Page 25 - HME Business, January/February 2022

the ground running in 2021 with audits on thousands of claim lines at one time.
Andthosearejustafewoftheauditissues for 2022. On Feb 10, van Halem presented an HME Business webinar outlining 2022’s audit trends and how providers can contend with them. It is online as a free archive at HME-Business.com/webinars.
9. EPRESCRIBING HME
Of course, one way to help ensure claim accuracy and claims acceptance is through eprescription. There has been a lot of
talk about eprescription for HME, and there have been forays into implement- ing it on specific billing software systems, but it hasn’t taken off. However, a recent, industry-driver effort might change that.
In September, a collection of HME industry leaders formed DMEscripts LLC (dmescripts.com), a healthcare e-prescribing company that offers a plat- form for prescribers to electronically transmit HME/DME orders to any partici- pating provider. Better yet, it comes from the HME industry.
The alliance of investors forming
DMEscripts includes the American Association for Homecare, VGM & Associates, AdaptHealth LLC, Apria Healthcare Group LLC, Lincare Inc. and Rotech Healthcare Inc. The venture combines the leadership and resources of all founding members, as well as other digital health experts, to administer an industry- owned and operated e-prescribe platform.
DMEscripts says its ultimate aim is to improve the current order-to-delivery process by empowering and accelerating the widespread adoption of an electronic ordering application for DME. To accom- plish that, DMEscripts uses proprietary e-prescription software to operate an open network for any DME supplier to join at no cost to prescribers or patients.
10. OUTSOURCING SOLUTIONS
Lastly, outsourcing will be a continuing trend for 2022. Driving efficiency has been a business imperative for HME ever since CMS decided to continually hack away at reimbursement. While providers demon- strate their value via their patient services, they can’t do that if they are spending too
much time trying to keep every component of their workflows in-house.
So, providers are starting to more frequently “look within” and assess whether or not staff-intensive workflows are truly aligned with the value they deliver, or whether they are instead a costly distraction that can be fulfilled by outsourcing.
So we will continue to see that comes from the HME industry. Obviously, that means more outsourcing to billing and claims processing services. Also, we are seeing new outsourcing options come online as technology is applied in creative ways. As mentioned above in the telehealth section, services such as rtNOW and TeleHealth Clinical Evals are using telehealth to create all new types of outsourced services. And we’re also seeing clever staffing solutions such as Tactical Back Office that aren’t exactly outsourcing, but rather using tech- nology to create dedicated remote teams that work for the provider.
Increased challenges naturally bring more solutions, so we can expect that the range of outsourcers is likely to expand over 2022 and beyond.
Management Solutions | Technology | Products hme-business.com | January/February 2021 | HMEBusiness 25 Untitled-34 1 2/1/22 12:35 PM