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In last quarter's column, I discussed the importance of education in your OfficeMate and ExamWRITER implementation and on-going learning experience. At OfficeMate Software Solutions, we're continuing our focus on education and have made significant investments for the future. Our inaugural OfficeMate Users' Group Meeting (UGM) was held in Newport Beach, California, on June 6-9. It was standing room only at some points and, unfortunately, about 25 practices that would have liked to go, were unable to attend due to space limitations with this year's venue at the Hyatt Regency. Next year's UGM will be held on June 4 -7 and we're moving to larger facilities at the Hyatt and expecting attendance to approach 350 to 400. Watch your e-mail inbox for more information on this exciting event and be sure to register early to reserve your seat. As a result of the success of this inaugural UGM, we're planning 13 additional educational conferences in 2008. OSSU one-day conferences will be held at the five major eyecare industry events including SECO, Vision Expo East and West, the AOA Congress, and the Academies of Ophthalmology and Optometry, and ASCRS. Additionally, two-day OfficeMate Software Solutions University (OSSU) regional meetings are scheduled for Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, Orlando, and Washington, DC. OfficeMate and ExamWRITER sessions will provide an ideal forum to learn our software, mingle and learn from other OfficeMate clients, and get some one-on-one time with our educators. Speaking of OSSU educators, we're lining up a first class team! I'm pleased to announce that Rebecca Johnson has joined OSS as Director of Education. Rebecca was the Founder and President of Foundation Ophthalmic Training and Development and is a Certified Ophthalmic Technician, Certified Ophthalmic Executive, Paraoptometric Technician, and Medical Office Manager. Rebecca's clinical and professional skills and on-the-job learning experiences make her the ideal candidate to lead our OSS team of educators. Complementing Rebecca will be Phernell Walker. Phernell's Masters in Ophthalmic Optics, his role as a faculty speaker for International Vision Expo, his authoring of Pure Optics, and selection as a “Top 40 Under 40” Optical Professional by Vision Monday magazine in January 2004 provide a wealth of eyecare industry expertise Phernell will be incorporating into OfficeMate and ExamWRITER education. And, we're not finished recruiting our OSS education team yet! Current discussions are under way with another nationally-renowned speaker and educator to accompany Rebecca and Phernell! The significance of Rebecca and Phernell joining the OSS team lies in the investment OfficeMate is making to provide you with top-flight opportunities to learn and fully implement OfficeMate and ExamWRITER in your business. We see and hear over-and-over that OfficeMate and ExamWRITER are becoming the hub of many practices with EMR implementation and new digital instrumentation. Our Technology Integrated Practice (or TIP as we call it) signifies our initiative to partner with other strategic industry vendors to create a fully integrated, turnkey solution for your eyecare business. Our clients continued to change over the past few years. Federal mandates on electronic medical records and the new Physician's Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) dictate the full-scale implementation of practice management and electronic medical records. OSS is responding by making substantial investments to meet the educational demands. OSS is the premier eyecare software solutions provider with the right leadership, value, and vision for the future. Tell your colleagues about OfficeMate, ExamWRITER, and iPoint VTO!  As always, I welcome your comments and suggestions. The ideal way to communicate with me is via e-mail at ed@officemate.net. We value and appreciate your business. Thanks and have a great summer!
C. Edward Buffington |
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At the beginning of the year OfficeMate Software Solutions asked for your opinions in our annual Report Card Survey. The Report Card Survey allows you to evaluate OfficeMate Software Solutions in several areas including support, software development, training, and documentation. The Report Card Survey is your opportunity to influence how OfficeMate Software Solutions operates and what priorities we set for the next year. To sweeten the deal, we raffled off a 30GB Apple iPod to one lucky respondent. This year's winner was Dr. Sid Shafran. Congratulations, Dr. Shafran! Look for the 2008 Report Card Survey in early January for your chance to win a great prize from OfficeMate Software Solutions! |
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| Box 24J is populated only when the billing NPI number (box 33) is different from the rendering NPI number (box 24J). The billing provider is recorded in the Provider field at the top of the Fee Slip window, while the rendering provider is recorded on each line item. The billing NPI number (box 33) is taken from Setup > Business Names > Business tab. The rendering NPI is taken from Setup > Business Names > Provider/Staff tab. For a complete list of CMS 1500 boxes and the corresponding OfficeMate fields, go to http://www.officemate.net/omkb/article.aspx?id=12506. This tip appears in our online Knowledge Base. For more tips like this, visit our Web site, www.officemate.net and select Knowledge Base from the Jump To menu. |
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| What is PQRI? PQRI establishes a financial incentive for eligible professionals to participate in a voluntary quality reporting program. Eligible professionals who successfully report a designated set of quality measures on claims for dates of service from July 1 to December 31, 2007, may earn a bonus payment, subject to a cap of 1.5% of total allowed charges, for covered Medicare physician fee schedule services. Again, that's up to 1.5% additional payment just for adopting the program early! The initial reporting period is July 1, 2007 through December 31, 2007. PQRI was formerly referred to as the Pay for Quality or Pay for Performance (P4P) programs under Medicare. CMS sees the adoption of HIT (Health Information Technology) as a means to improving quality, safety and efficiency of health care services to Medicare recipients. No registration or enrollment is required to participate, but you must follow these guidelines:
Eyecare practitioners will be reporting on the following diagnoses:
Eyecare practitioners will use the following quality measures:
An electronic medical record and practice management software suite can reduce the burden of the additional busywork of this process and make sure that the appropriate Level II CPT codes and modifiers are reported as part of the software processing. OfficeMate 7.2 and ExamWRITER 7.2 can easily help you streamline this process. For more information please refer to the CMS Website http://www.cms.hhs.gov/PQRI/ . For information on leveraging OfficeMate for PQRI reporting, review the “OfficeMate 7.2 Enhancements” document on our Web site at http://www.officemate.net/pdfs/OM72Enhancements.pdf . You don't want to leave 1.5% of your total Medicare on the table, do you? Dr. Ian Lane |
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Happy summer from the team at OSSU! The OSSU team is expanding and investigating new technologies to meet the growing demand for OfficeMate and ExamWRITER. Our team has grown to seven members in the Ohio office and is busily training and taking client support calls. But simply adding staff isn't enough to meet the growing need for training; so, we will soon be revamping the training class structure and schedules. For example, we have expanded the times for our OSSU 101 course, “Introduction and Implementation” (formerly called “Welcome”). We are also researching new technologies that will make the prerecorded iTrains interactive, as well as a technology that will allow you to test your knowledge of OfficeMate and ExamWRITER online. We will keep you posted as we progress in these areas. We truly look forward to serving your training needs. Marsha Vaughn |
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Now that you have defined the position and updated the job description, the next step in your search for an excellent employee is to develop criteria for selection. A job description lists the tasks this employee will perform. Selection criteria allow you to determine the type of person who is best qualified to complete the tasks in the job description within the culture and environment of your practice. As you develop selection criteria, there are questions that must be answered. What qualities do you value in an employee? What qualities did the previous employee in this position have that were a positive factor? What qualities did the previous employee have that were a negative factor? For example, a quality that you might value in an employee is strong interpersonal communication skills. This quality could prove to be very beneficial in patient care, unless the love to communicate exceeds his or her sense of efficiency. The ability to recognize common threads of successful placement is crucial. I recommend that an employee retention study be performed every one to two years. If you have never done an employee retention study, begin by going through past employee records for a time period of three to five years. List each employee, along with his or her position, past job experience/education, salary, and reason of departure. If you perform exit interviews, this will be easy; if not, you will have to rely on your memory. Figure the percentages of employee departures in your practice. (A survey conducted by the Management and Business Academy (MBA) on nearly 500 of the largest optometric practices in the country states the average practice has to replace 18% of their staff annually*.) Next, look at the percentage of staff that has been discharged, left for greener pastures, moved, retired, etc. By completing an employee retention study, you should begin seeing similarities in departing employees. Evaluate these similarities. For example, if you find that you are investing time and training in staff members that leave your practice for an additional dollar an hour, take a hard look at your salary level compared with other practices in your area. Considering the cost of hiring and training a new employee, you may save a considerable amount of money and stress by reevaluating your salaries. If you see a large difference in departments, look for a valid reason as to why one department is harder to keep staffed than the others. In many practices, the front desk seems to be the “revolving door.” If this is the case in your office, determine the reason why. Do these employees feel insignificant? Is there opportunity to grow in this position? What changes need to occur to promote employment longevity? A smart individual will spend time researching a large investment prior to committing to it; a smart doctor or administrator will spend time researching and developing criteria for selection prior to investing in a new employee. *Source: “Annual Staff Turnover Quintiles.” Key Metrics of Optometric Practice. 2007. Developed by Practice Advancement Associates on behalf of the Management and Business Academy. Cited here with permission. Coming in the next edition of OSSNews: “Interviewing Well” Rebecca L. Johnson, COT, CPOT, COE |
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Sunny and scenic Newport Beach, California served as the backdrop for the first OfficeMate Software Solutions Users' Group Meeting. By all measures, the meeting was a great success: great weather, wonderful food (and lots of it), an upbeat and enthusiastic atmosphere, and 2½ days of OfficeMate and ExamWRITER training that 165 attendees took full advantage of.
The meeting kicked off with an early evening poolside cocktail reception, which provided a great opportunity for introductions as well as an opportunity for practices to network with one another. Thursday morning began with a magic show (yes, a magic show) and presentation by Dr. Gary Gerber that was both entertaining and enlightening. From there, breakout sessions filled the remainder of the day until an outside dinner out by the pool. During cocktails and dinner, the conversations indicated that the breakout sessions required a lot of focus and attention, and the crowd was subdued and ready to call it an early night!
Phernell Walker jump-started Friday morning with his presentation on industry benchmarks and standards on running an efficient and profitable dispensary, and Dr. Ian Lane gave a quick tour of ExamWRITER. Then, once again, it was off to class! Lunch presented its own unique problem in that the 78-degree weather was definitely not conducive to motivating folks to get back into their breakout sessions. Nonetheless, everyone rose to the occasion and finished their courses. Friday evening, attendees availed themselves of the Newport Beach local points of interest and went out on their own enjoying everything from a sunset walk on the pier, local restaurants, cruising down Pacific Coast Highway, or attending the lively outdoor jazz concert at the hotel. Saturday morning brought us another perfect southern California day. Guests were presented with an overview of where OfficeMate Software Solutions is heading, new program features, and future product enhancements. Everyone had the opportunity to say goodbye to old as well as new friends before departing, and a large number of attendees eagerly asked “when is next year's meeting?”
More photos and descriptions of the 2007 OfficeMate Users' Group Meeting can be found on our Web site at http://www.officemate.net/usersgroup.aspx. Bill Hatch |
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ExamWRITER can interface with many pieces of diagnostic equipment; however, in order for the equipment to successfully transfer exam data into ExamWRITER exam records, you must be using one of the pieces of equipment for which we have developed an interface and completed quality assurance testing. After an ExamWRITER equipment interface has been thoroughly tested and deemed ready for ExamWRITER users to purchase and use in their practices, we update our official list of supported diagnostic equipment on our Web site at http://www.officemate.net/examwriter_equip.aspx. If a piece of equipment is not on this list, then ExamWRITER does not currently integrate with it. Our Development team works closely with diagnostic equipment vendors to create and test ExamWRITER equipment interfaces. We have many interfaces that are currently in development and testing processes, but until they are approved both by our Development team and the vendor's Development team, we do not advertise them or support them. If you want to know if ExamWRITER integrates with a piece of diagnostic equipment that you have or plan to purchase soon, you must view the “ExamWRITER Instrument Integration” document linked above. This document is updated with new information as soon as it's released and is your only way to verify if a piece of diagnostic equipment interfaces with ExamWRITER. More interfaces are always in development, so check back and view this document often! Carrie Damschroder |
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Ever have trouble finding the answer to a burning question on our online Knowledge Base? Here are a few tips to help you find the answer to your question quickly without having to wait for OSS to get back to you.
The Knowledge Base contains almost 1,100 articles on a variety of topics related to all OSS products. Chances are, the answer to your question is out there. If you can't find your question on neither the Knowledge Base nor in the user's guide that is embedded in your software, feel free to ask us a question on the Ask a Question tab. Michael Opsteegh |
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OfficeMate Software Solutions notifies you of important announcements and upgrades via e-mail. If the e-mail address we have on file is old or incorrect, or if your spam filter is blocking our messages, you could be missing out. If you believe we do not have your correct e-mail address, call us at 800.942.5353, option 5. Because spam filters are all different, legitimate e-mail messages can sometimes be filtered as junk mail. We highly suggest that you add the OfficeMate Software Solutions domain (officemate.net) to your safe senders list in your e-mail program. Adding us to your safe senders list will ensure that our e-mail messages and newsletters successfully arrive in your inbox. If you use Microsoft Outlook 2000 or higher, follow the instructions below to add the OfficeMate domain name to your safe senders list:
If you use another e-mail program, look in its Help to find instructions on how to add the officemate.net domain name to your safe senders list. |
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Staff management is a major challenge in the ophthalmic industry. The goal of this column is to provide you with practical advice to assist in hiring, training, and retaining staff. This article is part two of an eight-part series.
Visit our newsletter archive to read the previous article at 
So here is the answer—Newport Beach, California, will again serve as the location for the annual OfficeMate Software Solutions Users' Group Meeting. Make sure to save the dates of June 4-7, 2008, and we hope to see you next year!
If you're reading this on the OfficeMate Web site, did you know that the newsletter is also sent to your e-mail inbox? If you're not getting this newsletter by e-mail, you may be missing out on other important OfficeMate and ExamWRITER announcements.