Many providers are already providing services covered under chronic care management (CCM), but they struggle with how to properly track and get paid for these services. PacEHR™ electronic health record makes it easy to track and claim reimbursement for those services, ultimately maximizing your revenue without adding more data entry burdens. Here is how to utilize PacEHR™ electronic health record to complete CCM tracking and reporting in just 2 steps.
What’s Chronic Care Management?
Chronic Care Management (CCM) is recognized by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) as a critical component of primary care that improves the quality of health and care for individuals. In 2015, Medicare began paying separately under the Physician Fee Schedule for CCM services delivered to patients with multiple chronic conditions. CCM services are generally non-face-to-face, and are available to patients with two or more chronic conditions expected to last at least 12 months or until the patient’s death.
As soon as providers meet the threshold of 20 minutes of service per month, they can start billing for CCM. The reimbursement rate for CCM in 2021 is $41.17 for at least 20 minutes in a given month, but the actual reimbursement varies by region with higher rates for rural areas. The low time requirement and high reimbursement make CCM an easy target for companies looking to grow their revenue in 2022.
Tracking challenges prevent utilization and reimbursement
CCM is quite flexible in terms of service delivery, thus carry significant benefits for long-term care providers. Post-acute long-term care providers usually need to juggle a tight schedule, traveling between facilities and seeing many patients per day. CCM is a non-face-to-face service, which is not bound by the normal length of a patient visit in a facility. That means providers have more options for scheduling CMM encounters and avoid the physical commute to and from a facility.
CCM follows the fundamental principle of long-term care, which is all about proactive healthcare and continual monitoring to avoid hospitalization. CCM increases patients’ access to preventative care in a two-prong approach: having providers reach out to patients to deliver care proactively and expanding scheduling flexibility to extend providers’ availability.
CCM is highly effective in improving patients’ quality of life and offers an extra source of income for providers. On top of that, many physicians have already tracked and managed chronic conditions as part of their routine check-ins. The only missing component is reporting their visits on EHR and logging details for reimbursement.
Originally, CCM came with stringent guidelines and requirements for eligibility and reporting, which discouraged many care providers from reporting it for reimbursement. The traditional reporting mechanism doesn’t help its case either. Without the help of software, providers relied on good old pens and papers to track and report their CCM activities, which adds more data entry burden and complicates their already overwhelming workflow. Long-term care professionals continue to struggle with getting reimbursed for the service they’re already providing.
The good news is that since then, the regulations around CCM have relaxed to lower the entry barrier. Additionally, EHR software like PacEHR™ electronic health record now offers tracking capabilities to make reporting CCM a breeze for long-term care providers.
How to track and report CCM in PacEHR™ electronic health record in only 2 steps.
PacEHR™ electronic health record , the latest product from the Saisystems Health team designed by and for long-term care professionals, has a built-in mechanism to ensure that you can maximize your revenue by claiming all eligible reimbursement.
Tracking CCM for all patients can be completed in just one screen. There are 2 steps a provider needs to complete: enroll the patient and log encounter details. Patient enrollment is a one-time setup at the beginning of service. All the providers need to do is to check a box and confirm enrollment at the pop-up warning. Details logging is even easier. For every encounter, providers need to provide a short description of the discussion and the length of the service provided. Built specifically for long-term care, PacEHR™ electronic health record asks only the necessary information – no-frills, no excess.
How do you claim your reimbursement with PacEHR™ electronic health record? This is the exciting part. Once you reach 20 minutes of service, the system automatically sends out a bill on your behalf. Automatically billing makes sure that providers can focus on care quality, not the paperwork.
By tracking CCM, practices can unlock an extra revenue stream, sometimes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Want to learn how? Book a demo and see how you can unlock this revenue stream cost-effectively.