Physicians Practice - October 2008 - (Page 57)

solution that allows importation of those documents. Surgeons still wanting to dictate sometimes incorporate voice recognition into their EMR solutions. If that sound right for you, then select a system that supports voice recognition software. Of course, you can gain efﬁciencies by using templates to document the follow-up and post-op visits and rechecks. (Special thanks to MGMA consultant Rosemarie Nelson for assistance with this answer.) billed. Of course, this leaves open the possibility that you are creating delays by not submitting claims promptly, but you should be doing so automatically. COMPARING MALPRACTICE RATES Q Are there any current published reports that provide information on what different insurance companies are charging for malpractice for internal medicine in our region? Where can we get the best rates? REIMBURSEMENT WOES As for gender discrimination, there really isn’t any — just physician discrimination. A The Medical Liability Monitor publishes a rate survey at www.medical liabilitymonitor.com. Still, you really should call around and see what you can get for your speciﬁc practice. COMPARING COMMERCIAL PAYERS GIVING AWAY CARE Q Is it legal to give free care to anyone? Can we give free care to our employees that are self-pay? What if they have Medicaid, Medicare, or private insurance? A If patients are insured, I assume we are talking about making the patient responsibility-free but you’d still be billing the payer. Don’t do it. It’s a breach of your contract with commercial payers and Medicare looks upon it as an illegal inducement. Frankly, I don’t think you should see your employees at all, since breaches of privacy and conﬂicts of interest are darned near inevitable. If you do, the rules for them are no different than the rules for everyone else. You can sure offer time-of-service discounts to self-pay patients. REPORT BY BILLING DATE Q We were told by our practice management vendor that we should always run our financial reports by the billing date instead of the date of service. Why would running a report on charges, for example, be better by billing date as compared to date of service? A Well, the main reason is that industry benchmarks typically use date billed. For example, the Medical Group Management Association measures days in A/R from date WWW.PHYSICIANSPRACTICE.COM Q I’m trying to figure out if our reimbursement rate fee schedule from our various insurance carriers is too low and if so, what can we do about it. I’ve done an analysis to compare our reimbursements for each of the insurances we carry with what Medicare pays. How can we figure out what the going rate should be? What do these carriers pay male physicians vs. female physicians (and is there discrimination going on)? If we’re being underpaid, how can we get the insurance carriers to increase their fee schedules? My wife sees about 60 to 70 patients per week and we’re barely making ends meet. How can we increase our reimbursements? A It’s a big question. Rates are private. However, Physicians Practice does publish some aggregated, aged data. See our Januarly 2008 online article “Tired of Being at the Mercy of Tight-ﬁsted Payers?” (Type “tightﬁsted” into the Search Articles box to bring it up quickly). As for gender discrimination, there really isn’t any — just physician discrimination. OCTOBER 2008 | PHYSICIANS PRACTICE | 57 http://www.medicalliabilitymonitor.com http://www.medicalliabilitymonitor.com http://practicesalesusa.com http://practicesalesusa.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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