| |
mumms® Overview |
|
|
Referral and Admissions The mumms® family of software products manages patient information from the initial referral through admission, discharge and bereavement. All patient information, which may eventually be needed for an admitted patient, may be entered on the referral record. There is only one patient record per patient in the mumms® system, unlike most other applications that use flat file databases. mumms® utilizes a true relational database and this means that mumms® does not need to maintain a separate record for patient referrals, admitted patients, discharged patients, or rejected patient referrals. There is only one patient record and this record has a status field that reflects the current status of the patient. This one record maintains an archived history of all changes in the record for that patient. This configuration allows for a patient, who was discharged alive, to be re-admitted utilizing the same record as their previous admission. All previous data remains and a history is kept of all changes. A patient can initially be a referral, then a rejected referral, then referred again at a later date, admitted to the program, discharged alive, referred again, etc. etc. Subsequently, billing can be performed at any point in time, for any chosen period of time and mumms® will utilize the history file to properly reconstruct the patient configurations which exist for that billing period.
Patient Data Patient data is entered only once when utilizing a true relational database. Information is carried through from one form to another with no duplication of data entry. That is, the patient’s demographic information entered at time of referral or admission is carried over and used by the billing application when preparing the claims, requiring no duplication of data entries. No information is ever entered more than once, nor is information ever recorded more than once in the mumms® system. For Example: One particular flat file application, provided by another software vendor, records the physician phone number in at least four places. One record of the phone number is made on the physician master record, the referral record, the admission record and a fourth on the physician services record. Besides the time required to input that data in four different fields, this causes a great deal of confusion when the physician’s phone number (or any other master data information) changes. In most cases the information is changed in one place, but fails to get changed in the other locations. This duplication of information is performed in FLAT FILE databases to avoid the costly time overhead to make a “JOIN” of the FLAT FILES. Many FLAT FILE database vendors call their product relational because they can make these artificial-file-joins. However, performing a “join” operation is often very time consuming. To avoid this extra overhead, the application will often duplicate the data. THIS DUPLICATION IS NEVER PERFORMED IN mumms®, thanks to its utilization of a true relational database.
Supply/DME
Management and Usage Information There are various tools available for this function depending on the needs of the individual hospice. Ranging from data entry of what particular DME/Supply items a patient has received, management of a DME warehouse including the issuance of automated delivery and pick-up notices, and true inventory levels management. Orders can be tracked with as much detail as the hospice requires, from leaving the warehouse, to the delivery and the pickup of supplies from the patient.
Bereavement Support mumms® provides a full bereavement module including automated scheduled Contacts Due reports, scheduled mailing letter and envelope files, and bereaved persons management.
Clinical Documentation The initial creation of the clinical document, subsequent visit notes and care plan changes can be recorded from any place in the world – in real time. This is possible because the Care Plans and Charting Module (CP/C) will interface with the mumms® data server via the Internet or Intranet. The CP/C Module runs under any system that runs a Java browser (MS Windows, NT, Unix, etc.). The CP/C Module also incorporates wireless technology enabling laptops, in the field, access to up-to-the-minute data, and changes made in the field are instantly updated on the server. There is also an option to use hand-held Palm Pilots instead of Laptops. The hospice’s existing Assessment Forms and Care Plan Dataset can be installed into mumms® and used by the application. That way hospice employees continue using the Assessment Forms they are accustomed to using and the hospice’s administration continues to be supplied critical data for planning and reporting purposes. Additionally, there is a full assessment format that can be provided. This assessment format is a deep resource, which was developed through the collective efforts of SCS programmers, Hospice Clinicians, and Hospice Management.
Human Resources and Resource Management The mumms® Human Resources Module is a tickler system for managing all applicable persons (staff, physicians, volunteers, vendors, etc). This module can track an unlimited number of items within their personnel file. The hospice defines what items are tracked and at what intervals these items need to be renewed or assessed. Reminder letters are automatically generated to alert those that have items that need to be renewed or have items missing from their file.
Billing The base module is Patient Activity and Statistics (PAS) and it includes Hospice Billing and Accounts Receivable, for all Levels of Care, as defined by the Medicare Hospice Benefit and, also for Room and Board billing for Medicaid nursing home patients. All Medicare billing is performed electronically and follows the requirements and standards of the various intermediaries. There are many features optionally available with mumms® that are used to customize how the claims are produced and how the charges are posted to the Accounts Receivable. Extensive history files are maintained that record each time a claim is created or modified in any way. This feature also creates another audit path that is important to compliance efforts (HIPAA). The mumms® billing application offers many other claim management features. Utilizing our Bill Hold feature a patient’s billing can be tagged to prevent their claims from being included when doing batch billing. The Patient/Carrier Bill Hold Module expands the PAS Billing menu and allows this “Hold” to be insurance carrier specific. This allows a patient’s hospice claim to Medicare to be tagged as being “on hold” without also holding-up their Medicaid claim for Room and Board. This feature also provides a history file that maintains records on who placed the hold, when the hold was placed, and why the hold was placed. All this information can then be reviewed on the detailed reports that are available. Additionally, each of these reports can be printed. Another available feature for agencies offering in-house residential facilities or other adult day care services, are Special Levels of Care Billing. This provides a bill, in statement format, which is automatically generated for room and board charges. However, the user designates which carrier should be billed. There are seven different Level of Care codes (12-19) that can be used to designate different facilities or services. Statistical and census reports allow the hospice track patients in these Special Levels of Care. mumms® also provides for billing functions for many other programs and services in addition to the hospice program. A few examples are: private duty home health, infusion therapy, adult day care, special room and board for Medicaid or private carriers, and many others. Patients can be billed for additional services in addition to the hospice benefits. ALL billing is performed automatically. The user simply enters a date and presses the “BILL” button. Patients can be changed from one program to another with a few keystrokes and no duplicate data entry. A Separate Accounts Receivable Ledger & Aging is maintained for each program. Individual patient ledger cards can be viewed for each separate program or for all programs combined. This is also true of all statistical and census reports, that is, a report can be run for a single program or for all programs.
Program
2: Home Health Billing Program
4: Non-Hospice Hospice Billing Accounts Receivable The mumms® PAS Module provides for a full range of A/R features. In addition to the standard posting of payments, an unlimited amount of Adjustment Codes can be setup to track all A/R write-off and balance adjustments. Additionally, all payments and adjustments are tied to the actual claim, not just the patient’s account. There is a full array of Aging and Revenue reports to meet all management needs. In addition to the basic A/R features, mumms® offers an Error Code and Notes Module that provides an extensive set of tools for tracking an ERROR CODE that caused a claim to be denied, what corrective action needs to be taken, and when to follow-up. This is done via a “tickler” system with automatic reminders to the billing staff by way of an Excel spreadsheet that lists the Next Contacts Due. Also includes a message board where notes can be kept and communicated among staff.
Statistics Reporting There are extensive statistical reports available regarding the census, discharges, admissions, diagnosis, etc. for all hospice patients. In addition to this, mumms® provides many specialize Nursing Home Census reports, including Excel spreadsheet reports that take it a step further. The Accrual Report looks at the patient Nursing Home Room and Board records and compares those records to the patient Accounts Receivable records to ensure that all room and board stays that are billable have, indeed, been billed and posted to A/R in the correct manner. The Payable Report addresses the patient Nursing Home Room and Board records and, based upon your setup, this report will determine what the Accounts Payable to the Nursing Homes should be.
mumms® provides a number of batch entry features.
Home Care and In-Patient Unit Support mumms® includes a full featured, extremely flexible Care Plan and Charting application for use both for Home Care and In-Patient Units.
Technology & Infrastructure Management Requirements Relational
Database Commonly Used and Supported.
Standard Windows Interface mumms® is accessed either using either Internet Explorer or other web browser or through a third party terminal emulation software, which loads under standard Windows operating systems, or virtually any operating system that can run a browser.
Common Programming Language There are two main applications of mumms®. The PAS Module (Patient Activity and Statistics) is written in C-code, a very low level language that can be compiled under any operating system. The later module, CP/C (Care Plans and Charting) utilizes XML technology. It is written in embedded Perl interfacing to any Mod Perl compliant database, such as Oracle, and is accessed using a web browser. Any platform that can run a web browser can access mumms® applications.
HIPAA Compliance. An information technology vendor should help its clients understand that parts of HIPAA compliance are supported by the use of technology. mumms® programs provide Technical Security Mechanisms, which are enhanced by using Public Key Encryption Codes and Secure Shell (SSH1 & SSH2) Connections. mumms® programs provide data integrity by insuring that information is only modified by appropriate people (users), confidentiality by giving access to information only to appropriate people, and availability by ensuring that the information resources are reliably present when needed. Secure Computing Systems, Inc. is committed to assist every client in obtaining and maintaining HIPAA compliant procedures. ANSI 837 format will be tested and implemented before October 2002.
Field and Cross-Field Validations mumms® makes extensive use of its relational capabilities to ensure that all data is consistent and that information is not written to a record without a valid master existing. That is, it is impossible in mumms® to give a patient a financial class that does not exist in the financial class master. This is not true with flat file databases that do not have this cross-field integrity checking. Access
via Dialup or DSL connections? Absolutely. mumms® can be accessed via dialup or DSL connections, or intranets, or frame relay private networks, or the Internet. If a hospice benefit provider has access to the Internet, we can provide them with a password and give access to mumms® applications in a single day. All one needs is a connection to the Internet to run mumms®. mumms® exploits the use of LAN/WAN in its operation. In fact, TCP/IP is the only way to access mumms®. Anyone, anywhere in the world that has proper passwords and security certificates can access and run the mumms® application. Our infrastructure provides satellite-sites with the ability to look up the information from their location. There would be no need to fax that satellite-site the referral. If the satellite location has access to the network (or to the Internet) they simply log in and print or view the referral information. Odyssey HealthCare is a hospice organization currently using the mumms® system. Odyssey maintains over 50 separate hospices, with an Average Daily Census of over 4,000 patients, across the United States. All the data for every hospice is maintained on a single server located in Dallas, TX. All billing is performed out of Dallas, TX; however, each of the 50 hospices is responsible for and maintains all the referral information themselves. In other words, the referral information is input by the individual satellites. The individual satellites maintain referral information. There is no need for a satellite location to fax referral information to corporate offices, or have central personnel input the data and then fax it back to the satellite. mumms® application acts exactly the same whether or not the input operator is located next to the server, in the same building as the server, or is a different state or a different country.
Ability to run on Win 2000 Pro, or other NT Based Servers. mumms® will run under any platform that can run an Internet browser.
Supports Remote Access and Synchronization. mumms®, of course, supports remote access and all data is entered into a common database. There is no need for synchronization. Data is not disbursed over many PCs and therefore there is no need to synchronize.
Maintains Record History mumms® maintains a record history of virtually all data put into the system, most is automatically time and date stamped. That is, a user makes an entry and the person, the date, and the time they made the entry is automatically stamped into the record. This is also true for changes or deletions. A person may intend to delete a record and may appear to them that they are deleting a record, but it is not actually deleted. It is simply marked as having been deleted by a certain operator on a certain date and time.
Open Interface capability, both import and export. The mumms®
applications can interface with virtually any other data application.
mumms® can extract any data, using SQL, and format that data into
any required format. Conversely, mumms® can import any data set. mumms®
also provides Open Data Base Connectivity (ODBC) allowing users to import
information directly into spreadsheets or word processing applications.
Standard Interfaces to Great Plains. The mumms® program can interface with virtually any other data application.
Standard Report Writer with basic math capability mumms® provides ODBC connectivity to its database, thereby providing utilization of any third party popular report writer such as Crystal Report Writer, Excel or Access, etc.
Complete System documentation and user manuals User program manual and database schema is available and updated yearly.
Established
Customer Support Organization Secure Computing Systems, Inc. has a Technical Support Department providing all of the above.
On-Site Implementation Support and Training when required Yes, this is available at any time.
Demonstrated Installations Currently, the mumms® system is in place in over 100+ hospice offices throughout the United States.
Network & Infrastructure Management Backup
& Recovery, SCS provides ASP Hosting services to all of its clients. This is a feature being promoted by Oracle Corporation and is destined to be included in the future of computing. That is, an individual user of software no longer has to purchase expensive multiple servers, expensive licensing, and has to be concerned with backups, schedules, breakdowns, updates, etc. SCS can optionally provide all these services for the hospice. Because mumms® is accessed over TCP/IP, it can be accessed from anyplace and the location of the server is actually irrelevant to the operation of the software. The servers could be located in China. There is no need for each individual hospice to go to the expensive proposition of buying and maintaining their own servers and server software, and in fact, mumms® has 2 servers located in 2 different cities for automatic fall back in case of a catastrophe in one of the server cities.
|
|
Copyright © 2003 Secure Computing Systems, Inc. All rights reserved. |