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When asked by Ortivus to contribute an article
for the Customer Feature section of the
newsletter, one might ask, “Whom did I tick
off?” “Will I ever get through to support again,
if I don’t do it?” Having been assured that no
such dire fate awaited, we have agreed to share
some of our experiences using what is now called
Sweet–Billing.
Our company, Mobile Health Resources, has been
using the Sweet Ambulance Billing software for
about seven-and-a-half years – it was called
A2000 back then. But some of us go back even
farther. Do you remember PC Ambulance? There is
one person here that goes back even before that
program started, purchasing a precursor of that
software in 1983 B.E. (before email). Back then,
support consisted of Dave Sweet putting his son
in a car and sending him to our office to
customize the program code. But Dave was always
famous for his personalized service. Computers
in small offices were not networked back then.
The program ran on one computer and staff
members would take turns entering information or
payments or printing bills – ah, the good old
days when ambulance billing was simple, payors
were friendly and everything was billed on
paper!
Through our ambulance billing company,
MHR Billing Services, we provide a complete billing program for
our
EMS
services. Our staff handles more than 160,000
calls per year. Needless to say, we put a
billing system through its paces. We are unique
in that we have even made the software perform
services that were never on anyone’s drawing
board. In fact, there are times that the support
staff at Ortivus just shake their collective
heads and adopt the old military policy, “Don’t
ask, don’t tell.” But the software has performed
admirably through it all. We have used almost
every module available with the program. The
ability to create custom reports and forms has
been invaluable in our various business lines. A
number of our customers request special
information projects that require “data mining”
and selective searches. There have not been many
requests that we could not meet by using the
tools that the software provides. This becomes a
value-added service that we can supply to our
providers.
One of our special needs was to be able to use
the billing program from multiple locations.
Amazon [Sweet-Billing] combined with
Citrix networking has allowed us to connect
various offices directly into our billing
database. These connections run the gamut from
connecting over the internet using VPN
technology to T-1 phone connections and local
area networks. Technology can be very confusing
at times, but we have been able to work with the
support people at Ortivus to maintain this
complex web of computer connections.
We have also been able to interface with two
very different CAD programs. One of our services
has now implemented the new Ortivus [Sweet]-CAD
program which transfers data to our system. We
are also beginning implementation of [Sweet]-Field
Data in one service.
Our activities have come a long way from that
single computer running an ambulance billing
program written in uncompiled Basic. Being an
out-sourced billing service, we are an
economical answer to a equipping and staffing an
in-house billing office. We are also able to
provide our clients with well-trained staff that
are current on all the latest regulations and
idiosyncrasies that payers require for proper
claims processing. Sweet-Billing has
enabled us to keep pace with all of the changes
that are required in this ever more complex area
of EMS operations and billing.
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