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The federal HITECH Act has created more business opportnities for third-party healthcare billing companies.

Steven Tolle, vice president of solutions management at Chicago-based EHR vendor Allscripts , delivered a speech at the 2009 national conference of the Healthcare Billing and Management Association mentioning the opprotunities created by The federal HITECH Act for third-party healthcare billing companies. Tolle said that the HITECH act of ARRA has created opportunities for third-party healthcare billing companies to expand their businesses, provided that they act quickly. Tolle said federal stimulus money offered to physician practices to aid EHR adoption would prompt “10,000 EHR purchasing decisions between now and May 2010.” During his speech, he encouraged third-party billing companies to catch on how an increase in EHR adoption among their physician clients would impact their business.

Tolle's speech is carrying a lot of weight in such a scenario where most of the healthcare billing companies serving physician practices have expressed concerns that the stimulus money offered to doctors for HIT adoption might have an adverse impact on business. During his speech, “Practices are going to be looking for ways to diversify their revenue streams and to develop a medical home strategy,” Tolle said. “(Third-party billing companies) have the trust of physicians, and you can leverage that to expand your business.” he added.

Tolle mentioned three areas in the context of HITECH Act, in which he anticipates third-party billers can achieve success. He explained on top priority, the importance of Regional Extension Centers, or RECs, which will promote EHR best practices and provide unbiased information to physicians.  RECs offer assistance to community physicians in EHR vendor selection, group purchasing, project management and local workforce support. In order to get involved with RECs, the third-party billers would have to establish non-profit divisions; and the strong relationship between billing companies and local physicians would make RECs options for the companies.Tolle also indicated that the EHR market for small physician practices (the 1-9 physician space) offers an opportunity for billing companies to serve as resellers of ambulatory EHRs.

On the other hand, federal IT stimulus money is not just about EHRs, Tolle said, and more opportunities exist for business expansion. “Physicians will have to deploy portals, kiosks (and) other tools to improve consumer access to medical records,” Tolle said. “There are other provider services that (billing companies) can get involved in to take advantage of stimulus money. But you need to act quickly because time is of the essence.” he added.

Source: Healthcare IT News

You can discuss more about Healthcare IT and HITECH Act in our Healthcare Informatics Group