2009 Healthcare Staffing Summit Comes to D.C.

From September 14-16, the 2009 Healthcare Industry Analysts Staffing Summit will descend upon the Marriott Wardman Park Hotel in Washington, D.C.  Topics of discussion include travel nursing, per diem nursing, locum tenens, and allied medical.  Highlighted by former U.S. Senate Majority and Minority Leader Tom Daschle, healthcare staffing participants will have the opportunity to listen in on several keynote speeches focusing on the healthcare industry’s history and what is to come in the future.

The conference kicks off on Monday with registration, orientation, and a networking event in the evening.  Exhibits will open on Tuesday in conjunction with moderated networking discussion sessions.

The healthcare staffing industry considers this conference as one of the two must-attend events of the year.

New Credit-Card Reform Law Excludes Small Business Cardholders

It has been about a month since President Obama signed new credit-card reform laws.  The goal of the new reforms is to protect individual cardholders from long-term practices in the industry such as changing terms on short notice and unexpected jumps in interest rates.  However, the popular business credit cards that many small businesses have relied on for years will not be subject to the same change.

Card companies are combating the new law, which won’t go into effect until February 2010, by increasing rates on current business cardholders.  Small business cardholders are upset about the sudden increases, but they aren’t being left with many options; they can choose to close their accounts within a month of the announced increase to avoid the hit.

Paul Hartwick, a spokesman for Chase, is claiming the recent increases in small business credit cards is not due to the new law, but is instead based on, “borrower risk, market conditions, and the costs to us of making the loans…”

Congress attempted to include small businesses with fewer than 50 employees in the new law, but the effort failed.  There is a glimmer of hope, however, as the law ordered the Federal Reserve to monitor the use of small business credit cards and present their findings to Congress sometime next year.

Click here to read the entire article: No Relief for Small Business Cardholders.

For Profit Hospitals Doing Better in Bad Economy

Some interesting statistics were announced at last week at the annual South Florida Summit. Caroline Rossi Steinber, a trends specialist with the American Hospital Association (AHA), shared the following information with attendees:

90% of surveyed hospitals have made cutbacks as a result of the tough economic times, with the biggest cuts in administrative expenses.

43% of surveyed hospitals had a negative net return for the first quarter, which was 17% higher than the same time last year

65% of hospitals reported that they witnessesed an increase in the number of physicians seeking employment

In addition, according to Darren P. Lehrich, Deutsche Bank’s managing director of healthcare providers research, for profit hospitals’ stocks have increased 70% in the past three months. Moreoever, the profit margins for publicly traded hospitals during the quarter were the highest they’ve been in a number of years.

A big concern for hospitals across the U.S. is how the concept of public health insurance will be interpreted and enforced in the future.

The AHA’s studies show that most hospitals are relying on current government payers like Medicare and Medicaid, whose combined brings in 56% of the revenue, while private insurance accounts for 43% of revenue.

Steinberg noted that providers depend heavily on private insurance providers to pay the bills because Medicaid only reimburses 90% of their costs and private insurance generally reimburses 130%. If the public health insurance is specified as a health insurance option for the uninsured, it would help hospitals immensely by reducing the uncompensated care. On the other hand, if public health insurance is used as a “cheap public plan open to everybody an reimbursed providers at low rates,” it would be devastating to the hospital industry.

Click here to read more details: Hospitals cutting back.

SBA Reports Uptick in Business Credit Card Use

According to a new analysis released by the Small Business Association (SBA), the nation’s largest lenders have been decreasing their small business loans, and at the same time, they have  been increasing their credit-card lending.

An article on BusinessWeek.com reported that “the total value of small business loans outstanding increased 4%, to $711 billion in the 12 months ending in June 2008. That’s half the growth in small business credit than the SBA reported the year before.”

Some say the rise in small business credit card use may reflect a “changing demand for small business credit.” Many of the small businesses (internet companies and home-based businesses) in operation today simply don’t need a larger line of credit because they don’t have a lot of physical assets.

Click here to read the entire article: The SBA Sees a Lending Shift.

Entrepreneurs Notice Credit Lines Disappearing, Should Turn to Factoring

BusinessWeek.com recently published an article that put JPMorgan Chase bank in the spotlight, as the bank started reducing or eliminating credit lines  for a large number of small business owners to help even out its balance sheets.

According to the article, in most cases, “If business owners can’t convince Chase of their creditworthiness, they have three options: 1) pay off the balance in full; 2) agree to a conversion of the line of credit into a term loan; or 3) go into default.”

One business owner interviewed for the article described how his four lines of credit were reduced to two on the exact same day that he received a letter from Chase that the bank was blocking him from drawing on two lines of credit due to “an adverse change in his ‘financial condition and/or credit history.'” The entrepreneur had been drawing on all four of the lines to help meet his monthly payroll, and he’s not sure where the money will come from if he’s not able to reistate the two lines.

As banks continue to reduce and eliminate credit lines, there will continue to be an influx of established healthcare business owners who are in this same situation. Lucky for them, there is an immediate answer to their cash flow problems.

Home care agencies who need additional funding to pay their sitters and companions, medical transcription service owners who are waiting a long time for hospitals to pay, and medical coding companies who are looking to expand can and should take advantage of healthcare accounts receivable factoring programs to help them at a time when more traditional funding avenues are failing them.

Click here to read the entire article: Snipping Credit Lines for Small Businesses.

Small Business Owners Report Cash Flow Concerns

According to the Monthly Small Business Watch, a report that measures economic confidence by randomly selecting 750 small business owners and asking them to respond to six questions, 50% of small business owners have experienced temporary cash flow issues in the past 90 days. In addition, 53% of the surveyed business owners reported that they will decrease spending on business development in the next six months.

Now, more than ever, is a prime time for cash flow consultants and factoring brokers to reach out to those small business owners and pair them with the appropriate funding source. As many of The Factoring Blog’s readers know, PRN Funding is a great option for medical staffing factoring, medical transcription factoring, medical coding factoring and home care factoring.

Click here to read more current small business cash flow statistics.

Factoring Makes List of 101 Ways to Save Money

Jill Amadio, Jacquelyn Lynn, Ivan R. Misner, Chris Penttila, Guen Sublette and Laura Tiffany of Entrepreneur.com came recently contributed to a very important document for business owners: 101 Ways to Save Money in Your Business.

Compiled to advise business owners and entrepreneurs on how to save money in a penny-pinching economy, the accounts receivable factoring specialists at PRN Funding found #86 particularly helpful:

“Consider the factors. Factors–companies that essentially buy and then liquidate a company’s accounts receivable–provide an option to tied-up money.”

AHDI/MTIA EHR Task Force Recruiting for Focus Group

The AHDI/MTIA EHR Task Force has a very real goal to “develop and release an EHR Readiness Toolkit, a resource guide for our sector in preparing for healthcare’s migration to an electronic health information infrastructure,” according to a recent Vitals eNewsletter.

In order to meet this goal, the Task Force wants to form two focus groups of transcriptionists with EMR/EHR integration experience to provide insight, recommendations and feedback to help develop the toolkit.

The Task Force is seeking approximately 8-10 MTs or transcription managers/supervisors who have experience as employees with facility migration to an EMR/EHR are needed for one focus group, and approximately 8-10 MTSOs or independent contractors who have been part of a client’s migration to an EMR/EHR for the second focus group.

Some of the duty’s involved with the focus groups include: complete a comprehensive questionnaire, partake in 1-2 meetings, and review the toolkit prior to its release.

If you are interested and able to participate, contact Tiffany Wagner (twagner@ahdionline.org or 209-341-2461).

2009 MTIA Conference Recap

PRN Funding recently had the opportunity to connect with many MTSOs and medical transcriptionists when we exhibited at the 20th Annual MTIA Conference in Louisville, KY a couple of weeks ago.

Account Manager, Joanna Schafer, represented PRN Funding in booth #26, and she had the opportunity to speak with a number of MTSOs about the benefits of PRN Funding’s medical transcription funding program.

In a recap email, MTIA listed a slew of key issues and priorities discussed at this year’s conference as well, namely:

  1. The 2009 MTIA Conference had 80 first-time attendees.
  2. MTIA membership grew by 10%.
  3. Attendees wholeheartedly supported a uniform visibility campaign comprised of advocacy to key health policymakers and a public relations strategy focused on the sector’s contribution to quality patient care delivery.
  4. MTIA recognized that the recently enacted HITECH Act (Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act) and healthcare reform present tremendous opportunities for the clinical documentation sector, as long as the sector is organized and focused.
  5. “Discrete reportable transcription” can be integrated with EHR technology as a method of increasing EHR adoption.
  6. With the number of consumers who are documenting their personal health stories continues to increase and more outcomes driven data coming from the provider community, there are new dynamic business models being created for the clinical documentation sector.
  7. The Health Story Project promotes and enhances the value of narrative text in the age of EHRs by producing and encouraging the adoption of  standards for the flow of information between common types of healthcare documents and EHRs.
  8. The SRT Summit held an active dialogue concerning the impact of SRT on the clinical documentation sector with an ultimate goal of creating a white paper to assist MTSOs with the challenges of purchasing, adopting and implementing SRT.
  9. The QA Summit reviewed essential elements of a quality assessment process and outlined key components and metrics in order to begin producing a widely accepted quality standard protocol that will serve the healthcare community as prudent, efficient, cost-effective, valid, reliable and scalable to ensure quality of all health records.

AAPC iTouch Winner Announced

Last month, PRN Funding announced that it would have a drawing  for a 16-gig iTouch at the 2009 American Academy of Professional Coders Conference in Las Vegas.

Attendees lined up at PRN Funding’s booth each day to learn about the benefits of medical coding factoring and medical billing factoring.

While at the booth, they also had a chance to fill out an entry form for a chance to win the iTouch. On the last day of the show, PRN Funding put all 535 entry forms from medical coding and billing professionals into our fish bowl and chose one.

Congratulations to Jean Pryor of Anderson Medical Billing who was the lucky winner!

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