What will happen with my old
Medical Software data?
EncounterNotes's has
made conversions from different types of
Medical
Billing Software,
Medical Software,
Electronic Medical Records (Windows systems, Unix systems, DOS systems and many others). Your
conversion will not be the first; it may be the first one of its type,
but the conversion logic will be the same. Obviously there are
challenges if your system is closed, or the data is in special format.
When this type of situations occurs, we look for different alternatives.
Conversions take from
4 days to 2 or 3 weeks, everything will depend on the complexity of the
conversion. If the data is corrupted, it will be impossible to
convert it.
Data can be extracted
from:
-
Directly from the
Database
-
Directly from an
ASCII file, created by the old system, or binary.
-
Directly from a
Printed Report (Report is sent to a file)
If none of these
alternatives is possible, the prior billing software vendor needs to write a
program to extract the patient demographics and electronic claims, sometimes they have utilities built
into the medical software that facilitates the migration of data. This last option very rarely happens, but
it is possible. Once this is done, we can start the file conversion to our
Medical Software solution.
The first option
"Directly from the database" is the easy one, since the database is an
open architecture, and the data can be seen by different applications.
Our Medical Billing Software or Medical Software solution uses an open architecture.
If your old Practice Management Software System is a DOS application, this option does not apply.
The second option
"Directly from an ASCII file" or binary files, (mostly DOS
systems) is somewhat easy. There are a lot of challenges to see the
Medical billing information in an unknown format, at this stage of the conversion
process, there are a lot of "guesses". Once everything has been
confirmed, we start the conversion process. One additional step after
these challenges, is to extract
the data from the prior Medical Billing Software, and store it to a file called "Flat
file" or ASCII file". Once the Medical Billing Software data is in that format, we are able to
read the information and store it in our system.
The third option
"Directly from a printed report". This option is very challenging and
not always 100% accurate. It sometimes requires the combination of
two Medical Software reports in order to create one "Flat file" or ASCII file with all
the Practice Management System information needed in that file.
MAPPING
Mapping is the
process of identifying every Medical Billing Software field in the database or flat file, this
process requires the analysis of every field in the old system to match
it with a field in the new Practice Management system.
Example:
| Field |
Old System Flat File |
New System |
| Patient Number |
Pos 1 to 5 |
Patient_NR |
| Patient Name |
Pos 6 to 35 |
Patient_Name |
| Patient SS# |
Pos 36 to 44 |
Patient_SS |
| Patient Date of
Birth |
Pos 45 to 52 |
Patient_dob |
If the source of
the Medical Billing information is an open database, then we match (Map) old names with current
names in the Medical Software databases and not positions as is shown in the above
example on column 2.
| Field |
Old System Field name |
New System |
| Patient Number |
Patient_NR_OLD |
Patient_NR |
| Patient Name |
Patient_Name_OLD |
Patient_Name |
| Patient SS# |
Patient_SS_OLD |
Patient_SS |
| Patient Date of
Birth |
Patient_dob_OLD |
Patient_dob |
Once the
Practice Management System data has
been mapped, the conversion process starts, the results are moved to our
Medical Billing system, then the information can be seen in our EncounterNotes' Practice Management
System solution.
YOUR JOB
Your job is to
certify the information, as you are the most knowledgeable person of your
data, and only you can say if it is right or wrong. You can tell if the
grand total of the account receivables is correct or not, so you need to
certify the information. Once the Medical Billing information has been certified, the
information is moved again permanently.
This task usually
costs between $3,000 and $4,000 (assuming you have only one Practice
Management Software to migrate from), the price will depend on the complexity
of the conversion; $1,500 if it is the Medical Software demographics only. Third party
Medical Billing Software companies that offer conversion services, typically charge between $4,500 to
$8,000 per Practice Management System converted.
Some office managers
decide that they do not want to move the information and they prefer to
start entering the information from scratch, and let the old system die
until all the Medical Billing A/R becomes zero. If you want to preserve the history in
one single system, this
option is not a good one.
EncounterNotes
Practice Management System can store as many years of information as you want, the
space that it uses in the server is not considerable, and it is very cheap to
store it there, the performance of the Medical Billing Software with a huge amount of data
will not be affected at all.
Other Medical Practice management
Topics
Electronic Billing Insurance Claims
Electronic Statements
Medical Telephony -
ReminderPRO
Practice Management Software
Medical
Billing Software
Touch
Screen Electronic Medical Records
Medinotes e
Medical Software
Pricing Medical Software
Medical Appointment Scheduler
Medical Software products
Electronic Medical Records EMR
Software
EMR System
Medical
Billing System
LabRetriever
Electronic
Medical Records Software
Electronic Medical Records System
Medical Software Specialties
Front Desk
Medical Software and Billing Workflow
Physician
Electronic Medical Records Workflow
|
