2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting to Offer Coding, Practice Management Sessions

At this year’s ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting in San Francisco, you can take advantage of a variety of sessions designed to address pressing concerns in practice management today. Practice managers, clinicians, office staff and others will enjoy and benefit from hands-on practical sessions and informative panel discussions by top content experts in the field.

Here are some important reasons you won’t want to miss the Annual Meeting, held this year from Nov. 6–11 at the Moscone Center in beautiful San Francisco:

ICD-10 Will Be Live, & You’ll Have Questions

After a number of delays, the long-awaited rollout of ICD-10 will take place on Oct. 1. This new, updated and more complex coding system will provide more detailed information on the screening, diagnosis and treatment of your patients. Hopefully, it will improve quality measurement, research and organizational efficiency, as well as maximize advances in health technology.

Practice managers, clinicians and office staff will benefit from hands-on practical sessions and informative panel discussions at this year’s Annual Meeting.
International Center for Documentary Arts

But practice managers and others may find all these new, lengthy codes confusing or intimidating. Take advantage of the premeeting coding course on Friday, Nov. 6. ACR coding experts and other top speakers who are knowledgeable about ICD-10 will speak and answer all of your questions, no matter how large or small. As your practice begins to work with ICD-10, think about any problems you are having, confusing codes, questions about which code to use in different case scenarios, or anything else that may help you make a smoother transition.

The ACR and ARHP are committed to helping you and everyone on your staff adapt to ICD-10 with fewer headaches and more success. The goal of ICD-10 is to help lower coding errors, boost accuracy and provide more specific data to payers and providers so you get reimbursed correctly. At this year’s Annual Meeting, you will enjoy a unique opportunity to get your questions answered and troubleshoot potential challenges from the experts who know ICD-10 better than anyone.

Master Your Practice’s IT

Technology is a growing and increasingly complex part of your practice and the entire healthcare landscape. From billing to coding to scheduling, IT can help you do everything more efficiently. However, you can feel overwhelmed by new tech, including which products you should buy and how to implement them in your practice without alienating staff or patients (or giving yourself a huge headache).

This year’s Annual Meeting will have an all-new Tech track that offers practice managers and others savvy advice on navigating everything from social media platforms to in-office medical software. Technology is a major component of successful practice management today. You and your staff will enjoy these engaging sessions, and you’ll learn how to integrate health IT and social media smoothly into your practice. Instead of fighting with technology and feeling frustrated, learn how to control it and use it to your practice’s advantage.

Electronic medical records, online tools, smartphone apps to promote healthy behaviors or facilitate patient compliance, electronic billing technology and other innovations are all an important part of medical practices today. Are you up to speed? Could you use new technology to make your practice or patient care more effective? Could tech help you control costs?

Don’t feel bulldozed by all the new buzzwords or changes in technology. All of these questions and others will be discussed at this year’s Annual Meeting. By the end, you may feel as tech-savvy as the teenagers in your family.

Sail Through Authorization Issues

At this year’s ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, Practice Management track sessions will help you and your staff gain invaluable insight into important changes happening in 2015 and beyond. Be prepared before changes occur so your practice can avoid problems and thrive. This is especially important in your relationships with insurance providers.

On Sunday, Nov. 8, ARHP will organize an informative panel discussion on Navigating Insurance and Prior Authorization. Insurance companies are changing their business practices and policies. How do you keep up and make sure procedures are reimbursed in a timely manner? Content experts will talk about every aspect of this complex area, from quality issues to contracting. This session is just one part of this year’s exciting Practice Management track, and everyone at your practice is encouraged to attend. Don’t let a changing landscape catch you off guard.

Learn Ways to Control Costs

Practice managers and others focused on your practice’s bottom line will enjoy informative sessions at this year’s Annual Meeting. One planned session on Monday, Nov. 9, offers expert discussion of new, innovative practice models like super groups, entities that bring rheumatology practices together so they can integrate efforts and save operating costs. Healthcare expenditures keep rising, and you need to take advantage of any opportunity to keep your balance sheet healthy. Adopting new payment models may help your practice succeed in this ever-changing, always-challenging economic environment. You need to get up to speed on new antitrust rules, contract issues, and how insurance companies view new practice business models.

Be Prepared for, or Steer Clear of, Audits

As always, the ACR and ARHP will offer hands-on advice on how to prepare for or even prevent a costly practice audit. Audits and financial reviews by the Medicare Recovery Audit Contractors (RACs) or even by private payers are time consuming and aggravating, not to mention costly for you. They require your staff to take time away from their daily work to respond to these requests.

Audits are not going away anytime soon. There is more pressure than ever for payers, including government and private insurers, to keep healthcare costs in control, and to avoid wasteful overpayments that should not happen in the first place. If you do have to deal with a practice audit, you need to know how to respond effectively and efficiently.

At the Annual Meeting, you will also be able to talk to experts about how to avoid presenting red flags that may attract an audit. We can show you some common pitfalls in improper coding and billing, and help you analyze your internal systems so they are in line with others in rheumatology. You can learn more about how your practice may be vulnerable to Comprehensive Error Rate Testing (CERT), a risk-assessment tool developed to spot improper reimbursement payments to physicians.

Practice management will be a strong focus at this year’s ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting. Join us in San Francisco to prepare yourself for the healthcare landscape of 2015 and beyond.

For more information about the 2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting, visit acrannualmeeting.org.