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Monthly Archives: February 2015

For doctors and administrators: great HBR post on dealing with disappointing performance

In our work helping medical practices improve their profitability and efficiency, it's not uncommon to find that employee morale, performance, and turnover are problems.  Those problems, in turn, often stem from the relationships between staff and their leaders -- and staff perceptions about how physician owners and practice administrators regard them. Sometimes, there's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem: are leaders coming down hard on employees because employees are under-performing?  Or are employees under-performing because they're stressed and discouraged by standards they can't meet, delivered emotionally by demanding bosses? In some ways, it doesn't really matter how leaders address unexpected shortfalls.  Good performers are typically hard on themselves already.  They know when they've messed up.  Often, what they really need is permission to regroup and fix the problem -- and to know that you trust them to do a good job.  Getting angry usually doesn't help -- it's usually counter-productive. This is the point of this excellent post on Harvard Business Review -- well worth a read (you can access up to five HBR articles for free, and a few more if you register). To the article's great points, I would add that it's also important to determine if a structural problem inside the organization made it hard for employees to do what was asked.  In a medical practice, for example, are employed providers not meeting productivity goals because they're unmotivated, because they haven't made an effort to grow their practices through referrals, or because there are patient flow bottlenecks that make it impossible for them to see more patients?  Is a biller's accounts receivable growing because she's not billing fast enough, or because there's no system to put patients on payment plans ahead of large procedures?  Are voice-mails piling up because the staff charged with answering the phone are juggling too many balls? Ask a few questions, take a deep breath before reacting to performance problems.  Be sure you understand what's really behind poor performance before you react emotionally and trigger consequences that will only make a tough situation worse.

By |2022-01-01T22:52:01-08:00February 21st, 2015|

Reminder: EHR ROI webinar this week (2/19)

Please join Joe Capko and me as we present "Finding the ROI in Your EHR," a free webinar hosted by Kareo. Joe and I will be discussing many different ways your EHR can help your practice become more profitable and serve your patients better. We hope you'll take part on Thursday, February 19 (10AM Pacific/1PM Eastern) -- to sign up, visit this link.  It's free, and we'll have time for Q&A, too!

By |2022-01-01T22:52:01-08:00February 16th, 2015|

Maintaining medical practice cash flow in Q1

As we've posted here before, almost all practices face the risk of a cash flow crunch in January and, really, through all of Q1, thanks to the deductible reset.  (January's revenue collections are sometimes also hit lower volume in December because of the holidays -- a double whammy.) In our experience, the decline in revenue can be anywhere from 10-20% for primary care practices (pediatrics and family medicine typically get a little 'help' maintaining Q1 volume from winter viruses) to more precipitous drops for surgical specialties (especially when there's little downside to patients for delaying surgery). The most important step practices can take to cope with the drop-off is to plan -- now that it's February, well, it's a little late for planning for Q12015, but if you're suffering from shrunken revenues that you didn't expect, mark your calendar now to start planning for Q1 of 2016 at the end of this summer.  With enough notice you can plan to set aside cash reserves so that you don't need to tap lines of credit, cut expenses or delay needed purchases when the squeeze hits.  You can also make sure you're ready to take advantage of the upside of the deductible reset: patients will be anxious to schedule procedures in Q4, after they've met (or come close to meeting) their deductible.  Alert staff that vacation time will be limited in the fall quarter -- perhaps even offer staff extra time off in January.  And, above all, start marketing procedures and mining your EHR for patients who may have wanted and needed a procedure, but put it off for financial reasons. Even though we're now in the thick of crunch time, there are still a few steps you can take to nudge the cash flow back up. If your practice's bread and butter is high-fee procedures,  look into financing options and review your financial policies.  If you're able to offer payment plans, that can take the sting out of patient responsibility payments.  Technology solutions that can help you offer payment plans that comply with HIPAA and other security requirements are more readily

By |2022-01-01T22:52:01-08:00February 10th, 2015|

EHR: the right thing for the wrong reasons? (Get ROI, not just MU incentives!)

Did your practice adopt an EHR primarily (or solely) because of Meaningful Use (MU) incentives? And is MU your main focus when it comes to using your EHR? If you adopted EHR technology mainly to meet MU, you may not be expecting to gain anything from it beyond government incentives (or penalties avoided).  But, more likely than not, there are benefits built into your system that can help your practice -- benefits that offer untapped ROI. Joe and I will be discussing many different ways your EHR can do more for your practice at an upcoming (free!) webinar hosted by Kareo on Thursday, February 19 -- to sign up, visit this link. In the meantime, here's one quick tip we always like to share with all of our practice clients.  Used properly, the workflow tools in your EHR can provide immediate insight into your patient flow processes -- it can tell you at what stages patients are waiting, giving you the data you need to optimize staffing (e.g., add MAs), scheduling (e.g., stagger new patient and established visits), or technology (e.g., enable patients to enter their own history and chief complaint). If you're entering your workflow in/out data accurately, you can get a quick view of the bottlenecks and wait times in your system that is a gold mine for maximizing patient throughput while keeping patients happier than ever -- but the key is entering information accurately.  More on that in our webinar -- please join us!

By |2022-01-01T22:52:02-08:00February 2nd, 2015|
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