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2018 CPC Practice Exam Answer Key 150 Questions With Full Rationale (HCPCS, ICD-9-CM, ICD-10, CPT Codes) Click here for more sample CPC practice exam questions with Full Rationale Answers

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Click here for more sample CPC practice exam questions and answers with full rationale

Medical Intuitives ? Recognizing its Importance in Medical Professionals

Medical sciences have been receiving several changes and advancements day by day. But medical intuition is one ancient medical concept which has helped people of earlier times. The condition of mental health is diagnosed by noticing the presence of mind. And, of course, medical intuitives programs seem to be very effective in terms of providing the people with positive results in this regard. Medical experts or instructors follow this trick to find out the present mental condition of individual.

The program of medical intuition usually assists to shift the mental consciousness for unique knowing and self-empowerment. Instructors who work on this program are called as medical intuitive. They work in the way to put off cover from root sources of emotional, mental, physical as well as spiritual imbalances. One can learn several techniques to transform and resolve them into well-being.

Medical intuition by instructors is considered as a dialogue between the individual and higher consciousness. With the help of hands and fingers and higher vision, the individual is supplied with appropriate tools to get the answer related to deepest truths. This is done by acquiring knowledge of numerous physiological and energetic systems. Entire body and surrounding energy field are two parts which are needed to be focused in medical intuition.

In short, there are various programs available in the market to help someone become medical intuitives . Professional medical intuition practitioners make use of tools which they can be used to gain attention of the person’s mind. Telephoto lens is used by them to perform in this regard. They research, understand and make use of lenses; filters as well as techniques which they think can work better to gain the presence of mind of individual. Through regular practice, medical gain enough knowledge on making use of which kind of lenses, filters or speeds. Moreover, they offer hands-on support to build mental strengths of individuals. Thus, it would not be wrong to say that medical intuition has been recognizing its importance and value in the domain of health care.

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The medical importance of Emphysema

Emphysema is a pathological increase in the size of airspaces distal to the terminal bronchioles, with destruction of the alveolar walls. The term hyperinflation is used to denote non-pathological over-distension.

 

Etiology

Diseases of the Airways: Chronic bronchitis, prolonged exposure to irritants and dusts (heavy cigarette smoking), and chronic partial bronchial obstruction.

 

Conditions associated with Alpha-1-Antitypsin Deficiency:

These predispose the destruction of elastic tissue and collagen. Alpha-1-antitrypsin prevents the breakdown of elastic and collagen by proteases which are liberated from leukocytes. Alpha-1-antitrypsin deficiency may be congenital or acquired. Such persons develop emphysema by the third or fourth decade of life.

 

Occupational causes

Several occupations which require forced expiratory effort as seen in furnace blowers, goldsmiths and use of wind instruments predispose the development of emphysema in susceptible subjects. Exposure to Cadmium leads to the development of emphysema and pulmonary fibrosis.

 

Pathology

The lungs are in the inflated position occupying the whole of the pleural cavity. Since the elastic tissue is damaged, the lungs lose their elasticity and they fail to collapse when the chest is opened during autopsy. The diaphragm is depressed and respiratory excursions are diminished. The alveoli are over-distended. The septa rupture and neighboring alveoli coalese to form air cysts. The pulmonary vascular bed is progressively diminished and pulmonary arterial hypertension results. Reduction of alveolar surface area leads to impairment of gas exchange. Right ventricular hypertrophy and cor pulmonale may develop. Emphysematous bullae may rupture to produce spontaneous pneumothorax.

 

Clinical features

The main symptom is exertional dyspnea. As the condition progresses, even ordinary activity like talking, eating or lying flat may cause dyspnea. The chest is distended in the position of full inspiration. Expansion is diminished and the accessory muscles of respiration are active. Expiration becomes an active process due to loss of elasticity of the lung. Infective episodes occur frequently. Physical examination reveals barrel-shaped chest with diminished expansion, hyper-resonance on percussion, obliteration of cardiac and liver dullness and diminished breath sounds with prolonged expiration. Due to increased intrathoracic pressure, especially during expiration, the neck veins become distended during expiration and collapse during inspiration. The apex beat is felt feebly because of interposition of the distended lung. Right ventricular hyper-trophy produces a heaving impulse in the epigastrium and sub-xiphoid region. Evidence of right ventricular failure may be present.

 

Radiographic features:

The lungs are hyper-translucent and domes of the diaphragm are lowered. Fluroscopy reveals limitation of respiratory excursions. The normal variation of density of the lung fields during the respiratory cycle is also diminished. Tidal volume, vital capacity, FEV1, MVV and PEFR are diminished. Functional residual capacity and residual volume are increased. In the advanced cases, arterial PO2 (PaO2) is diminished and PaCO2 is increased. Respiratory acidosis may develop.

Course and prognosis:

Once established, emphysema is usually irreversible. Respiratoy infections, respiratory failure, and cor pulmonale may develop as complications. Mild cases are compatible with normal span of life, if the condition is diagnosed early and further deterioration prevented.

 

Management

All factors that lead to deterioration are avoided. Strict avoidance of cigarette or beedi smoking and avoidance of smoke exhaled by other smokers (passive smoking) are most useful in this regard. The avoidance of dust, allergens, and inclement weather help in preventing its deterioration. Respiratory infections are treated with appropriate antibiotics as in the case of chronic bronchitis. Use of bronchodilators and respiratory physiotherapy help in relieving symptoms and improving lung function.

 

Special forms of emphysema
 

Compensatory emphysema: This is the condition in which the normal lung tissue undergoes hypertrophy to compensate for extensive damage to the other lung or other parts of the same lung. Being a compensatory phenomenon, this is asymptomatic. The respiratory excursion of the normal lung is increased in this case.

 

Atrophic emphysema: This condition is the result of senile atrophy of inter-alveolar septa. The total lung volume is not increased.

 

Bullous emphysema: In this condition air spaces exceeding 1cm in diameter develop either congenitally or as a part of acquired generalized emphysema. With passage of time these bullae enlarge and become giant bullous emphysema. They may rupture to produce pneumothorax.

 

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Importance Of Medical Billing

Nowadays medical professionals are finding it difficult to manage day-to-day affairs, particularly administrative issues. Medical billing is one such area in which healthcare professionals are facing a daunting task of trying to cope up with the rapidly changing coding or billing rules and requirements. These days a lot of paperwork is involved that not only causes hindrance, but sometimes also become a cause for inordinate delays in payment and billing purposes.

Need For An Billing Software

There is an urgent need to have a good way of managing the electronic medical records. This task can only be made easy with the help of good practice management software. So, what do you actually seek from billing software? Well, the answer is simple. You would expect the software to make sure that the billing calculations are done accurately and efficiently. Besides, you will also want the software to be available to you on the Internet so that you can access it from anywhere in the world.

Practice management software (PMS) is a kind of software that caters to the daily operations of a medical practice. You can get this PMS software in the following ways. The first way is to contact a software company and ask it to make this software for your organization. The other option for you is to hire a group of software professionals to get the software made for you. Finally, you can also buy off-the-shelf software and get it customized according to your needs and requirements.

Most software companies would charge you good amount of money in order to get the software up and running. If you have very low budget, you can hire a group of software professionals and get the software made for you. Finding such a group to prepare the medical billing software is quite easy, and you will not have many problems getting the work done from them.

Are your collections too low and receivables very high? If yes, then you definitely need to check out www.practiceanswers.com and get the right solution for the medical billing software.

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Importance Of Medical Billing

Nowadays medical professionals are finding it difficult to manage day-to-day affairs, particularly administrative issues. Medical billing is one such area in which healthcare professionals are facing a daunting task of trying to cope up with the rapidly changing coding or billing rules and requirements. These days a lot of paperwork is involved that not only causes hindrance, but sometimes also become a cause for inordinate delays in payment and billing purposes.

Need For An Billing Software

There is an urgent need to have a good way of managing the electronic medical records. This task can only be made easy with the help of good practice management software. So, what do you actually seek from billing software? Well, the answer is simple. You would expect the software to make sure that the billing calculations are done accurately and efficiently. Besides, you will also want the software to be available to you on the Internet so that you can access it from anywhere in the world.

Practice management software (PMS) is a kind of software that caters to the daily operations of a medical practice. You can get this PMS software in the following ways. The first way is to contact a software company and ask it to make this software for your organization. The other option for you is to hire a group of software professionals to get the software made for you. Finally, you can also buy off-the-shelf software and get it customized according to your needs and requirements.

Most software companies would charge you good amount of money in order to get the software up and running. If you have very low budget, you can hire a group of software professionals and get the software made for you. Finding such a group to prepare the medical billing software is quite easy, and you will not have many problems getting the work done from them.

Are your collections too low and receivables very high? If yes, then you definitely need to check out www.practiceanswers.com and get the right solution for the medical billing software.

Q&A: The importance of oral care

In January, Trina Crow, RN, MJ, associate project director at The Joint Commission, wrote in a blog post that long-term care facilities need to pursue oral care policies more intently. While neither The Joint Commission nor CMS cite hospitals or critical access hospitals for oral care deficiencies, Crow writes that it’s still an essential part of care.

 “The statistics on this are alarming,” she wrote. “According to a study published in the Journal of American Geriatrics Society, on any given day, 84%–100% of [long-term care] residents don’t receive any oral care. Furthermore, only 27% of the long-term care organizations in the study had oral care supplies and the average tooth brushing duration was only 60 seconds. Many care providers didn’t even change their gloves between helping the resident use the restroom and brush teeth.”

Along with tooth and gum disease, poor oral care is linked to pneumonia and endocarditis (an infection of the heart’s inner lining). Barbara Quinn, MSN, RN, ACNS-BC, a clinical nurse specialist with Integrated Quality Services at Sutter Medical Center, Sacramento (SMCS), and co-author of one of the few studies and articles on oral care programs and pneumonia prevention in hospital settings. Her research showed that by putting an oral care program in place, hospitals can prevent 40%–60% of non-ventilator hospital-acquired pneumonia (NV-HAP), which accounts for 62% of all hospital-acquired pneumonia. 

HCPro.com – Briefings on Accreditation and Quality

The Importance of Claiming Your Online Presence

Claiming Your Online Presence for Your Medical Practice

Claiming Your Online Presence for Your Medical Practice

Patients are more in control of the patient-doctor relationship than ever before.

The proliferation of third-party healthcare websites, including numerous sites dedicated to reviewing doctors and medical practices, opens up patients to a wealth of new information once restricted only to conversations with their doctor.

Patients can go comparison shopping online for a healthcare provider, just like they do for a hotel or restaurant. It’s almost as if they were walking down the aisle of a supermarket. In fact, there are over 70 popular healthcare-related websites that show information about specific healthcare providers and practices.

According to a 2014 study on patient use of medical practice review sites, 42% of respondents said they consult such sites. That’s a 68% increase over the number of people who visited such sites the previous year!  Of those who use the review sites, 49% would be willing to see an out-of-network doctor who had better reviews than one in their plan.

Millennials are particularly plugged into online discussions of their health care experiences. If they’re a key demographic of your target patient persona, you’re either ahead of the curve in managing your online reputation or you’re losing out to those who are.

Today, managing your healthcare practice’s online presence is no longer something that is nice to have – it’s a critical part of your reputation, and it heavily influences patient decisions.

What you see is what you get

Online, what patients see is what they know of you and your practice. According to Pew Internet, 80% of all US adults have gone online to research health information, with 25% of those searches about a particular provider.

Even if your practice relies primarily on referrals and word of mouth, chances are high that a patient or primary caretaker will head online to research you. Their first step? Head to a search engine like Google and type in your name.

Or, perhaps they head over to Facebook and ask their friends if they’ve ever worked with you. Maybe they fire up the Yelp app on their phone and look up what others have said about you.

Claiming your online presence, however, is not just about rating and reviews. Many of the healthcare websites that have created a profile for you or your practice have inaccurate or missing information.

Things such as your clinic hours, conditions treated, procedures offered and payments methods accepted are wrong. This could lead to patients heading to the wrong clinic, calling into the wrong provider OR worse yet, deciding not to call you at all.

There is no Neutral on Review Sites

Ignoring review sites, however, isn’t an option either.

First, many review sites – especially large ones like Yelp or Google My Business – will have a page for your medical practice, even if you don’t claim it. That means people can leave reviews about you and your healthcare practice without your participation in the review process.

Second, if you aren’t managing your online review reputation, other healthcare providers are managing theirs. And these are the providers you’re losing patients to.

BrightLocal’s 2015 Local Consumer Review Survey found that only 14% of those reading reviews would visit a business with fewer than 3 stars. So if you’re not getting reviews and earning stars, you’re losing out to the surgical practices that are.

Claiming Your Profiles Also Impact Search Rankings

Major search engines are starting to assign more weight to claiming the various profiles found online for you and your practice. For example, Google gives heavier weight in their search queries to healthcare clinics that have a clean NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number) profile across the internet.

While time-consuming and tedious, claiming the various profiles and listings found across the internet for you and your practice has an impact on your overall online visibility.

Search engines also value patient reviews more today than ever before.

Google ramped up its local ratings and reviews starting in 2013 when it launched “City Experts” to help grow hyper­local content for Google+. Activity on a review site is assumed to be local content, which search engines want to provide to local searchers.

The lesson here is that claiming your online presence has a number of benefits.

Accurate profiles with correct  information ensure that when patients find you anywhere, they’re getting the right details. Increased search engine rankings and search visibility help you pull in more patients. Authentic patient ratings and reviews are some of the most compelling marketing content available to practices.

Your online presence influences whether new patients schedule appointments with you, or decide to visit someone else they found first who had better information or more positive reviews.

Online Presence Checklist

Ready to take control of your health practice’s online presence? Here’s a checklist to get you started.

  • Audit your practice’s search engine and review site listings
  • Claim each of your practice’s search engine and review site listings and update them with current information
  • Regularly monitor each review site listing for new reviews; you can set-up automated alerts to do this
  • Implement a patient review/feedback loop via email that encourages positive reviews and provides a fast opportunity for you to respond to negative reviews

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— This post The Importance of Claiming Your Online Presence was written by Garrett Smith and first appeared on Capture Billing. Capture Billing is a medical billing company helping medical practices get their insurance claims paid faster, easier and with less stress allowing doctors to focus on their patients.

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