Next book

MEDICAL BILLING NETWORKS AND PROCESSES

An excellent manual for medical offices seeking to improve billing.

A thorough, easy-to-reference guide to improving medical billing procedures and collections that will be of value to medical practices small and large.

Mathematician, inventor and CEO Lirov brings his broad range of knowledge and experience to the subject of medical billing. The company that he heads, Vericle, brings this technology to clients, but the book avoids frequent references to the enterprise and is clearly not an advertisement. Targeted toward those who are involved at any level with medical billing–including computer programmers, medical office or billing service workers, and physicians–the book addresses the problems that practices of all sizes face: how to simplify the payment process and maximize collections from clients and insurance companies. Lirov begins with an overview of the economics of health care today, comparing billing procedures and outcomes of the past with the strategies Vericle utilizes. He then explores the administrative aspects of medical offices, such as choosing the ideal billing system, computer-aided scheduling and problem tracking. The author also addresses metrics that are useful in determining efficacy of the chosen billing system–and what an office can learn from this study. Compliance with regulations including insurance claims and HIPAA is a large task for medical offices, and Lirov invited guest authors to detail their specific procedures. These authors contributed several chapters, covering topics such as physician “Super Groups,” dictation versus electronic records and integration of electronic health records. Other topics of interest include outsourcing of billing and patient retention. This well-written guide contains easily referenced chapters, section headings and lists of key points, with each chapter concisely summarized and indexed. Consequently, all office workers will be able to understand the language and terminology. Further, charts and diagrams provide examples and illustrate key points.

An excellent manual for medical offices seeking to improve billing.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2009

ISBN: 978-0-9796101-3-4

Page Count: -

Publisher: N/A

Review Posted Online: May 23, 2010

Categories:
Next book

I AM OZZY

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.

Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.

An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.

Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010

ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Grand Central Publishing

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009

Next book

THE ELEMENTS OF STYLE

50TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...

Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.

Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").

Pub Date: May 15, 1972

ISBN: 0205632645

Page Count: 105

Publisher: Macmillan

Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011

Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972

Categories:
Close Quickview