Managing Your Run Exception Inventory
Each Run Exception PDF you receive essentially carries a value that is equal to your average cost recovery per trip (see your monthly Financial Summary to see what this is). In most cases, it can be somewhere between $500.00 and $750.00. Therefore, it’s important to keep track of every PDF. AccuMed will do this, with your help. When you receive a Run Exception email, we encourage you to save the (PDF) attachment to a folder named AccuMed-Exceptions, somewhere on your local computer. The actual name and location can be anything you like, but it’s important to use the same folder all the time. In cases where more than one person may be responding to these documents, consider using a shared network folder that everyone can get to. Here’s a recommended process for managing these PDFs:
1. A Run Exception Email arrives in your inbox
2. Open the email, and save the attachment to the folder named AccuMed-Exceptions. Only after you save this attachment should you mark the email as having been “read”. After you’ve done this, there is little value in the original email. You may do as you see fit with the email. Even deleting it is ok if you know that you’ve saved the attachment.
3. Put your email program aside, and browse to your AccuMed-Exceptions folder.
a. In your file explorer, be sure that you can see the Date Modified column of the files in this folder. Once visible, click this column header (possibly several times), until the arrow in the header is pointing up. You will now be looking at a file listing of your current run exceptions in chronological order (oldest on top, most recent on the bottom).
b. AccuMed recommends processing your oldest run exceptions first. Consider filing-limits.
4. Open the first document on the top of this list.
5. Provide answers to the questions, and attach any additional documentation. Be sure to always complete the Providers Section of the PDF.
6. Save your changes. You will be saving to the same document / same location. In some cases, your Adobe product may force you to “Save-As”, instead of saving. That’s OK. Overwrite the existing document if necessary.
7. Return to your file explorer and open the next file. Repeat steps 5 & 6 for each PDF you want to work with.
8. Transfer the completed Run Exception PDFs from your local folder to your FTP site at AccuMed. Place them in the folder named Returned Run Exceptions.
9. Once you know the files have been transferred to AccuMed, you should delete them from your local AccuMed-Exceptions folder.
a. Return to your file explorer showing the files you have just transferred (the AccuMed-Exceptions folder).
b. Delete the Run Exception PDFs that you just sent to AccuMed from the AccuMed-Exceptions folder.
i. By doing this, you are maintaining a collection of Run Exception PDFs that remain to be “worked” (in the AccuMed-Exceptions folder). If you left the recently transferred files in this folder, you would not be able to easily tell which run exceptions you’ve completed, vs. the PDFs that you still need to work.
ii. If you’re not comfortable deleting these files, you can also move them to another folder of your choice. If you do this, be sure to “move” the files, and not “copy” them.
It’s important to have a good understanding of your current run exception inventory. Managing these files in the AccuMed-Exceptions folder is one way to accomplish that objective. Once you become familiar with the overall process, you may discover improvements that simplify things for you.