Medical Billing technology has witnessed continued expansion during the first two months of this summer, as evidenced by press releases about some ninety products accumulated in BillingWiki. A practice manager may find it difficult to select the best product from such a large product variety. This article roughly tabulates some eighty-five press releases about medical billing technology products and/or vendors across two-dozen service categories.

Asset Life Cycle Management: Products that help healthcare organizations optimize the performance of their capital assets, uncover hidden expenses, gain more visibility and control over their asset and facility operations, and improve safety. Such systems also serve as repositories for hazards, alerts and recalls facilitating a closed-loop process that documents the hospital's course of notifications and corrective action. See St. Croix and LYNX.

Audit and Compliance: Products that help providers and payers to manage compliance by facilitating internal audits and planning external audits respectively. Such systems assist an auditor to spot errors, omissions, fraud, and abuse. Solutions span spectrum from basic audit reporting to complete automation of the audit process by using data mining, natural language processing, and statistical methods to produce a random sample of medical records, data scoring, and potential revenue loss estimate.

• Claim Audit: A-Life, CodeRyte
• EFT Audit: GlobalSCAPE
• HIPAA Privacy and Security Compliance: MedicalSuite

Certification and Awards:

• Best in KLAS: KLAS is a leading source of information on Healthcare Information Technology vendor performance, with information gathered from users at more than 4,500 healthcare facilities nationwide. Performance data collected from 300 Healthcare Information Technology vendors and 500 of their products is evaluated and made available to subscribers through the KLAS website as well as through periodic reports and custom research. See press releases about VantageMed and athenahealth.
• CCHIT Certification: The CCHIT Certified mark - a "seal of approval" for EHR products - provides the first consensus-based, consistent benchmark for ambulatory products. See LSS Data Systems and Misys.
• DOQ-IT Testing: CMS, an agency of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, established the DOQ-IT initiative program to encourage physicians to adopt EHRs and, in turn, improve the quality, safety and efficiency of health care. In order to gain official DOQ-IT recognition, vendors must meet all 35 DOQ-IT reporting requirements. See Misys

Deals: This category shows business development activity based on leveraging reciprocal client relationships and complementary product capabilities. See A-Life, Affinity Billing, athenahealth, eClinicalWorks, Eclipsys, GE Centricity, H-Quotient, Healthnostics, IngeniousMed, JPI Data Resource, LEAPpm, Massachusetts Medical Society, MedLink, Misys, medFORCE, medHost, MediSys, Nexplicit, Nicka & Associates, Nightingale On-Board Communications, PatientKeeper, Quantum Group, RXHub, Scandent, Streamline Health.

Electronic Charge Capture: MedAptus

Electronic Data Interchange (EDI): The ability to access one single source of continuously updated claims tracking data to perform real-time status checks directly from local PCs instead of spending hours on the phone calling one insurer after another to track down the status of submitted claims. See MicroSys.

E-learning: AlphaQuest, Care2Learn

Enhanced website: CAP-MPT, Companion Technologies, Patientrak

Factoring: Factoring provides healthcare professionals with automated electronic insurance claims management solutions and advance funding on medical claims, as submitted, through a revolving line of credit. See MDWerks

Integration: Products that expedite revenue cycle by integrating office management functions, which in the past used to be performed separately. Integration eliminates data entry repetition, reduces errors and costs, and streamlines revenue cycle. See press releases about four integration aspects outlined below.

• Billing and Coding: ChartLogic
• Billing and EMR: Affinity Billing, MediEMR, Siemens, NextGen, athenahealth.
• Billing and Compliance: Billing Precision.
• Billing and Imaging: IMPAC, AMICAS, Fujitsu, MedLink.

New clients: Ingenious Med For, Lumetra, Misys, Per-Se, MediSys, Craneware, PaperFree, athenahealth, Picis, MicroMD, intraNexus, Visionary Medical Systems, AllScripts, LUMEDX, Streamline Health, LYNX, Sullivan Group, PHNS, Streamline Health, ECDS, McKesson

New billing products and services: Automed, HealthWare, JP Morgan, Physmark-Transplant, LabDAQ

Online Supply Store: Antek HealthWare

Patient Payment Ability Verification: Offers predictive reporting functionality to determine a patient's ability to pay for services and verify a patient's billing address in real time. See Per-Se.

Payer-side automation: See Guidewire ClaimCenter, XPERT Connect.

Personal Health Record Smart Card: Patients and health care providers can access medical health records, and send and save their most vital personal medical information instantly using the Internet or multiple devices, such as smart cards, USB keys, mobile phones, PDA's and Tablet PC's. See Patientrak.

Telemedicine: eNotes.

More help on technology selection is available in our companion paper. Interested reader will find specific press releases on Technology page of BillingWiki.