Monthly Archives: October 2014

Six Ways to Improve Your medical Billing Process

Posted on October 31, 2014

Since cash flow is critical to the success of your medical practice, it is of utmost importance to complete your billing process quickly and efficiently. This means submitting correct claims and receiving the proper reimbursement. Here are six things that you and your medical billers can do to ensure a high success rate in your medical practice:

1. Get familiar with LCDs: Ensure that your medical billers are familiar with Local Coverage Determination and their relation with specialities and billed services. By knowing about LCDs, you can understand when a Medicare carrier will cover a procedure and under what circumstance. This can help you ensure that your claims are correctly submitted and reimbursed on time.

2. Review submission reports: You can use and review your submission reports to verify if your claims were submitted and received by the payers. Since these reports will also reveal which claims were rejected and the reason why, you can steer away from potential denials and also ensure that your claims are corrected. With all the errors rectified, you can resubmit your claims.

3. Work on your denials: Both insurance companies and medical billers can make mistakes. At times a claim can be billed correctly, but the insurance company can make an error and deny it. This is why your medical billers should come up with a regular schedule in which every denial should be worked on. Also ensure to continue with regular follow-ups, until all your denials are paid.

4. Make appeals, if needed: Payers may not always follow coding guidelines, so at times, you may have to make an appeal. Take some time off to write out letters, gather the proof and submit your appeal to the insurance company. Based on your appeal, you could receive payment on your claims. Continue reading

5 Image Masking Methods to Enhance Product Images

5 Image Masking Methods to Enhance Product Images

Posted on October 26, 2014

Do you have images of products to put up on your website, online store, brochure or catalog?  But you want the focus to be on your product and not on the background.  This is now possible through image masking. Photo masking is a great way to protect a part of an image by creating a mask. When a photograph is masked, the final quality can be improved to give a great effect.  Even serrated edges can be removed and the image can be given a well-defined look.  Here are 5 Image Masking Methods to Enhance Product Images:

1. Alpha channel masking technique

Commonly known as the raster masking technique, this masking method is perfect for semi-transparent or translucent images. When creating a layer over an image is difficult, this technique is used. By utilizing this technique, you can make sure of your cut-out/isolated images having smooth and even edges.

2. Advanced/complex layer masking technique

This image masking technique is great to use when you need to eradicate fine objects from the background of a photograph. Transparent or semi-translucent objects like feathers, fur or hair can be successfully extracted by using this technique in Adobe Photoshop CS6.

3. Transparency masking technique

This particular image masking technique is quite handy when it comes to removing gradient transparencies from an image. For example, glass objects within an image can be smoothly removed without a trace. Continue reading

6 Tips for Conducting the Perfect SWOT Analysis

Posted on October 20, 2014

Do you plan on starting a new business venture? Or maybe you plan on introducing a novel business strategy? If yes, your business will find it quite helpful to conduct a SWOT analysis. With a thorough analysis of your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats, you can get a deeper insight into the external/internal factors that can help your business reach its goals. Though a SWOT analysis is quite useful and easy to perform, there are a few things that you should keep in mind while performing a SWOT analysis.

Continue reading

How Technology is Transforming the Mortgage Industry

Posted on October 11, 2014

The one thing that most prospective home buyers are worried about is the process of procuring loans. The maze of complicated and never ending processes goes beyond the understanding and knowledge of buyers, leaving them feeling frustrated. However, with the coming of technology, the loan procurement process has undergone a sea change.

The amazing technology advancement of the present has vastly contributed in simplifying the loan processing process. For example, e-signatures have brought about a humongous change. With e-signatures attaining legal sanctions, documents can now be instantly signed, even from a distant location, thus drastically reducing the time lost during the transit of documents.

E-signatures are indeed a boon to the mortgage industry, as they have helped speed up almost every aspect of the lengthy loan processing process. Technology has also paved a way to create an electronic archive, which can hold all the signed documents. This way, documents can be easily accessed at the click of a button.

The emergence of smartphones has also significantly transformed the mortgage process. Right from phone calls, to document sharing and e-signatures to appraisal photos, everything in the mortgage process can be performed from the smartphone. Earlier on, pictures had to be taken, developed and then fixed to the appraisal docs, before it could be mailed to the mortgage office. This would take anywhere between a few days to a couple of weeks. But this has completely changed with the digital camera, wherein a photo can be clicked and affixed within a few seconds. Now a buyer can conveniently use a samrtphone or digital camera to take a photo of their application documentation and submit it without any time delays. Continue reading

5 Benefits of Outsourcing Medical Writing

Posted on October 4, 2014

If you are a pharmaceutical, life science or biotechnology company, then you can enjoy huge cost savings by outsourcing your medical writing needs. Outsourcing medical writing is an effective business strategy that can help you reduce rising costs, while delivering high-quality medical writing services, within your budget and time constraints.

1. Minimize payroll costs: If your company has a modest budget or produces fewer publications, then outsourcing is a great way to avoid the cost of staffing an in-house team of medical writers. You can enjoy cost savings related to medical insurance, payroll, worker’s compensation and vacation time.

2. Better flexibility: Publication demands continuously fluctuate in the medical world. Through outsourcing, you can manage peak workflow demands in a better fashion. Instead of staffing a team of medical writers to write journal articles irregularly through the year, you can access the skills of writers only when necessary. Depending on your workflow, outsourcing can help you ramp up or ramp down your production, thereby helping you save on costs.

3. Leverage core skills: Experienced medical writers can bring a wealth of knowledge to your journals and help your present the information effectively. This is boon to smaller companies, who would otherwise not have access to such writers. Through outsourcing, your company can hire skilled medical writers who are not only experienced, but are also skilled at presenting the information to your target audience. Continue reading