Physicians Practice - October 2008 - (Page 32)

MANAGEMENT Wills Family Clinic in Sherman, Texas, purchased Abaxis’ Piccolo inhouse lab about a year and a half ago. Every time a payer contract comes up for renewal, the clinic’s ofﬁce manager, Becky Sanders, contacts the carrier and requests reimbursement coverage for the practice doing its own labs. She explains how X percent of the clinic’s patient load is with that payer, and if the clinic does its own labs, it saves the payer [enter-calculated-amount-here]. “I really don’t get much resistance,” she says. “They’re willing to look at the numbers.” In most places, payers are reluctant to reimburse practices for lab someone by golly will pay for it. We can’t tell you how many times we hear about a practice that added a new service only to ﬁnd out later that, oops, its payers won’t reimburse for that service. In-house labs are a good example: They seem like a nice patient convenience and a way to generate extra money, and practices add them without checking whether payers will reimburse them — only to ﬁnd that many will not. Payers often get a better deal by sending all their patients to large chains. We’ve seen other practices add a service without considering whether its physicians really have an interest in providing it, or asking what the affect or make them healthier? Or is it just a way to make a buck? YOUR PIGGY BANK IS BROKEN Little things add up, with coins quickly becoming dollars. You should do anything you can to streamline your processes. Here are a few ideas to plug the holes: • Scrutinize your maintenance contracts as they come up for renewal. Do you use all the services you’re paying for? Trim out the fat wherever you can. • Got an EMR? Be as paperless as possible. Develop and strictly adhere to a “no-print” mindset across your practice, and save yourself the cost of unnecessary printing. • If you must print, use paper of the right quality. Printer paper descrip- WHAT’S GOIN‘ ON? Were you ahead of the learning curve for getting an NPI number, or did you find out the day after Medicare’s long-publicized, March 1 deadline because all your fee-for-service claims to CMS bounced? will be on the lives of the physicians who perform it. Will the doctors’ hours increase? Will it require them to travel to a new location? How much will it increase their incomes? The best ancillary services are often the ones that patients in your market are clamoring for — so much so that they’re willing to pay for it themselves. That way, you can collect up front without bothering with the insurance companies. But even in these cases, you need to do some market research to determine whether patients would come to you for it — or whether rival outﬁts already have it covered. And you need to know how it will affect your work ﬂow. Finally, any new service should be consistent with your overall mission and values as a practice. Will it really add to your patients’ quality of life tions include a “brightness” number; the higher, the whiter — and the costlier. For material you and your staff will refer to often, such as a staff manual, spring for the extra, as brighter paper causes less eye strain. You won’t have to buy much of this pricey paper. For everything else, the store brand is ﬁne (bought in bulk, of course). work. But the story is different in rural areas where large lab chains like LabCorp may not have a presence. Sanders makes sure she points out that for patients at her practice, an hour’s drive from Dallas, in-house labs will help to cut way down on the number of claims generated. “I previously worked for an insurance company,” Sanders says. “If someone could present me with a way to generate one less claim, woohoo!” She also notes how in-house labs have skyrocketed patient compliance, which saves the insurance company money. YOU LEAP WITHOUT LOOKING READ MORE ABOUT IT! Check out our Web site at PhysiciansPractice.com for more information on how to keep what you earn: •Check out our September Great Practice Makeover for a more indepth peek at the repercussions of both naysaying and hasty behavior within the same practice. •View the Physicians Practice 2007 Fee Schedule survey results by reading the January 2008 cover story, “Tired of Being at the Mercy of Tight-fisted Payers?” We’re all for adding ancillary services that make sense. But what does that mean? It means that patients want it, that your practice can handle it, that your providers are interested in doing it, and that 32 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | OCTOBER 2008 •Sign up for our free e-newsletters for regular, useful tips on tightening up your operations. You’ll find the links on the lower right corner of our homepage. WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM http://www.PhysiciansPractice.com http://www.PhysiciansPractice.com

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Physicians Practice - October 2008

Physicians Practice - October 2008 Contents Another Reason to Go Cash-Only? Letters How ’Bout Them Gas Prices? Second Opinion: Oh, Canada! Noteworthy Cover Story: Fixing the Leaks: How to Tighten Your Money Spigot Navigating a Lawsuit Ask the Experts The Administrators Desk: What’s Your Mission? EMR: Help or Hindrance? Dealing with Dr. Dangerous E-Mail Abuse Primer The Road to EMR Interoperability Don’t Let Staff Costs Stifle Profits Coding Classifieds Advertiser Index

Physicians Practice - October 2008

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