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Monday, February 16, 2015

9 Ways Doctors Can Generate More Revenue—Starting Today


9 Ways Doctors Can Generate More Revenue—Starting Today

by Vicki Rackner, MD

As a medical professional, how will you respond to falling fees, rising costs and higher taxes?

Here are 9 ways you can continue to enjoy the personal, professional and financial rewards that attracted you to a career in medicine.

Stop losing money.  A penny saved is a penny earned.

1. Address your billing practicesA medical billing expert remembers the day his new client showed him his “Porsche drawer” filled with rejected insurance claims.  This physician knew that if he contested the rejections, he could fund his dream car; he just never found time.

Are you doing everything you can to get paid for the services you render?  Most doctors see significant increases in cash flow when they turn their billing into the hands of the outsourced billing experts.

2. Look for found money.  A practice management expert tells me that virtually every medical organization leaks money, and he knows where to look.  He guarantees his results—putting more money in doctors’ pockets by patching the leaks.

3. Protect yourself againstfraud.  Do you have checks and balances in place to help keep your honest employees honest?  A colleague told me that she should have listened to her intuition about her “trusted office manager.”  She discovered that over the years, this person embezzled hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Get paid moreYou can increase your practice revenue through ethical, professional approaches.

4. Identify profitable activities. Mine your billing data to get a handle on the revenue generated by each of your daily activities.  In a fee-for-service practice model, you exchange your time for money.  Calculate your “hourly wage” for each procedure you perform or kind of patient you see.

Then consider the level of personal and professional rewards you get with each activity.

From that you can gain clarity about what your ideal day looks like.  You may decide to narrow your scope of services. You may find a “sweet spot” like the dentist who discovered he likes working with phobic patients. There are any number of ways you can attract more of those best-fit patients.

5. Add services.  If you run a busy practice, it might make sense to set up an in-house formulary that could increase your patients’ medication compliance as well as generate more revenue. 

Maybe you consider adding a cosmetic service for which patients pay out-of-pocket.

Maybe you decide to hire physician assistants or nurse practitioners so that you can spend more of your time  engaged in sweet-spot activities.

6. Sell products.  Consider offering products that help patients achieve the desired medical outcomes. A veterinarian could sell pet food, toys and educational materials.  A dermatologist could sell skin care products.  I met a pulmonologist who created an effective smoking cessation program, which he sells nationally through his practice.

Earn outside of your clinical practice.  Your value transcends your ability to diagnose and treat individual patients.  You can help many people in many different ways, and get paid for it.

7. Moonlight.  You could serve as an expert in medical malpractice lawsuits.  The benefits include your ability to review cases on your own schedule, generate a high hourly wage and gain insights that made me a better doctor.

You could take locums positions, serve as a director in medically-supervised weight loss programs,or get on staff at assisted living facilities.

8. Shift to a non-clinical career. You could offer leadership to medical organizations, launch a business venture or work in companies that sell medical products and services.

You might consider generating revenue through speaking or writing or coaching.

9. Make investments.  You can make your money work for you.  Be sure to vet any business opportunity with an expert who can evaluate the level of risk and impact on your bigger financial picture.

You can help people across the globe, educate people whom you never personally met and deliver value in unique ways.  This offers unprecedented opportunities for you.

I do not believe the golden age of medicine is over; I think it’s just beginning.

© 2015. Vicki Rackner MD.  All rights reserved.


Vicki Rackner MD, President of www.MedicalBridges.com, helps doctors enjoy the personal, professional and financial rewards that attracted them to a career in medicine.  She leverages her experiences as a surgeon, clinical faculty at the University of Washington School of Medicine and entrepreneur to help physicians and dentists thrive in the era of ObamaCare.

Monday, January 19, 2015

BENEFITS OF OUTSOURCED MEDICAL BILLING & REVENUE CYCLE MANAGEMENT



If you find it more difficult to manage the entirety of your medical practice while maintaining the complexity and efficiency of your revenue cycle management, you should consider outsourcing.

Saves Time and Resources
It takes a great deal of time to hire, train, and maintain a revenue cycle management (RCM) staff. With the ever-changing regulations and protocols in the healthcare industry, outsourcing relieves your business of these burdens and allows you to focus on the core of your medical practice.

Enhances Revenue Generation
An RCM service will be able to generate a higher practice income through efficiencies
of scale, broader experience with payors, resources dedicated to denial management, and self-pay follow-up, even after calculating the fees.

Decrease Days in A/R
Lack of follow up is a major contributor in lost revenue. Contributing factors such as timely filing issues, contractual allowances and write offs result in an increase in days in A/R.

Monthly Reporting
A contemporary RCM service will provide customized monthly reports and analysis's that offer a deeper look at key metrics, allowing the organization to make better strategic decisions. This should include provider productivity, coding methods, resource management, enhanced patient care and myriad other practice specific ones.

Detailed Information (Cost/Utilization Patterns to Assist in Contract Negotiations)
Negotiating with payors in today’s environment is not only a tedious process, but puts a tremendous strain on providers and their management team. Having detailed, empirical historical information on an ongoing basis is a competitively enabling foundation when negotiating contracts.

Designated Team
A RCM should be your “Business Partner”, not your “Billing Company”. Clients should have dedicated personnel to handle your account almost as if they were your own employees.

Single Point of Accountability
When outsourcing, you have an accredited organization focused on the highest level of performance while providing checks and balances, making sure there are no inconsistencies. This allows for a more efficient billing process that offers a one stop solution.

Cost of Building an Internal Billing Operation
The costs and personnel complexities associated with implementing and running an internal billing operation is very high. A billing administrator is required to hire, train, certify and carry out a compliance plan. The average cost of recruiting, hiring and training a new employee is $3,500 (that does not include the decreased production caused by turnover). Technology, (hardware/software) resources, salary, benefits and office space are just a few contributing factors to the overwhelming expense of inhouse billing.

Government Protocols
With the complex regulatory environment in the healthcare industry, the demands for billing knowledge and experience have become overwhelming for healthcare providers. Full service billing services are in demand partly because of their efficient administrative processes, HIPAA compliance, and their ability to stay contemporary with regulations and requirements.

Technology
End to End Management of IT includes the ability to meet the demand for skilled IT personnel, continuous assessment of your application (Industry Standards, HIPAA), hardware, network, heating, ventilation, HVAC, power, security, staffing, policies, procedures, upgrades, backups, monthly maintenance fees and the ability to integrate various systems and deploy new technologies. Offsite backups are required by HIPAA. And, an internal data backup plan is also required. You must establish and implement procedures to create and maintain retrievable exact copies of electronic protected health information.

Billing Business is Different From Your Core Business
Medical Billing is complex and requires 100% of your staff members time. Practices are looking to full service billing partners to allow the practice to focus on quality patient care.

Continuous Change in Healthcare Regulations
With the constant change in health regulations, providers no longer have the time and resources to dedicate to reading material, checking websites, interacting with payers and attending industry seminars. A quality RCM service staff will stay current on all of the aforementioned disciplines.

Don't wait until its to late and you find yourself in a predicament to have to close your practice because your revenue has dwindled away to nothing because you did not make a change. Whether we like it or not the healthcare industry is changing and if you don't jump on-board
then you will be left in the past and out of your money. Don't lose your practice and your revenue. Get in the loop and get in compliance and allow dedicated personnel to take care of your business financial needs while you focus on the patients.