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Monthly Archives: December 2018

Ask us anything!

Ever wonder how a practice management consultant might respond to the questions that come up every day in your business? With our new Ask Us Anything website feature, you send us your questions, and we'll share our thoughts on them here -- where you and other physicians and practice managers can see how we think about management ideas and challenges.It's free, and it's anonymous. Check it out at our Ask Us Anything page.

By |2018-12-28T18:44:49-08:00December 28th, 2018|

[PINNED POST] New! Ask us anything

Do you have a general practice management question you'd like our opinion on? Share it here anonymously and we'll respond with our view. (Please note, this feature is for public questions, asked anonymously, and answered with our general viewpoint. If you'd like a private consultation about a specific problem at your practice, our "20 minutes, one question" service might be a better resource.)

By |2023-05-25T14:26:31-08:00December 28th, 2018|

Don’t believe the hype: patient portals aren’t “largely unused”

A provocative headline got my attention recently. It proclaimed that patient portals are "largely unused." It caught my eye partly because it didn't sound all that plausible -- and because taking such a headline at face value could be unhealthy for your businesses, dear clients and friends of Capko & Morgan.  I decided to dig into the matter. The article text actually mentioned that 37% of patients have recently used portals. Could the author actually believe that 37% utilization is trivial? That seemed to be what they were saying, yet it's hard to imagine they believe that. (Would a 37% decrease in salary leave one's pay "largely" unchanged?) Perhaps, you may be thinking, this was just a forgivable, inadvertent misuse of "largely." But I tend to think not. This type of exaggeration is just too common in modern media, even in our world of the business of healthcare. I tend to think the headline intended to sensationalize. Yet even if that wasn't the intention, it's still not a benign error, which is why I'm calling it out. Mischaracterizing portal adoption has a hidden cost Clients often tell us they've held back on technologies that could make their practices more efficient because they're concerned patients won't use them. But that thinking usually means practices miss out on significant benefits, since the tools they delay adopting (or forgo altogether) could make interaction easier for patients or make their practices more profitable (or both). This tendency to hesitate has been especially true for patient portals, and it's often very costly. Somewhere along the way, the idea took hold that portals aren't worthwhile unless nearly every patient uses them. But this is not true. It's not even close to true. If even a small percentage of patients regularly uses a portal, those patients will benefit -- and their physicians will save time, too. (And that's strictly on the clinical side. Portals have the potential for even more dramatic benefits on the payment and administration side, even when utilization is very low.) What's more, relative to other recent technologies, portal adoption is arguably not that

By |2022-01-01T22:51:45-08:00December 20th, 2018|

Credentialing: is it time to upgrade your process with software?

Credentialing can be a frustrating, mysterious, time-consuming process. It can seem like a black box: you throw your (copious) data in (with no idea what will happen to it), then hope you'll get what you want out of the other side (eventually -- you have no control over when). Worse, unlike most other administrative tasks your staff handles, credentialing has seemed immune to process improvement. It's no wonder so many practices outsource this tedious, unpredictable paper-pushing. But that can lead to another set of problems. For example, when delays occur, how do you know whether there's a problem with the application, the payer is just slow, or your credentialing service dropped the ball at some point? Constantly checking in with a credentialing service for updates wastes valuable time on both sides -- especially since your credentialing service has no more control over how long it takes payers to respond than you do. Thankfully, dear reader, you and I are not the only people who've observed the built-in productivity drains in credentialing the old-fashioned way. In recent years, technology whizzes have stepped in to improve the process. There are still frustrating pieces of the puzzle that technology can't yet fix -- like the need for physicians to gather all that information in the first place, and like the uncertainty about where submitted applications stand with payers. But technology can help with: maintaining a single source of credentials -- to avoid submitting out-of-date information or incomplete information tracking key dates enabling physicians to enter their own information via a portal -- to avoid double entry of data, and the associated costs and errors automating the completion of many forms in some cases, automatically updating or communicating electronically with important third parties like CAQH If you are not yet using a credentialing software product, now is the time to check your options out. And if you're outsourcing, it may be more efficient to bring the task back in house, supported by up-to-date software. Or if you continue to use a credentialing service, be sure that your partner uses a cloud-based system that you

By |2022-01-01T22:51:45-08:00December 4th, 2018|
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