General Information

Stratford Healthcare EDI and management software

The stratford software is a comprehensive healthcare billing system that includes everything necessary to manage most healthcare offices as well as billing services.

The software can be used for

EDI  - The software uses formats required by HIPAA.

Send claims

837 transmit claims

835 receive ERA (electronic remittance advice) and automatically post to patient accounts.

Claim status

276 transmit claim status requests

277 receive claims status reports

Eligibility

270 transmit eligibility requests

271 receive eligibility reports

Edit reports

TA1 / 997 receive edit reports

A complete database is maintained that is not just for transmitting claims. You have a full accounts receivable with unlimited history of charges, payments, adjustments and notes. The software is multiuser and can be used on networks. See the 'Getting started' section of this manual.

EHR - electronic health record (Chart Notes)

A EHR database is integrated with the patient accounts. There is no need to import/export data.

Allergies

An allergy database is integrated with the patient accounts.

Program updates

Periodic program updates are required by most healthcare specialties to remain compliant with payer requirements. Be sure you make plans to obtain these updates as necessary.

If you obtain the software from your Medicare contractor you will need to get support and updates as required directly from Medicare. Your Medicare contractor will only support functions necessary to transmit claims to Medicare.

If you wish to bill payers other than Medicare or use other software functions, you will need to contract directly with Stratford for additional billing templates, updates and support.

We recommend you update by downloading from our web site. There are instructions in this manual with pictures. See the section named 'Optional Features' near the end. There is a topic named 'Online Updates' It describes the procedure that you can use.

When you begin to update your software, you must make sure that no one is using the software. You may wish to schedule the installation at noon or after work.

If, for any reason, the update procedure is stopped after it has begun, you may not be able to log into the program. You may see a message like this: "That account is being updated, please wait". This message indicates that the account is/was being updated. If you are certain that the account is not being updated and you want to restart the update, you may delete a file named C:\Stratford\ssiwin\309999\LockAcct.txt (where 309999 is your account folder).