There are lots of nice white papers available about Chronic Care Management (CCM). There are conferences and seminars to teach you the basics of CCM. We have enough white papers on our site to let any providers navigate through most of the joys of CCM billing. However, knowing the rules is only half the battle. There are a few places where outside help is probably worthwhile:
- Building the Care Plan
You can’t start billing for CCM without a care plan for each patient. The EMRs do not typically allow you to create good care plans. Those that do include a care plan builder tend to leave the actual design of the plan up to you. Dulcian has created a nice care plan builder that meets all of the CCM rules and integrates with your EMR. This provides a compliant care plan for each patient, which you can then evolve to meet your clinical needs.
- 24/7 access
You must make your care plan available to clinicians 24/7. Unless you want to create user names and passwords for your EMR for any clinician who might need access, some type of care plan portal is very useful. Dulcian has created a handy portal where care plans can reside.
- Logging CCM time
Any timer that is not automatically tracking time without an overt action on the part of the staffer is not going to get used. Our timer requires minimal effort from the staff and can be seamlessly integrated with whatever software is being used to support the care plan. Using any less rigorous way of logging CCM time and you will find that the fantasy of $200,000/year for each practitioner rapidly turns into $2000/year.
- Repurpose your staff
The way to get closer to full CCM billing is to focus your staff on reaching out to patients during the month. Since most practice staff members are already so busy that they can’t take on any additional tasks, you should contemplate either hiring new staff to do patient outreaches or outsourcing non-patient tasks to an organization that can take care of your routine office tasks. Dulcian can help handle all of your routine tasks using our credentialed staff to help you maximize the number of CCM patients for whom your practice can bill.
Leave a Reply