Hello, I'm Mike Beer and I'm a Technical Advisor on the Medical Software team at Bradford-Scott Data Corporation. My responsibilities at BSDC include programming, technical support, HL7 interfacing with hospitals or EHR, system administration and electronic data conversions for our medical office billing software and electronic medical record products.
I graduated from Purdue University with an Industrial Management / Computer Science degree in 1992 and I've worked at BSDC in the medical vertical ever since! I live in Indianapolis with my wife and two children. In my spare time I like to attend concerts, Indiana Pacers and Indianapolis Colts games, run, play football with the kids, travel, and try new kinds of craft beer. I like to be entertained and to laugh, and my favorite quote is "You can sleep when you're dead!"
An exciting new product in the
Intergy by Sage line is the Intergy Practice Portal. This product allows patients to interact with your practice in a brand new way! Whether it's on line or via a kiosk, patients can pre-register, view their information and results, and much more. A few of the features of this product include:
- Providing patients a convenient, secure on line option for submitting new patient registration forms, pre-visit questionnaires, appointment requests and prescription refills
- Empowering patients to view their lab results, immunization data, medications, health conditions and more
- Reducing staff phone time by exchanging real-time, secure email messages with patients instead of phone calls
Call
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation today to see how the Practice Portal feature of Intergy by Sage can increase satisfaction and reduce waiting times for your patients! Reply to this blog or call us at 317-713-2065.
Cheers,
Mike
The Big 10 tournament is here in town so I thought I'd run down the top 10 reasons why Intergy by Sage and Intergy EHR by Sage will transform your office:
- Bradford-Scott can help you qualify for EHR Stimulus money
- Sage Intergy EHR v 5.5 is CCHIT certified
- Go paperless
- EHR adoption is contagious, get started now
- BSDC provides Indiana EMR, Ohio EMR, Illinois EMR, Kentucky EMR and Michigan EMR
- CMS Incentives, Medicare Incentives, and Medicaid Incentives for EMR adopters
- Electronic prescriptions from your exam room.
- Comply with physician quality reporting initiative (PQRI) measures
- We offer the best training in the Midwest
- We offer the best support and service in the Midwest
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Purdue is my home team in the Big 10, and
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation is the home team among EHR companies in the Midwest. Call us to schedule an EHR demo!
Boiler Up!
Cheers,
Mike
A lot has been written about your EHR, or Electronic Health Record. But recently there has been a push to allow patients to create and manage a PHR, or Personal Health Record. While a hospital or provider with an electronic medical records system keeps track of your electronic health records, maintenance of a PHR is up to a patient.
According to myOptumHealth.com, any or all of the following information can be kept in a PHR:
- Family medical history
- Existing conditions
- Allergies
- Medications
- Surgeries
- Hospital stays
- Labs tests and results
- Dental and vision records
- Religious information
- Immunization records
- Emergency contacts
- Living wills
There are paper-based, computer-based, and Internet-based PHRs available. Obviously the Internet-based one is the most portable, but some may have reservations about the security of those. As EHR adoption grows, electronic health records will become more
and more available too. Bradford-Scott Data Corporation can provide you with an EHR demo of our Sage Intergy EHR product. Call 317-713-2065 or reply to this blog for more details.
Cheers,
Mike
The Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) has published a survey showing that the "Meaningful Use" segment of the ARRA Regulations will spur health care IT spending in 2010. Nearly 3/4 of respondents report that their practice will increase their spending this year, largely driven by the CMS Incentive program.
Thirty-five percent of respondents said they plan to have a fully functioning electronic health records (EHR) system within two years. Under ARRA rules, health care companies that make meaningful use of electronic medical records and electronic prescriptions will be eligible for Medicare incentives and Medicaid incentives.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation offers 2008
CCHIT-certified Sage Intergy EHR v5.5. If you want to find out how you can take advantage of the EHR stimulus money set forth by the ARRA program reply to this blog to schedule an EHR demo. It's looking to be a busy, busy year for EMR adoption and we're ready to help you.
Cheers,
Mike
Did you think HIPAA had ridden off into the sunset? Just when you thought it was safe, the new ARRA Regulations have defined new rules for notifying individuals when their protected health information has been breached. The ARRA Rules include a HITECH (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health) Act which became effective in September.
Health care entities are required to notify individuals affected by a breach. A breach is defined as
"Any impermissible acquisition, access, use, or disclosure of unsecured protected health information that compromises the security or privacy of the information." Documentation must be provided and include the following:
- What happened to the information
- The nature of the information
- Steps that could mitigate the potential harm
- The number of individual identifiers present in the information
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation's Intergy by Sage and
Intergy EHR by Sage will provide your office with important HIPAA-compliant security. To learn more about these products, click their links for more information or call us at 317-713-2065.
Cheers,
Mike
Right now (from 10am-4pm) a historic health reform meeting is taking place in Washington, D.C. between both Democrats and Republicans. They're trying to hammer out a health reform bill that both parties can agree (or at least compromise) upon. From www.whitehouse.gov comes the following amazing photo:
According to Dan Pfeiffer, the White House Communications Director, health care reform will lower premiums and slow the growth of costs for health care. He says,
"The non-partisan Congressional Budget Office, the Associated Press and the Wall Street Journal all found that our approach will substantially lower the cost of health care premiums for the vast majority of Americans for three reasons: because it lowers administrative costs, it increases competition, and spreads the cost of health care fairly across millions of Americans."I hope that health care reform will also result in increased EHR adoption. Electronic Health Records will result in better and more accurate health care for providers and patients.
Intergy EHR by Sage is a product that will help revolutionize health care, and with the EHR stimulus package that's being offered by the government, now is the time for EMR adoption. Click the link above for more info, or contact Bradford-Scott Data Corporation at 317-713-2065.
Cheers,
Mike
Are you participating in the 2010 Electronic Prescribing (eRx) Incentive Program? No? What is it? It's an incentive plan separate from and in addition to the physician quality reporting initiative (PQRI). Eligible providers do not need to participate in PQRI to participate in the e-prescribing incentive program. Here are some things you need to know about this program:
- Providers must have and use a qualified eRx system and report on his or her adoption and use of electronic prescriptions
- Providers must meet the criteria for successful electronic prescriber specified by CMS for a particular reporting period
- At least 10% of a successful eRx provider's Medicare Part B covered services must be made up of codes that appear in the denominator of the eRx measure.
To participate in the 2010 eRx Incentive program, providers may report on their adoption and use of a qualified eRx system to CMS via a qualified electronic health record (EHR) product.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation is proud to offer
Intergy EHR by Sage as that product. For information regarding EHR/EMR, electronic prescriptions, or to schedule an EHR demo, contact us at 317-713-2065 or reply to this blog.
Cheers,
Mike
Today,
President Obama released a new $1 Trillion compromise health care bill which he hopes will bridge the gap between the Democrats and Republicans. Gone is the public option and a few decisions have been shifted to states, but the underlying theme is still that all U.S. citizens would (and must) have affordable health insurance coverage. From the official White House website, here is a summary of what the bill may provide:
- It makes insurance more affordable by providing the largest middle class tax cut for health care in history, reducing premium costs for tens of millions of families and small business owners who are priced out of coverage today. This helps over 31 million Americans afford health care who do not get it today – and makes coverage more affordable for many more.
- It sets up a new competitive health insurance market giving tens of millions of Americans the exact same insurance choices that members of Congress will have.
- It brings greater accountability to health care by laying out commonsense rules of the road to keep premiums down and prevent insurance industry abuses and denial of care.
- It will end discrimination against Americans with pre-existing conditions.
- It puts our budget and economy on a more stable path by reducing the deficit by $100 billion over the next ten years – and about $1 trillion over the second decade – by cutting government overspending and reining in waste, fraud and abuse.
I may work for an EHR vendor but I have my own interests in mind too. My family's health care costs have consistently risen and there's no end in sight. New insurance requirements will result in new billing and EHR requirements. We at
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation have worked through many changes in billing and electronic medical records requirements and plan to do so again whenever this bill gets passed.
If you'd like more information about
Intergy by Sage or
Intergy EHR by Sage, leave a comment or call us at 317-713-2065.
Cheers,
Mike
Another day, another article about spiraling health care costs. CNN.com reports that Blue Cross' attempted 39% rate increase in California was called an example of excess by Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius. But this was not the worst. Sebelius also said, "America's largest insurance companies have requested premium increases of 56 percent in Michigan..."
When will this end? I know my rates have gone up drastically each year while my coverage seems to decrease. Luckily, next week President Obama will sit down with congressional leaders from both parties in an effort to work out differences and move health care reform forward.
In another example of proposed reform, don't forget that the
American Recovery & Reinvestment Act provided incentives for early adoption of electronic health records. If a physician's office is making meaningful use of EMR systems by 2011, huge rebates are available from the US Government.
Intergy EHR by Sage v5.5 is CCHIT certified, and with its help you'll be able to qualify for meaningful use. To learn more about this product and
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation's service and support, contact us via this blog. Stop the spiral!
Cheers,
Mike
I've been trying to keep up with the Olympics as I have time. A DVR is a wonderful tool for doing that, although I'm usually a day behind and sometimes know the results before I get to watch. So far the USA is doing pretty well at winning gold medals.
Today I had a crazy vision: What if
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation was in the physician medical billing or electronic medical records Olympics? I think we'd be standing up there receiving our gold medals in many events like:
- Intergy by Sage medical claims software implementation
- Intergy EHR by Sage electronic health records implementation
- CCHIT 2008 certification for Intergy EHR by Sage v5.5
- Customer service survey score of 9.52 out of 10.
If you're not already part of our team, we want you on it! To find out what gold medal service and products are like, contact us at 317-713-2065 or contact us through this blog. Go USA!
Cheers,
Mike
Purdue won at Ohio State last night! It took some definite teamwork to pull this one off. On a night when Robbie Hummel was invisible, Grant and Johnson stepped up to help the Boilers beat the Bucks.
The medical software and hardware departments here at
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation also employ a great amount of teamwork. In any given day, there are a lot of assignments that need to be accomplished, and the team comes together to do all of these things:
- Phone support for medical billing system and electronic medical records software
- Phone support for hardware, including servers, printers, backups, etc.
- Training classes for new and existing medical claims software and EMR customers
- On-site implementation of Intergy by Sage and Intergy EHR by Sage
- EDI Enrollment for new and existing customers
- R&D for our medical office billing software and EHR software
- Interface work with hospital information systems, labs, and EMR systems
- Countless other things...including blogging!
Bradford-Scott is a team that wants to work for you. Our
service and support team is the best in the Midwest and we can prove it. In fact, we scored 9.52 on a scale from 1 to 10 with 10 being the highest on our most recent surveys. Go team! Boiler Up!
Cheers,
Mike
In many of my blogs I write about our medical claims software, Intergy by Sage and our electronic medical record system, Intergy EHR by Sage. Then I thought, who is Sage? What do they offer? Why are we aligned with them? Here's what I found:
Intergy and Intergy EHR are products developed and marketed by Sage North America. SNA has existed for quite some time as shown by the following statement from their company biography:
Sage North America began not as one company, but as the efforts of many entrepreneurs who built their successful products and businesses with a sincere focus on their customers. Today, our company represents the culmination of that combined entrepreneurial spirit, drive, and vision.This means that Sage is not small potatoes. As a whole, Sage North America supports 3.1 organizations in North America! And SNA is a subsidiary of its parent company, The Sage Group. According to Sage's website:
The Sage Group, plc, is a world-leading supplier of accounting and business management software to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs). Because of the size of the company backing Intergy and Intergy EHR, we benefit by enjoying massive R&D budgets. This means that these products are always on the forefront of technology and are adding new features all the time. Take a minute to look at the specs for
Intergy by Sage and
Intergy EHR by Sage by clicking the links, and contact
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation through this blog or at 317-713-2065.
Cheers,
Mike
It's Fat Tuesday! I got some beads at the restaurant at lunch and I've gotten lots of comments about them. I think I'd rather be in New Orleans than here right about now. But I'm not, so why not have a little fun at work? Here's what Mardi Gras and
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation have in common:
- M - Medical Office Billing Software experts for over 25 years
- A - Always providing the best service and support in the Midwest
- R - Ready to upgrade your office to electronic health records
- D - Doing whatever it takes for our customers to succeed
- I - Intergy by Sage and Intergy EHR by Sage products
- G - GUI, Windows-based product line
- R - Real-time claim-tracking, lab interfaces, electronic prescriptions
- A - A+ service, as proven by our...
- S - Survey scores. Our 2009 customer support survey score was 9.52!
Enjoy your Mardi Gras! And when you wake up tomorrow, give us a call at 713-2065 to find out about the products and support that Bradford-Scott Data Corporation can provide you with.
Cheers,
Mike
For some time one of our system administrators at Bradford-Scott has been exploring caves. Brad Barcom has become an expert caver in an short amount of time. Last weekend he invited a few of us from work to go caving at Buckner Cave in Bloomington, IN. After acquiring permission and signing the release forms, we were off.
I took my 11-year-old Sam for what was promised to be a 2-3 hour trip. We crawled and crawled, sometimes through mud or water. Six hours later we were out! I think we were crawling for nearly four hours of the six! We saw lots of hibernating bats, a few formations, and a waterfall. Actually we crawled through the flowing waterfall which was the most difficult but also the most spectacular part of the cave. It was an experience I'll never forget.
But it's also nice to be back at
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation in a comfy, warm, dry chair. The world of dust, mud, clay and water has change to a world of EMR systems, medical claims software and data conversions. Though every muscle and joint in my body still aches, I can still use
Intergy by Sage and
Intergy EHR by Sage from the comfort of this keyboard! So if you're so inclined, be adventurous! And if you're a physician or work in physician medical billing, contact us for more information about Intergy by Sage or Intergy EHR by Sage.
Cheers,
Mike
I was reading some health-related articles today and found one that hit really hit me. A University of Minnesota study has found that drinking as little as two sodas a week can double the risk of pancreatic cancer. The study showed that the when soda, which has high levels of sugar, is consumed, the pancreas has to work harder to release insulin to balance the body's blood sugar.
The data was compiled by studying 60,000 patients in Singapore. It would be much easier to compile this type of data now that electronic health records are more prevalent. A doctor with a primary care EMR system would be able to ask about soda usage from their patients and would be able to track that over a long time span. A pediatrics EMR system would also track from when the patients were children.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation offers a CCHIT certified product,
Intergy EHR by Sage v5.5. In addition to tracking data like I mentioned above, it can provide you with lab interfaces, electronic prescriptions, and many more features. Click the link above to learn more about it, or reply to this post for more information.
Cheers,
Mike
What was supposed to be the big health care reform has hit the skids. Now that the Democrats' super-majority is gone, it looks like it may be even longer before any reform is passed. When it comes down to it, most people (excluding insurance companies) want some kind of reform. Physicians don't want their pay cut, patients don't want their benefits cut, but something needs to be done. My guess is that it's going to be a very slow process.
I looked the AMA's website and it details the following about reform:
The American Medical Association (AMA) has identified seven critical elements necessary to improve access to affordable, quality care and reduce unnecessary costs in the current system:- Health insurance coverage for all Americans
- Insurance market reforms that expand choice of affordable coverage and eliminate denials for pre-existing conditions
- Assurance that health care decisions will remain in the hands of patients and their physicians, not insurance companies or government officials
- Investments and incentives for quality improvement, prevention and wellness initiatives
- Repeal of the Medicare physician payment formula that would trigger steep cuts and threaten seniors' access to care
- Implementation of medical liability reforms to reduce the cost of defensive medicine
- Streamlining and standardizing of insurance claims processing requirements to eliminate unnecessary costs and administrative burdens
It remains to be seen what will happen with health care reform. No matter what is decided,
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation has a medical billing system that will help your practice cope.
Intergy by Sage is our medical office billing software and you can find out more about it by searching our website via the link above or contacting us through this blog.
Cheers,
Mike
The headlines look familiar. But it may not be what you think. This week, Michelle Obama rolled out her new health care plan: a fight against childhood obesity. Studies show that one in three children are overweight or obese and the percentage of overweight children has tripled since 1970! Some highlights that the administration hopes to accomplish are:
- Make nutritional information on food labels easier to understand
- Reforming the school lunch system to include more fruits and vegetables and less desserts
- With help from the American Academy of Pediatrics, stress to Pediatricians that more emphasis be put on BMI (Body Mass Index) measurement
Electronic Medical Record Systems provide a good way to measure a child's BMI and weight-control progress.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation offers
Intergy EHR by Sage, a Pediatrics EMR system that can help us curb this childhood obesity problem we face. Things can improve if we work together. Let's Move!
Cheers,
Mike
So today and yesterday I took my first sick days in probably 10 years. I don't get sick! But my whole family had the flu and I got a touch of it too. Still working today from home but I wanted to make sure I didn't get my coworkers sick for the Super Bowl.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation supplies the medical office billing software for both our family doctor and our pediatrician. It's comforting to know that they have a good medical billing system so our claims will be filed quickly and accurately. Plus, the Pediatrics EMR and the Primary Care EMR features offered by
Intergy EHR by Sage are second to none.
If your office is looking for the best physician medical billing or electronic medical records system available, look no further than Bradford-Scott. Contact us via this blog or at 317-713-2065 and ask for medical sales.
Last but not least: GO COLTS!!
Cheers,
Mike
Congrats to the Colts on winning the 2009 AFC Championship! We were there and it was a great game. We're still more than a week away from the Superbowl but you can be sure there will be plenty of posts about that in the coming week from all of us here at
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation.
Speaking of Bradford-Scott, there were a number of us at the game. Our Medical Software manager sat in on the goal-line. Our Electronic Health Records manager sat on the 20. A long-time medical claims software programmer sat in the end zone. And my family and I were in the corner along with our EHR lead trainer and her parents.
Bradford-Scott Data Corporation has been open for over 25 years in the medical software industry. And the combined experience at the Colts game Sunday was over 60 years! To learn more about how our
support and service will make your
Intergy by Sage and
Intergy EHR by Sage implementations go smoothly, give us a call at 317-713-2065 or reply to this blog.
Go Colts!
Cheers,
Mike
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