April 2015
In
this issue:
CMS
ICD-10 Preparation Continues
SOS
Launches Updated Referral Reward Program
Selling Your
Practice? Transferring your SOS license may be possible
Electronic
Claims Module Sale: Includes Eligibility Verification and ERA
Occasional
Phone Outage
SOS
Staff Profile: Stephane 'Steve' Tessier: Software Development
Recent blog
articles available:
Online Dating: Positive or negative for your
behavioral health clients, December 3, 2014
Mental Health Organizations Not Immune from
HIPAA Fines, December 10, 2014
Email Overload: How to avoid email bankruptcy,
December 17, 2014
Enjoy your holiday now . . . not when you
get there! December 23, 2014
HIPAA Compliance: How are you managing
privacy and security? February 4, 2015
HIPAA
Compliance Part II: Cloud security and cyberinsurance,
February
11, 2015
Identity Theft and Consumer Scams: What you
need to know, March 3, 2015
Behavioral Health Interventions Reduce Cost
of Medical Care,
March 13, 2015
PHI Security: How aware are you? March
17, 2015
Telepsychology and Internet Based Therapy
Revisited, March 25, 2015
CMS ICD-10
Preparation Continues
CMS continues to educate
and
prepare providers and vendors for the big move to ICD-10 on October 1,
2015. For behavioral health and substance abuse providers, that mostly
means using ICD-10-CM codes for diagnostic purposes for all services
provided after September 30, 2015. If your
organization provides inpatient behavioral health services, get some
guidance from your payers about the need to use ICD-10-PCS codes
(procedure codes) on your claims. If you submit UB-04 claims on paper
or electronically, be sure to check with your payers.
CMS has created lots of tools and a very detailed web site
to help you transition from ICD-9 to ICD-10. While we here at SOS try
to stay up-to-date on these issues, it is very important for you to do
so as well. You can check the CMS Latest News page regularly, or
you can sign up for email updates.
If you know nothing about the move to ICD-10, start with the web site
and tools. These will give you the greatest amount of information the
most quickly. But
do get started. October 1 will be here before you know it!
If you are an SOS customer, check the version of SOS Office Manager
that you are using. If you have a current support agreement, you are
entitled to update to the version which supports the ICD-10-CM.
If you
do not have a current support agreement, give us a call to get a quote
to update to the most current version. If you are using version
2014.01, you should see additional ICD-10 fields in your Claim Setup
screens (both Professional and Institutional), and you will find the
ICD-10 Prep Utility on the SOS
Office Manager Tools menu.
SOS
Launches Updated Referral Rewards Program
We
hope that you received our emails promoting our recently updated
Referral Rewards Program. For
a long time, we have known that our best source of new sales is our
current customers. While for many years we have provided a nominal
credit to thank you
for your referrals, we decided that the amount we have offered
is not enough to express our gratitude. Instead, we will now reward you
with 5% of the initial
purchase price of the product bought by your colleague. Refer a friend or colleague in
search of Billing or Clinical Record software. After they have
purchased, get 5% to apply to your own purchase of these SOS products:
| SOS
Office Manager |
| SOS Case Manager |
| SOS Appointment Scheduler |
| Electronic Claims Module via Emdeon |
| Electronic Remittance Advice Posting Module via Emdeon |
| Additional Users |
| Network
Upgrades |
| Support Renewal |
Please know that the SOS Privacy
Policy applies to anyone you refer or who self-refers, just as it
applies to you.
Privacy
Policy:
Synergistic Office Solutions, Inc. will never share any of your contact
information with anyone else without your explicit permission.
If you have any questions about our Referral Rewards Program, please
call us at (352) 242-9100 x 1 or email offers@sosoft.com.
The Terms & Conditions of the program are at the link below. And
don't forget to mention us the next time you are speaking to your
colleagues. If you would prefer not to give us your colleague's
information, be sure they know to say you were the one who referred
them. We want to be sure you get your Rewards!
Referral
Rewards Program Terms & Conditions
Selling
Your Practice? Transfering your license may be possible
Are
you in the process of preparing for retirement? Perhaps you are selling
your practice. Did you know that, with our permission, your license to
use SOS Office Manager
or SOS Case Manager
can be transferred to another user? This allows you to use your SOS
products as an asset controlled by your practice as you negotiate your
departure. Just give us a call so you can be sure you have all your
ducks in a row. In order to make the transfer of title, you must have a
current support/update agreement . . . or your purchaser will have to
buy one. The new owner is also required to execute new
Software
and Support
contracts as well as Business Associate Agreements (BAAs) with SOS. If
you
currently file electronic claims through Emdeon, 
there may be
re-enrollment tasks that must occur if the Tax ID of the practice is
going to change.
Just
remember, if you transfer the license of
your software to someone else, you cannot retain a copy for yourself.
Nevertheless, you have a legal obligation to assure that your patient
records will remain available, so be sure to contract with them to
retain your practice records for
you . . . or you will need to retain printouts of the data for
your records. We will be glad to help you work with your accountant and
attorney to determine just what needs to occur.
Electronic
Claims Module on Sale: New version includes Eligibility Verification
and ERA!
Get
20% off the
price of our electronic claims module for sending claims through Emdeon
if you buy before the end of April 2015. With that module, you get the
capability of sending your claims, picking up Electronic Remittance
Advice through Emdeon's Vision, and verifying insurance eligibility of
your current and prospective patients! If you are not sending your
claims electronically through Emdeon, you are missing out on faster
turnaround of your claims, easy tracking through the filing
and
payment process, receipt of EOBs through Vision . . . and now, the
ability to verify eligibility in real time from within SOS Office Manager.
Email Trish
or call SOS at 352-242-9100 x1 to place your order!
Please Note: The new Eligibility module will not run on a computer
running Windows XP. If you are still using such a computer to send your
claims, you will need to update the computer before you can use the new
module.
Occasional Phone
Outage
In
the past couple of months, we have experienced occasional outage of our
telephone system. We apologize for any inconvenience this might have
caused you. If you
are ever unable to leave a voice message for us, please immediately
email us at support@sosoft.com. If you have
any trouble with the telephone system, please report the difficulty to
us at support@sosoft.com.
If
you do leave a voice message and do not receive a return call within an
hour, please call again. Our
email and telephone systems are not connected to one another, so we
should receive an email even if the telephone is not working . . .
unless we have an Internet outage, something that has not occurred in a
few years.
SOS
Staff
Profile
Stephane 'Steve' Tessier,
Software
Development
We
decided that it
might be fun for you, our customers, to know a bit more about those of
us
who
work here at SOS. After all, you talk to us often, but many of you have
never
met any of us. Steve Tessier is someone almost none of you have talked
with.
As a senior Software Developer, he spends much of his
time at his desk fixing and adding features to our current software and
working on the next generation of our products. These
are Steve’s
answers to our standard questions.
How long have you worked
at SOS?
I
have been with SOS for 24 years. I started as a shipping clerk and
worked my way to programming.
How
would you describe your role at SOS?
My
main role is
programmer. I also do computer repair, software installation, data
conversion, customization, and I am Seth's second-hand in case of
network operation failures.
How
do you prefer to spend your time when you are not
working?
I
do woodworking and gardening.
What
else would you like our customers to know about
you?
I
like to self-educate in any tasks/projects that I take on. I am
probably one of few who read manuals from beginning to end. I enjoy
knowing how 'things' are made and how they work. Most importantly, I am
a family man and my family comes first.
Thank
you for being our customer. We appreciate your business.
Synergistic Office Solutions,
Inc. 17445 East Apshawa Road Clermont, FL 34715
352-242-9100