Juls Obermiller has recently joined our Software Development Department. She is mainly working on the finishing touches to our new billing software, but you will also be talking to her when you call for technical support. Juls brings a tremendous amount of experience to this position, having worked in our billing office for several years as well as many years in physician's offices. Welcome aboard, Juls!

Our current supplier for statement envelopes, MCPC, has stopped carrying the teal envelopes sets. We have arranged to have a similar product available through Olympic Printers. This means you will be able to order your statements and envelopes from the same vendor. Olympic Printers will be contacting you with a price list soon.

October 22 is the next important date in the transition to the NPI. On this date, your provider information in the Medicare system needs to exactly match your information in the NPI system. If it does not match, Medicare will reject your claims.

There are several things you should do before October 22. First, check your Medicare Mailbox reports. If you are receiving informational messages on all of your claims, you need to update your information.

Second, check your provider information on the NPI website at

https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/NP PES/LoginPage.do?userType=PROVIDER

To see the Medicare notice that explains which information fields need to be matching go to:

https://www.nori dianmedicare.com/p- medb/enroll/npi/urgent_092107.html

Please call our office if you have any questions.

Many of you have asked whether there will be a website to look up NPI's, just like the old UPIN registry. The answer is yes and you can find it online at

https://nppes.cms.hhs.gov/NPPES/Welcome.do

Our clearinghouse, Availity, is discontinuing dial-up claims submission. Instead of using a phone line, you will use the internet to send electronic claims. We are offering several training sessions to show you the set-up instructions and the sending/receiving process. These will be held in our Silverdale office at no charge. We hope one of the following times will be convenient for you:

Wednesday, October 17 at 5:00 pm
Thursday, October 18 at 1:00 pm
Friday, October 19 at 7:30 am

Please call us to reserve a time at 692-5242 (local) or 1-800-585-5242 (toll free).

My family physician told me of an incident that actually happened to him back in the early days of his practice.

He said a woman brought her baby to see him, and he determined right away that the baby had an earache. He wrote a prescription for ear drops. In the directions he wrote, "Put two drops in right ear every four hours" and he abbreviated "right" as an R with a circle around it.

Several days passed, and the woman returned with her baby, complaining that the baby still had an earache, and his little bottom was getting really greasy with all those drops of oil.

The doctor looked at the bottle of ear drops and sure enough, the pharmacist had typed the following instructions on the label:

"Put two drops in R ear every four hours."