or feedback is greatly appreciated, so everyone join in! And note: this is a work in progress so I will enhance as I go along.

Introduction
So right off the bat the book makes a good point. Passion. The book states “…the team had made effective use of many tools, including management, people skills, collaboration and execution. But those tools alone hadn’t gotten the job done…” That is where we need to demonstrate passion. With that success can be achieved to a much greater extent. Getting that quality behind peoples’ ambition, vision and leadership makes moving forward easier and, I feel, reaching goals easier.

(more…)

June 7th, 2009 | 1 Comment »