By: Derrick Stark, CPA, CVA – ClaraVista LLC

Andrea buzzed me on the intercom a few weeks ago and said one of our clients needed a schedule of active CPAP patients by zip code with the estimated cap date. Not only did they need it that morning… they needed it within the next 30-minutes. I told her I’d see what I could do and got to work.

Long story short, we sent the client a schedule, they had a wildly productive meeting, and everybody was happy.  Although the timeline was a little tight, we pull these kinds of “on-the-fly” analyses together all the time in our business. How do we do it? We use a tool that you probably have on your computer right now, Microsoft Excel.

As someone working in the reimbursement sector of the DME industry, I’ve found that providers often have helpful tools at their disposal that no one has taken the time to really teach them how to use. Case in point, Excel.

You may be reading this right now, thinking, “I know how to use Excel. I use it all the time.” But if you’re only using the program to produce financial statements or budgets, you’re just barely scratching the SURFACE of what it can do! In fact, this week alone we’ve used Excel to:

• Match physician address and telephone information from our billing software to our list of PECOS warnings to create a complete call list for physician education.
• Prioritize our call list relative to the patient volume associated with each physician resulting in a warning message.
• Identify claim concentrations by HCPCS code and payor. 

And the best part is, it doesn’t take an accountant or technical expert to use Excel. In fact, with a little practice, the receptionist or delivery tech might be your best data analysts.

If providing your staff with the tools to work smarter, not harder is something that interests you, then I invite you to attend my live webinar tutorial entitled: Using Excel to Maximize Efficiencies in Your AR Department on January 21, 2010. Using sample reports relevant to the DME industry, I will show you how to use Excel to strategically analyze, sort and format data, providing you with knowledge that can be readily applied to your own sales, collections and AR reports.

The course is broken down into two classes, one for Excel 2003 users and one for Excel 2007 users.  We will skip “How to Minimize a Window”, the “CD-ROM or cup holder debate”, and other uber-basic matters of PC use, but advanced Excel knowledge or experience will definitely not be a requirement.  Attendance is just $49. For more information or to register, click here or visit www.miravistallc.com/recent_services.php.