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
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
The spawn of Seinlanguage: shticky meditations by a stand-up comic who now stars in a top-rated television show. As Tim Taylor, Allen is the focal point of Home Improvement, but his manly-man persona plays off his wife, ``Tool Time'' cohorts, and other characters. Here we have Allen solo, closer to the stand-up mode, musing ``about many things I want to say about being a man.'' His short chapters mainly consist of riffs on his past, his humor safely in the middle American mainstream. Born Timothy Allen Dick, he learned to cope with his unusual moniker through humor and thus segues into observations genitalistic. Allen resents women saying men's cars are linked to their penises: ``What's an extension of the vagina—a purse?'' His life was transformed, he writes, by a Playboy centerfold, and he does have some wise thoughts on objectification: ``If we could have had sex with our cars and boats, it would have been a lot easier. But we'd be a smaller species.'' What should men ``look for in a gal? The answer is easy: breath.'' Allen balances such cheap laughs with some insights, suggesting that women, like men, seek glitz in a partner but eventually settle for ``the family station wagon.'' There's more: marriage, sports, and, of course, tools, leading to his innovative analysis of the impact of tool belts on butt cracks. He ends with some heartfelt sentiments on fatherhood. Allen only briefly touches on the traumas that have fueled his psyche: the death of his father in a car wreck when Tim was 11 and a prison sentence for selling drugs. (The lack of privacy in prison supplies the book's title.) More memoir and less shtick might have been a better balance here. For loyal fans, who should still be plentiful. (First printing of 500,000; first serial to TV Guide and Playboy)
Pub Date: Oct. 7, 1994
ISBN: 0-7868-6134-7
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Hyperion
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
Danielle's dirty linen. A lot of this unauthorized biography is about legal wrangling, much of it to do with child custody. It's a good story, but Steel could have told it better. Bane and Benet, People magazine staff reporters, follow up on their Steel exposÇ of 1992 (written with Paula Chin) with this book cobbled together from interviews, court depositions, and letters Steel wrote to her second husband, Danny Zugelder (most while he was in prison). Heaven knows Steel's life is more than the stuff of romance. She was a neglected child. When she was hospitalized with ovarian cancer at 16, her parents never visited her. She married two convicts: Zugelder, a car thief and bank robber, who was also jailed for assault and rape (they were married in a prison ceremony and consummated their relationship in a bathroom); and Bill Toth, a heroin addict imprisoned for fencing stolen goods. Toth and Steel fought over custody of their son, Nicholas, and much of the last half of the bio comes from trial depositions and interviews with Toth and his lawyers. Steel finally found her putative Prince Charming in John Traina, who the authors take pains to point out is not and has never been a shipping magnate, though he does have a dynamite collection of cigarette cases and closets full of designer clothes. With their nine children, Steel and Traina bought the enormous Spreckels mansion in San Francisco. They also own a mini- compound in the Napa Valley, where they house a fleet of cars and a staff of thousands. For the sins of success, eccentricity, and a strong sense of privacy, the authors try to build a case against Steel. But in the end she comes through as a hard worker and a gritty survivor. It's you-can-run-but-you-can't-hide journalism, gossipy with a sound foundation, and not too high on elegant turns of phrase. (First printing of 100,000; author tour)
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-312-11257-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1994
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