Business Process Solutions - Chasing Paper Isn’t A Good Business Strategy

Telamon's Business Process Solutions division assists durable medical equipment (DME) and home medical equipment (HME) companies stay lean in the competitive bid environment. As the squeeze tightens over the next 24-36 months, "payer" reimbursement cuts will drive down the maximum allowable charges by 20-30%. Medical equipment businesses need to adopt innovative solutions to ensure quick, consistent cash flow.

Survival in the competitive bid environment will require business skill and intuition about the medical equipment marketplace. Telamon offers a sound business solution directed at improving the management and tracking of required DME/HME documentation, such as Certificates of Medical Necessity (CMN's). Streamlining workflow improves cash flow by reducing the cycle time associated with HME/DME document management. Telamon transforms the document collection process into a virtual workflow solution dedicated to pursuing the required DME/HME documentation. Telamon's data entry clerks, project managers, and IT experts combined with cloud technology maintain receipts, audit, track, and alert duties while the clients' managers remain centered on the status of the documents. Telamon handles the mundane tasks while the client targets the revenue-centric responsibility.

Delivering value as profit margins continue to shrink is not a new challenge, however, for some medical equipment companies, the thought of outsourcing segments of the revenue cycle workflow seems daunting. The inhibition quickly disappears once the efficiency of the new approach kicks in. Business leaders see the value of shortening their longstanding accounts receivables or inconsistent payment cycles commonly associated with the medical equipment-billing paper chase.

Medical Solutions - Technology & Telecommunications in Direct to Patient Care

Technology & telecommunications in direct to patient care is a term represented by Telamon's newest business unit, Medical Solutions. A few weeks ago, Sunny Lu, General Manager of Telamon's Medical Solutions business unit, presented on this topic at the Health Informatics Tri-State Summit at the University of Southern Indiana. Read on for a review of her presentation & for some very interesting stats!

Setting a Premise: 

• Focus on the patient as a consumer, a user, and in the home environment. 
• New definitions to derive new meaning. 
• It's all commercially viable. 
• Technology, as a tool. 
• Telecommunications, as a delivery method. 
• It's the program, not the product. 

Technology Tools - Social Media 

Social media drives the fastest, least expensive form of adoption. The most important factors of the patient adoption path include demographic, content,  and usage.

Technology - Usage 

Below you will see the top 5 smartphone operating systems, shipments and market share from Q1 2013. 55% of the US population uses a smartphone with the most popular operating systems being Android & iOS. 

Units in Millions

Telecommunications - A Nod to Engineering & Evolution 

 

Telecommunications Delivery System 

• Mobile Wireless Competition 
• Tier 1 Carriers: AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile 
• Federal Communications Commission (more devices in use than population of US) 
• Fixed Broadband Competion
• Carriers: AT&T, Comcast, etc. 
• Demographic 
• 34% of adults live in wireless-only households
• 500 Megabytes of data consumed per month per user

To download a copy of Sunny's full presentation, please click here.

Telecom Solutions - The Internet of Things

Many of us are familiar with the term “Internet of Things” but may not stretch the concept to understand how this will play a major part in the present and future world of telecommunications.

IoT – as it is abbreviated – is a term that has been around since 1999. As soon as “identifiers” – in the form of radio frequencies, barcodes and QR codes – became attached to objects, these objects could be traced, tracked and monitored. It is estimated that 26 billion devices will have some kind of embedded identifier by the year 2020. Up until recently, devices that could be identified were mainly collecting data, lots of data. What does this mean to a telecommunications company? As technology improves within the telecommunications industry with the massive deployment of fiber optic infrastructure and high speed broadband equipment, this data could be accessed faster allowing real time decision making. Time is money and customers demanded faster access to information, which forces constant upgrades to this telecom infrastructure. 

But, as with everything, things are changing. Where once the data was collected and decisions were made in a reactive mode, now data has been coupled with logic and patterns to make proactive decisions. Google recently acquired the Nest product line which, based on patterns of usage, will intuitively know when you come home and adjust the temperature of your house. Once all of our devices (doors, appliances, etc.) have been equipped with “identifiers”, you could walk into your home at the end of the day and your favorite music may come on, a fire lights in the fireplace and a glass of wine has been dispensed from your smart refrigerator.  It would be awesome if somehow these devices could have the children fed, bathed and put to bed but that’s another blog entry……

So, what is the industry doing to prepare for the continued onslaught of data? Just today, IBM and AT&T announced a partnership to develop products and services to address the growth of the Internet of Things. AT&T, one of the world’s largest telecommunications providers and IBM, a software services giant, both recognize that there is immense value in the data that can be gathered by “things”. This data is already being used by major utilities in the further development of the Smart Grid. As we stretch our imaginations to dream up what can be done in the not too distant future, there are already great minds out there putting these plans in place.

-Suzanne Beck

VP Business Development

Telecom Solutions - Telamon Corporation