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Medical Billing Software Alternatives?
irwinr12 asks: "Well, I've spent hours and hours and hours scouring though pages of google search results, trying to find a medical billing software package that will run on Linux. (Or Solaris or even Mac OS X for that matter) I've come out pretty much empty handed. Perhaps I'm just not looking in the right places, or perhaps such software does not exist yet? I ask this, because we are currently using MediSoft on Windows 98. We are very displeased with the service from medisoft, and the instability of Windows(MediSoft is partly to blame too) is costing us alot of money in downtime. We are a fairly small billing office, only billing for 5 doctors at this time, so some of the large 'hospital' billing systems want much more than we can afford for such a small operation. If anyone could send any information my way, i'd appreciate it." We did a similar story on Ask Slashdot over 3 years ago with very little in the way of definitive answers. Has the intervening time made any difference in the answers?
Generic financial systems do not recognize concepts, such as "spleen", which are essential to the field of Medical Billing.
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
But note that a medical billing program "is a" billing program
No, it's much more. Medical coding and billing is a science in and of itself; they write textbooks on the subject. It's not practical to talk about adapting a general-purpose accounts receivable tool to use in health care.
It wouldn't take too much effort to throw a custom GUI and printing interface over a MySQL or PostgreSQL backend.
It's pretty clear that you don't know what you're talking about here. Just implementing an integrity checking scheme for the tens of thousands of medical codes would be a monumental effort. And that's just the very beginning.
I'm sorry that I don't have anything positive to say. I just didn't feel right about letting this kind of misinformation get out there unchallenged.
actually, medical billing really is a whole 'nother ballgame... Its not a matter of coding hours or something like that. there is all kind of bureaucracy involved, between government regs, insurance approval, pre-approval, etc... that's why medical billing programs are so expensive. there's a veritable minefield of regulations to put up with.
There is a company here that has a medical billing platform that runs on SCO Unux and they have successfully ported it to Linux. My company uses it exclusively for billing our clients (we are a billing office). The server has a windows client that is really just a glorified terminal emulator. I have used dumb terminals to connect to it as well. Its a very robust platform and their support is pretty good. The only problem is that it is, as most of these apps are, quite expensive.
Rule of Life Number 2: Remember, it can all go to hell at any minute. --Jimmy Buffet
They also don't explicitly recognize any of the other myriad technical terms from hundreds of other special fields. The essential problems being programmed for in Medical Billing probably share 99% with those encountered in Random_Industry_X billing. There's no reason one can't write sufficiently extensible and flexible generic financial software.
11*43+456^2
:)
sorry. So, yes, I actually agree with you. Responses to this post of mine seemed adamant that Medical Billing is indeed different from normal billing, due to regulations and insurance and so forth.
I would argue, as I believe so might you, that these types of issues due effect more than the medical industry, and that any sufficiently flexible financial system should be designed in such a way that it can be adapted to Medical Billing.
What I suspect is that the construction of such a system, while technically feasible, may require so much legal advice to get all of the rules correct that a free implementation is not realistic.
Not to mention, in the litigious health care industry, folks might shy away from a system whose README features "Disclaimer: IANAL"...
Karma: Good (despite my invention of the Karma: sig)
From what I've heard, high-test medical software runs on mainframe-type machines. You may need to go with something from IBM, just because that is the platform the software is designed for. Medical computing is old enough that its roots really are in the mainframe era, not the relatively new UNIX/Linux era. Keep in mind that you won't need a big mainframe, just a desk-side model.
Also, I don't know if it was MediSoft, but I knew someone who worked with a Windows based billing program at one time--and hated it. It was down more than once every day; the the lost productivity probably made it much much more expensive than just shelling out the cash for a real mainframe. Just think of it, a whole medical lab stopped in its tracks while one person argues with tech support over the phone. Terrible.
Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
I don't remember its name, but a while back I saw a freshmeat posting for free software that helped to run a veterinary clinic. I think it handled scheduling and perhaps simple billing.
But other posters are correct: a general MySQL database really needs a lot of work to hone it into something that front office people can use productively.
I've seen my dentist's office use some kind of Windows based software that nicely integrates patient records (show teeth and point out cavities, X-ray images), examination records, appointments, billings, sending out reminders of appointments, helping to concoct the right insurance claim submission. Very impressive.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
Check out The Physician's Computer Company . They've been around 18 years, run on Red Hat (they handle it all for you), specialize in smallish offices like yours, having met some of the staff socially they're folks I'd like to do business with.
I don't read ACs: If a post isn't worth so much as a nom de plume to its author then I wont bother either.
(It's times like these that a good ol' "salt the earth" Free software project sounds like such fun!)
Er... did you mean "salt the earth" or "salt of the earth?"
Judges 9, verse 45: "And Abimelech fought against the city all that day; and he took the city, and slew the people that was therein, and beat down the city, and sowed it with salt."
      You can find an enormous amount of open-source, medical software at the VISTA and Hard Hats site. Some of the software apparently pertains to billing (see "integrated billing," about half-way down the page), but I cannot attest as to its quality or applicability to your needs.
Nearly all of the VISTA software is written in the Mumps programming language, with which comparatively few programmers are familiar these days (that's my impression -- I could be wrong).
A lawyer & digital forensics examiner. Also an expert on open source software (OSS).
Except that by the time the rules are written, you have a special packages. Those with general accounting programs, rather than develop rulesets for docs (which vary by state), they develop, or at least market as, a separate program.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I use quicken
What is your specialty? Doc who reads slashdot? Looking for a job? Contact via email:)
I didn't become a doc for similar reasons (medical business displaces medical practice). So what do I do now? Run the business end of a medical practice:)
I'm glad you noticed that it is just as illegal to underbill as overbill. We had a few docs (now gone, thank goodness) who thought they were safe by underbilling. Right now, I think we have a decent bell-curve distribution of level 1,2,3,4, and 5 visits. Pediatrics is shifted a little high, but those people write so damned much, an audit wouldn't be too bad.
And yes, insurance companies are serious bastards. They deny a certain number of claims out of hand. In a batch (if you submit electronically) an average of 5% are automatically bounced, sometimes for flagrantly false reasons (ie, bad DOB. The system won't let us enter a patient without one. You got the freakin' DOB Aetna, piss off)
If you're not too entrenched, may want to try doing one of those things out west. Visiting reservations and the like. Potentially more rewarding with less hassle than urban/suburban practices.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon