DECEMBER NEWSLETTER

Printable Version

Medicare Offers ERA Printing Software

Many of our clients have had the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of using Lytec’s built in ERA auto-posting module to automatically apply payments to their Lytec practice. While many Medicare intermediaries are also sending paper EOB’s, some of our clients have remarked that the posting reports that Lytec generates do not look very much like the EOB’s they are used to seeing from the carrier. This represents a problem for them because they are using the Lytec reports to send claims to secondary insurance carriers, and those carriers are not always accepting those reports as valid EOB’s (especially Medicaid carriers). This poses a particular problem as we move to increasingly more electronic formats for exchanging information. Specifically, you are going to find fewer and fewer carriers that will offer the paper EOB format as we move into the future.

Ever mindful of our client’s needs, Stephens & Associates has found a good solution to the problem! There is a program written and distributed by CMS called “MREP”, which stands for “Medicare Remit Easy Print”. This program will open and print any ERA file. Not only does the printed EOB look IDENTICAL to the one you have been getting from Medicare directly, but also the program itself is FREE! Even though the program is free, finding the program can be a bit daunting, so we have taken the liberty of doing all of the hard part for you! You simply need to use the following link to download the program, or find more information about it! http://www.cms.hhs.gov/it/mrep/default.asp.

Lytec 2006 SP1 gets S&A’s “seal of approval”

Lytec 2006 Service pack 1 was officially released Monday, November 21st, 2005. Immediately, S&A was hard at work testing this newest version of Lytec with our popular Validator program. The following morning, S&A had completed its testing process, and had completely rewritten the form file we use for Lytec to work flawlessly with the new version.

Now, to give you a little background on what that means, you should know that our testers used a specially designed Lytec database with over 130 different hand created claims. These claims were created to make use of every field, date, and type of claim that can be created. The resulting file is more than 2000 segments in length. This output file was compared with files from the previous versions of Lytec, which were known to work impeccably (Lytec 2005 in this case), and then we used a special program that helps us highlight the differences between the two files.

So without further ado, Stephens & Associates is giving Lytec 2006 SP1, our official "Seal of Approval" for use with the Validator. Copies of the Validator form file designed specifically for use with Lytec 2006 will be available for download from our web site but in order to offset some of the time we spent re-writing the form for use with 2006, we will be charging a nominal fee of $149 for this new Lytec 2006 form file. However, if you purchase Lytec 2006 from S&A we will waiver f that fee.

Anyone who is currently using Lytec 2006’s initial release is strongly encouraged to update immediately to service pack 1 (SP1). The service pack included over 80 fixes, many of which are necessary in order to generate your direct electronic claim files.

The time to kick the clearinghouse to the curb is now!

NDCHealth has released another round of communiqués to the masses in an effort to get everyone who is using their clearinghouse to upgrade to their HIPAA compliant “Phoenix” platform. In an e-mail released November 30th, NDCHealth states:

… we are working with our direct customers and identified Lytec VARs who have customers processing claims on the LAN platform to migrate these claims processing clients to our ANSI-formatted, HIPAA compliant Phoenix processing platform by December 23, 2005…In order to interoperate with the Phoenix platform, Lytec customers are required to run Lytec 2005 or Lytec 2006 software. Thus, customers running Lytec 2004 or earlier releases must upgrade to Lytec 2006 and migrate to the Phoenix platform by December 23, 2005 in order to continue processing claims.

While we do believe that the time to become HIPAA compliant has long since come, we thought this might be an apropos time to let everyone know that you DO have a better option than to be forced to upgrade and sign another one of NDC’s 2 year contracts. Stephens & Associates' Validator program has been HIPAA compliant for over 3 years, is certified in over 23 states, and works with versions of Lytec as far back as Lytec 98. If you or any of your friends are tired of paying monthly, annual, and per claim charges, you or they should definitely check out our Validator 5 program!

You may have questions about some things we have covered in this article and if so please call our sales department at 805-650-6128 Ext. 123 or e-mail sales@satechs.com. We’ll be happy to help.