Practice Management Improvement Strategies

The physician’s role in the revenue cycle is important for optimizing charge capture in independent and employment settings. Understanding key acronyms related to code sets and reimbursement guidelines is important to an organization’s bottom line and future physician compensation.

Technical skills and job experience are important considerations when you're interviewing for new staff, but as a colleague once said to me, "You can't train for 'nice.'" In other words, there are some characteristics a candidate either has or doesn’t. Determining these entails you to go beyond simply asking about key tasks on the job description.

With the number of patients who have high-deductible health plans that are climbing even higher, many practices are moving toward an up-front, point-of-service collections model. Our firm has advocated this for decades. When front-desk collections are implemented correctly, we see significant increases in daily revenue and a reduction in accounts receivable of more than 90 days old.

Evaluation and management coding patterns are under the microscope. CMS is monitoring evaluation and management code usage by specialty, state and nationally. The Recovery Audit Program of CMS aims to identify and correct improper Medicare payments through the detection and collection of overpayments. Commercial payers are using analytics to identify potentially inaccurate coding, too; take-backs may result.

Benjamin Franklin famously said that an investment in knowledge pays the best dividends. Building a well-trained team can improve efficiency and increase the bottom line. Here are six ways to build your practice “brain bank.”

Whether a physician’s compensation is tied directly to productivity or collections, or is indirectly influenced by the overall financial sustainability of the practice or the hospital, the physician’s paycheck depends on the employer getting paid for the patients who are treated. Surgeons new in practice often do not understand the interrelated aspects of how the practice bills and collects for these services. This article explains how the revenue cycle works and the key areas that require physician involvement. A glossary of common revenue cycle terms is included.

A governance agreement is a written directive for how a practice’s board of directors is comprised and how it operates. Governance is the way in which an organization polices itself, and a good agreement includes a number of things that allow your practice to do that effectively. Decision-making policies, meeting procedures and board role definitions are a few examples.

Running a practice without looking at financial reports is like diagnosing a patient without checking blood pressure or ordering blood work: Chances are, you are going to miss something important. Truth is, it is impossible to identify or make sound business decisions without first looking at some data.