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Monthly Archives: January 2014

Dashboards: Practice performance at a glance

A medical practice performance dashboard is a great time-saver to help keep your finger on the pulse of practice performance and understand your position in real time. It is similar to the one in your car – a set of indicators  provide a simple, practical way to know what’s going on and to let you know when you’re headed for trouble. The dashboard is a metric reporting tool that makes it easy to look at business performance so you know when the practice is doing well and are alerted when something is wrong.  Dashboards provide a layered interface that conforms to the way you work.  When performance dashboards are aligned with the practice’s operations, productivity, finances and strategic plan, managers and physicians begin to work more efficiently and effectively toward achieving shared objectives. Typical indicators revealed on the dashboard focus on practice productivity and finances. However, the power of the dashboard can be extended to include other data. For example, if a new provider was added recently or you opened a new satellite clinic, monitoring growth and financial progress of this entity can be added to the dashboard. The dashboard can be designed to compare internal performance from the prior year or to look at how you compare to your colleagues across the nation. Medical Group Management Association’s (MGMA) has conveniently packaged a set of dashboard metrics with its Cost Survey on disc.  This enables the user to create a dashboard based on six indicators that are benchmarked against other practices in a few short minutes. The spreadsheet used to prepare the dashboard shows your ranking when compared to the MGMA database. If you find yourself on information overload with management and financial reports screaming for attention, think about implementing dashboard technology to monitor your practice's business performance at-a-glance.   With web-embedded technology some applications can update information automatically eliminating the need to repopulate the spreadsheets.  Charts and tables can be configured to support drill-down capabilities. Keep in mind, though, that dashboards are only as good as the data that supports them.  Success is dependent on the quality and flexibility of

By |2022-01-01T22:52:09-08:00January 31st, 2014|
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Managing includes developing practice staff

Sometimes, the business of medical practice management is a fuzzy science.  Managers have to keep the patients, and their bills, moving through the practice.  Most often, physicians are satisfied if their managers accomplish that much. But managing optimally includes softer skills, like bringing out the best in staff.  Recently, we've worked with several practices with managers who do a great job of managing upward -- reinforcing the confidence their physicians feel for them -- but who don't have much insight into really managing their own teams effectively. Keeping an eye on the team, and making sure everyone's doing what they're supposed to do, is a huge chunk of a manager's role.  But it's not the entire role of a truly effective manager.  A truly effective manager helps each member of the team develop his/her skills, understanding each person's strengths and weaknesses, and figuring out how each direct report can contribute more and be challenged and grow.  This is not just key to helping the practice improve its short-term results, it is critical to retaining the best staff and successfully completing growth initiatives. Turnover alone can be so costly to practices.  Hiring and replacing employees is a time-and-money sink.  And while critical jobs stay unfilled, mistakes can happen -- and patient service can suffer. This recent Harvard Business Review article delves into this issue -- and makes the important point that a poor relationship with their direct manager is a primary reason (if not THE primary reason) employees quit.  We see it every day! Medical practices often pay a great deal of attention to provider education -- partly by necessity. And managers can often attend conferences and find other paths to learning and development.  But staff are often left out of the equation.  And if managers aren't finding out what staff career goals are -- and how they can help them learn, grow and achieve them -- then the practice will suffer as a result.  Make sure you're evaluating your managers on this important skill!

By |2022-01-01T22:52:10-08:00January 28th, 2014|
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Trade shows – there’s so much to gain

There are lots of reasons to spend time in the exhibit hall when attending practice management and other medical conferences. By visiting the exhibit hall you will learn a lot about what’s going on in the industry, how vendors are seeking to meet your future needs and what technology changes have emerged that can make a practice more efficient and profitable, while improving service and outcomes. Yes, there are lots of reasons to get down to the exhibit hall, but it's also important to plan how you can do this without being overwhelmed or wasting your valuable time.  Forget about seeing everything – it’s just not possible and can lead to unnecessary frustration. However, with thoughtful planning you can see those things that can make a difference in your very own practice. Get off to a good start. Conference materials at the convention will include a list of all the vendors that are exhibiting. Match these with your interests. Then check-out their location on the exhibit floor. This will allow you the opportunity to plot your course.  Visit your selected vendors, by covering one section of the floor at a time. It’s a strategic move that will get you off to a good start. Refer back to your vendor list as you move through the convention. You might want to take photos using your mobile phone or make notes. This will be valuable for follow-up and decision-making when you get back to the office. Pace yourself.  Be realistic in evaluating how much time must be spent on the floor of the exhibit hall to achieve your goals and meet with the different vendors you have targeted.  Allow an average of 5 minutes for each of the vendors on your list. When you meet with an exhibitor, it’s important to be a good communicator and get right to the point.  Let the sales representative know what information you want and why.  At the same time, if the sales rep is not a good listener you could be wasting valuable time.  Don’t allow him or her to lead the conversation to information

By |2022-01-01T22:52:10-08:00January 21st, 2014|
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Will the ACA bring a wave of new patients? Prepare for the best

Will the ACA bring a big increase in patients to your practice? For most of the practices we've been working with, the ACA's impact on patient volume is still pretty unclear.  Since we're less than a month into the new coverage year for ACA exchange plans, and the open enrollment period continues through March 31, we're still at the very early stages; the actual impact is hard to gauge at this point.  Moreover, the impact may vary widely based on local demographics, practice type, and state participation in the Medicaid expansion. But we're still advising practices to take steps to prepare for more volume -- whether it comes from the ACA or their own marketing.  Readying your practice for growth is good business.  Better processes not only allow you to handle more volume, they help you serve all of your patients more effectively. Preparing your practice to handle more patients is the subject of my upcoming webinar sponsored by Kareo and hosted by Physicians Practice.  Join me on Feb 6 for this free presentation entitled "Position Your Practice for Growth: Responding to the Dynamic Healthcare Market."  I plan to share some ideas that can help almost any practice prepare from and profitably realize more growth -- whether from the ACA or their own internal marketing efforts.  Plus time for your questions!

By |2022-01-01T22:52:10-08:00January 20th, 2014|
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The cost of poor decision-making

We were recently called into a group practice where the physician owners of Struggles Medical Group were disillusioned with the practice of medicine. Their concerns were typical, shrinking reimbursement, dismal profits and the threat of new competition, as a large urban academic faculty practice was beginning to penetrate this suburban community.  Sound familiar?  This is happening around the country as a response (or reaction) to healthcare reform, where larger healthcare organizations see new opportunities to get a bigger piece of the revenue pie.  Struggles timing was perfect for bringing this consulting team in and here’s why. We performed a detailed practice assessment, examining the implications of past decisions and analyzing the current state of Struggles Medical Group in primary areas of performance including practice structure, finances, human resources, billing, clinic operations and work flow and marketing.  One physician owned this practice and the other physicians and providers were employed.  We soon discovered the physician owner had a history of making bad decisions. They did not analyze return on investment (ROI) before making investment decisions that would impact the practice operations, finances and possibly patient care. A perfect example of Struggles poor decision-making was buying very costly diagnostic equipment that they were unable to use because payers were contracted with a lab to provide these services.  This meant the investment was rendered useless to the practice. Besides this, with new models on the market every six month,s there was no way to attract another buyer for the equipment.  There were other equally disastrous investments Struggles made over the past two years. The most recent strategic error was changing the direction of the entire practice.  In their quest for new revenue opportunities the practice decided to focus on expanding its service to workers compensation patients.  Attracted solely by somewhat higher gross reimbursement rates, they went ahead with this in this in 2013 without thinking of the implications with would have on staff, workflow and profit.  This was a costly error. Workers compensation is a practice model that is significantly different from other payers and requires specific expertise in report writing and tremendous

By |2022-01-01T22:52:10-08:00January 10th, 2014|
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