Laurie Morgan

About Morgan

Learn more about my background at: linkedin.com/in/lauriemorgan

The power of managing details

I'm working on an ebook right now about medical practice staffing. More specifically, it's about how the instinct to cut staff, to be as leanly staffed as possible, can backfire*. There are dozens of little details that any practice can explore to improve profitability. These small changes can be made with much less risk than eliminating a job or cutting staff hours. And because they improve the profitability of your processes, they are a gift that keeps on giving, making your bottom line a little bit bigger every day. Here are just a few of the possibilities I explore in the ebook. Are you taking full advantage of these opportunities to improve your bottom line? Reduce no-shows: Take a quantitative look at your no-show rate. Are you tracking both true no-shows and last minute cancelled slots that can't be refilled? Audit your reminder process and results. Is your timing right? Experiment with reminding further ahead or closer to the appointment. Remind people using the technology they prefer. Capture email and cell info: Being able to reach people electronically opens the door to multiple efficiency improvements, including more effective reminders and better collections. And your patients that want to be emailed or texted, not called, will appreciate the option. Win-win! Train patients on portals: Too many practices make portal adoption a low priority, or abandon the effort altogether, because they find it hard to get patients engaged. It is hard! But it's still very worthwhile. As more patients use your portals, you have more ways to reach them for marketing. Portals make other key tasks more profitable, too. Notice I said "portals," plural?  If you don't have the ability to collect payments through your EHR portal, investigate the option to set up a payment portal with your PMS vendor.  Patients want to help themselves -- and they want to pay without having to write a check or find a stamp. They'll reward you by paying faster and more reliably. If you cut staff before checking out all the possibilities to improve your operations, you may not have the people you need

By |2022-01-01T22:51:56-08:00May 8th, 2016|
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The legal risks of waiving copays are very, very real

Effectively collecting copays (or coinsurance for procedures) has become much more important in recent years. One reason is that they've become a bigger proportion of total reimbursement. Once just a token $5 or $10 payment, office visit copays have increased to $30, $40, or even $60 in many cases. They now often account for a third or more of the revenue your practice can receive for these services. Not collecting them reliably is a threat to your profitability. Besides ensuring full reimbursement, there's another, equally compelling reason for your practice to master time-of-service copay collections: Your payer contracts almost certainly require it. If you've been in the habit of waiving copays or billing for them, you are probably violating these agreements. Health plans view copays differently than you probably do. Copays are not just a way to reduce their portion of your fees; they're designed to discourage patients from receiving services they don't need. Copays are supposed to help keep patients on the side of the payer in the battle to reduce costs. That's why your contracts will usually state that you agree to collect them, and often further state you should do so at the time of service. (Some waivers may be allowable, but only when certain hardship conditions are verified.) Contracts also often contain language about the plan being entitled to the same discounts you give other parties -- so that if you give the patient a discount by waiving any amount they owe, you need to give the plan the same discount. (This might mean you owe the plan 100% off if you waived a patient's full copay!) For these reasons, routinely waiving copays can lead to serious problems in the event your practice is audited. If your practice frequently waives these payments -- or if some of your clinicians choose to -- it's important to get everyone up to speed on why you need to collect as you've agreed to in your contracts. I've written quite a few papers recently on front office technology that can help you collect more easily and reliably, while keeping the focus

By |2022-01-01T22:51:56-08:00April 29th, 2016|
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Will regulation fix payer directory errors?

A few months ago, I was honored to host a #kareochat (thanks, @gokareo!) about filling the appointment schedule. The discussion hit on one of my favorite topics: payer directories. Repeat visitors to this space and/or readers of my ebook probably already know that I consider payer directory listings to be the top reputation management priority for most practices (at least if you're aiming to serve insured patients). Even though these directories aren't always near the top of a physician or specialty search in Google or Bing, most patients will know the name of their insurance plan, and will go to the plan's site to be sure any physician they consider seeing will take their plan. (This goes double for any patient who has been burned by accidentally seeing a doctor out-of-network, resulting in an unexpected bill.) Patients will find their plan directories, and use them to screen out doctors who don't take their insurance. Of course, the other reason I put payer directory listings at the top of the monitoring priorities is that they are so often wrong! It's logical to assume that the directories would be updated automatically or that the payers should take care of this without assistance from providers. But even though payers are nominally responsible, providers have to be vigilant, because the stakes for themselves and their patients are too high, and payers just aren't getting the job done. @drtom_kareo (Dr. Tom Giannulli, medical director at Kareo) pointed out that legislation is coming (SB 137) in California to mandate payers correct their directories. Plus, the CMS has already announced that it will fine Medicare Advantage plans for errors in their physician listings. In theory, this will push the payers to get their directory houses in order -- right? While the legislation is going to bring more attention to the problem, which is great, I don't think solving it will be so easy.  Here are a few reasons why I think it's not that simple. Are payers deliberately ignoring their directories?  I don't think so. The idea that legislation is the push that insurance companies need to

By |2022-01-01T22:51:56-08:00April 13th, 2016|
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Transitioning to a new EHR? A few tips to consider

Are you transitioning to a new EHR?  It's exciting to imagine the benefits you'll enjoy when your new system is finally in place -- but it can be a little nerve-racking to consider the process of getting there.  (If you've already done it once, you know that unexpected things can go wrong -- and that your practice productivity can take a hit while you try to resolve surprise snags.) Your best defense: planning.  To paraphrase President Eisenhower's famous quote,  plans may ultimately be useless in preparing for battle, because surprise problems are almost inevitable, but the experience of planning is indispensable.  Setting aside enough time for planning allows your entire team to understand the scope of what you're undertaking. It puts the challenge into a realistic frame, to help head off frustration when things don't proceed perfectly. It helps you recognize the pieces of your implementation that will cause the biggest headaches if they fail, so you can prioritize better. And, while the point of Eisenhower's quote is that it's impossible for any plan to predict everything that could go wrong, planning does give you the opportunity to prevent some problems before you get started. The process of planning may feel like wasted time, but nothing could be further from the truth. Rushing in without allowing enough time for planning increases the likelihood of a difficult problem that isn't easily solved while you're up and running. It's much harder to repair the automobile while you're rolling down the freeway. If you've got an EHR transition coming up, I hope you'll join my upcoming webinar (free), "Five Tips for an Optimal EHR Transition," on March 15 at 11AM Pacific.

By |2022-01-01T22:51:56-08:00March 8th, 2016|
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Toast, workflow, and the quest for practice productivity

Looks better than mine, even w/o butter.* I observed something this morning when making toast.  I don't make toast often, but when I do, I tend to let it go for a few minutes before heading back into the kitchen to check on it, hovering outside the toaster oven to make sure I grab it when it's "just right." Now, like you (I suspect), I tend to be a little annoyed by wasted time. Standing next to the toaster oven, tapping my foot impatiently, that's definitely wasted time.  So I have developed a habit of "prepping" for the toast by scooping up the butter I'll use on it and putting it on my plate.  But today it finally dawned on me that this prep routine (which I've done for years) really saves no time at all. It's no quicker to pick the butter up off plate and put it on my toast than it would be to just take the butter out of its own container and spread it; the step of transferring it to the plate in advance is meaningless.  (In fact, when I do this the entire process usually ends up taking longer, since I rarely get just the right amount of butter on my plate -- a mistake I wouldn't make when just buttering the bread from the tub.) Of course, I do get a personal payoff from this little activity: I am less bored while I wait for my toast. But even though I feel like I'm doing something, it actually makes me no more (and usually a bit less) productive. Naturally, when I realized this, my mind immediately jumped to practice workflow, and how easy it is to be deceived by activities that feel like progress but actually have no effect -- or even slow things down. My favorite one of these, a subject that we wind up discussing with almost every practice we work with, is the central vitals station. Transferring patients from the reception area to the vitals station, then from the vitals station to the exam room, is one of

By |2022-01-01T22:51:56-08:00March 1st, 2016|
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Are you missing out on excellent solutions to front office challenges?

Capko & Morgan recently collaborated with MedData Group* on a physician survey about front office technology awareness and plans. The results seemed to confirm what we see among our clients: many physicians are unaware of the full array of excellent innovations that have recently emerged to support the medical practice front office. Check out this chart from the infographic that MedData created from the survey data.   It's interesting to see that even the tools that are most commonplace, check-in tablets and automated reminders, widely available for a decade or more, still barely passed 50% awareness.  This is consistent with what we experience when we talk to practice administrators and physicians about front office technology solutions. Often, administrators and physicians also assume that such tools are aimed primarily at large health systems or hospitals and aren't affordable or even feasible for independent practices -- but this is not the case. As technology has proliferated among consumers, so have ways to use it to make working with your practice more convenient for patients, and to make processes more efficient for you. For example, studies from other industries have shown that consumers mostly prefer to pay electronically, and reward the businesses that let them do so with more loyalty and more reliable and prompt payment.  Most practice management systems offer email statements, payment portals, and other tools that make offering online payments very easy, but practices too often assume that implementation will be difficult.  It usually isn't complicated at all -- in fact, we've worked with two different practices recently that were able to get their online payments solutions up and running within an afternoon.  These practices found money waiting for them, deposited via online payments from patients, when they arrived at the office the very first morning after implementation! There are many other front office technology solutions that can help practices enormously, but that aren't getting the attention that they should.  These tools can make some of the most frustrating and tedious practice challenges -- no-shows, patient collections, payment plans, front desk paperwork -- a lot more manageable. And they impress patients

By |2022-01-01T22:51:57-08:00February 11th, 2016|
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Filling the appointment schedule chat — Storify

Did you miss our Kareo-led tweet chat this morning on Filling the Medical Practice Appointment Schedule? It was fun and there were a lively group of commenters sharing ideas.  You can see the highlights by clicking this link.

By |2022-01-01T22:51:57-08:00January 21st, 2016|
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Get the right EHR this time! Join my webinar 1/20 for ideas

If you are among the many, many practices that are considering an EHR switch in 2016, you won't want to miss my webinar this Wednesday, 1/20/16, at 11 Pacific/2 Eastern.  It's a short, sweet, 30-minute presentation with 7 steps you can take to organize your search and decision-making. The webinar is free, courtesy of sponsor Care360.  And it's the first of a two-part mini-series on choosing and implementing a new EHR for satisfaction and success.  Sign up for free, and you'll have access to the recording (in case you can't be there at the live presentation), and also get an automatic reminder of the second presentation.  (But I hope that you'll join us live so that you can share any questions or comments.) Here is the signup link.  Hope to see you online on 1/20 at 11AM Pacific.

By |2016-03-04T11:23:52-08:00January 18th, 2016|
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Resolved to switch EHRs in 2016? Seven steps to satisfaction

Is New Year, new EHR your practice's resolution? You're not alone. Software Advice analyzed requests for EHR recommendations through its system, and they found that the number of buyers replacing an existing EHR increased 59% in 2015 versus 2014, and that 60% of their total buyer population was switchers. Practices as a whole are more experienced with EHRs, and therefore better able to prioritize what they want from a system. Systems have also steadily improved in recent years, becoming more responsive to physician and practice management needs. And the cloud has allowed for much faster roll-out of improvements, while keeping costs in line. It all adds up to make switching a much more attractive option than in the past -- and it makes sticking with a system that's unsatisfactory a lot less tolerable than it used to be. If you're looking to switch, your biggest concern is probably to ensure you're making an upgrade -- and not jumping out of the frying pan and into the fire. Because even though switching has gotten easier, and better systems have helped lower the risk, an EHR change is still a considerable undertaking, and will likely come with significant learning and conversion costs (even if the software itself is no more expensive). I'll be sharing some best practices for making an EHR change in a free webinar on January 20th, sponsored by Care360, entitled, "Seven Steps to Choosing an EHR." It's a 30-minute presentation (so you'll still have time for everything else you'll need to get done, and maybe time to grab a sandwich!).  It's at 11 Pacific/2 Eastern, and I hope you'll join me. This webinar is Part 1 of a two-part mini-series entitled, "Choose Wisely, Implement Well for EHR Success and Satisfaction."  Sign up for "Seven Steps," and you'll automatically receive a reminder about Part 2 -- plus you will have access to a recorded version of the presentation in the event you can't attend live. Please join us if you can -- it's always a pleasure to answer questions and hear your feedback live!

By |2022-01-01T22:51:57-08:00January 14th, 2016|
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Filling your physicians’ schedule in Q1: Five Ways (webinar)

Whether you've got the deductible reset blues or have simply resolved to keep your schedule as full as it can be in 2016, I've got some ideas to share in my new webinar, "Five Tips to Fill the Schedule in 2016." It's free (sponsored by Kareo). Some highlights of what will be covered: Reputation management -- why it's more valuable and powerful than ever, and also easier than ever; The key segment of reputation management that must be your top priority -- and most reputation management experts never even mention it; How preventive services can help you cope with the deductible reset this year -- and for years to come; How embracing technology can become its own form of (painless) marketing, even as it gives your practice other big benefits. Of course, if you sign up, you'll have access to the recording a day or two after the presentation, so don't hesitate to register even if you think you might not make it for the live presentation. (But I hope you can join us live, because I really look forward to your questions and comments.) Here is the sign-up link.  

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00January 13th, 2016|
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Deductible reset blues? We’ve got a few medicines for you to try.

Ahhh, January. We're already six days in, and it's still hard to believe we're a week into a brand new year.  Perhaps especially so if low volume has you moving through your days more slowly -- and worrying about what your revenue numbers will be at month- and quarter-end. The January effect on medical practices can be a source of stress, but it's not too late to do something about it if you're worried about lower revenue in the first part of the year. In fact, with patients changing up plans and making health-related resolutions, the beginning of the year can offer opportunities for growth, even if the patient financial responsibility features of modern health plans are working against you. Join me for a fun, fast-paced webinar on January 14 to learn a few tricks to help you improve your volume at the start of 2016. Even if you've been caught off-guard and unprepared, there's still a lot you can do -- and the ideas I'll share are both easy and mostly free. To sign up (for free!), visit this link at our sponsor Kareo's website.

By |2016-03-04T11:25:21-08:00January 7th, 2016|
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Your practice may be unintentionally turning new patients away

It's almost a new year -- woohoo!  Resolution time!  Fresh start!  And for many patients, brand new insurance! For many patients with new insurance, it's also time to shop for new doctors.  When they do, will they find you? By now you probably already know that there are many resources out there to help you with online reputation management (including lots of software products, and publications like this book by yours truly). But an often-overlooked part of online reputation management is especially important early in the year: payer directories. Patients rely on payer directories both when they shop for a new plan (if they want to keep their doctor(s), they'll want to be sure they're in the new plan) and when they start to use the plan (to choose a new doctor(s)). Both of these moments are among your very best opportunities to attract a patient who has just secured a plan you accept -- just the kind of patient you want. But if you're not listed in the directory, or not listed properly, your chance to attract that patients just slipped through your hands.  It's just as if your practice intentionally turned the patient away -- if your payer directory listings are not correct, the effect is no different. It may seem to you (as a sensible person) that payers should make sure their directories are accurate. And indeed they should. But, unfortunately, errors abound. Maintaining directories, it turns out, is a very difficult job.  While it shouldn't be your job, unless you assume some responsibility for monitoring these listings, you can't be sure they're correct; if they're wrong, it's  your business that pays the price. Plus, in some cases, online payer directories are adding features like photos and website links that can give your practice a promotional boost. You can't access these new features unless someone at your practice is engaging with these directories and keeping them updated and polished. Make checking and updating the directories of all your payers a top priority for the New Year. Finding and fixing even one erroneous entry can make a significant difference in

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00December 15th, 2015|
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Ready for the deductible re-set?

It's almost that time again: deductibles re-set in less than a month. Got your game face on? For many practices, the end of the year is so busy, it's hard to think about planning for slow business in January, February and March.  Ironically, the cause of the busyness in Q4 is related to the cause of slower demand in January: deductibles. At year end, patients are eager to bring any known problems or elective procedures in to practices, because their deductibles have been met or nearly so; in January, many patients delay care because their deductibles re-set to their original amounts (or even higher amounts in many cases). It may also seem like there's little you can do to deal with the deductible re-set. But you do have options, and making even a small dent in the downturn can make a big difference in overall profitability. So isn't it worth trying? If you're in a pediatrics, adult primary care, or OB/GYN practice, of course one of the best steps you can take to smooth your revenue is to let patients know you have availability for preventive services in the beginning of the year. Let them know that your practice may be less crowded (barring, of course, a wave of flu or another virus coming through your neck of the woods).  Make sure patients are aware that preventive services usually come with no copayment or deductible.  (It can be helpful to create a list of common tests and vaccines that are preventive per the USPSTF, to avoid confusion.) Here's where your EHR can shine: use list-generating capabilities to identify patients that are due for preventive services, or who have chronic conditions are overdue for a regular visit.  For example, it's usually easy to isolate healthy patients you rarely see that are overdue for pap smears, hepatitis screening or check-ups. Tapping your system a little more creatively, you can identify patients that have just crossed a threshold to qualifying for a preventive service such as herpes zoster, pneumococcal pneumonia vaccine or cancer screening. Patients that turned 65 in 2015 may also be identified and offered an

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00December 8th, 2015|
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It’s everyone’s responsibility, yet no one’s doing the job

Are some jobs at your medical practice just too urgent or important to assign to specific people? That's the argument some practice managers and physicians make, e.g: "Phones need to be answered by the first available person, whatever their job" "Everyone should keep an eye on the fax machine, and deliver faxes they see piling up" "Let's all keep an eye on the reception area, to make sure no one's waiting too long" "It's the entire team's job to make sure the patient bathrooms are clean and stocked" When the entire team is engaged on these important, urgent tasks, the theory usually goes, there will always be someone available to do them, right when the need arises. Everyone will have an equal stake in making sure they'll get done -- right? Alas, no. Have you ever heard the amusing little story about four people named Everybody, Somebody, Anybody and Nobody? It goes like this: There was an important job to be done and Everybody was sure that Somebody would do it. Anybody could have done it, but Nobody did it. Somebody got angry about that, because it was Everybody's job. Everybody thought Anybody could do it, but Nobody realized that Everybody wouldn't do it. It ended up that Everybody blamed Somebody when Nobody did what Anybody could have done.* There is a lot of organizational insight packed into that little verse. When something is everybody's job, it's effectively nobody's job. Nobody is actually accountable to do the work, and everybody can rationalize that they thought someone else would do it. When everyone has other work to do that they believe is important, they'll be more likely to assume someone else will take care of the group responsibility. We have worked with several practices that have applied this "everyone's job" idea and been very unhappy with the results. Laurie, they say, why aren't the staff answering the phones? We tell them over and over that everyone has to answer the phones! Instead, our messages are piling up, patients and other doctors are complaining, and nobody's getting the help they need when they call.

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00November 29th, 2015|
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The upside of staff downtime, the downside of multitasking

Employees who are not always busy working are frequently a source of consternation to physicians. Sometimes, practices attempt to remedy the situation by restructuring staff jobs -- not always with good results. Consider the front desk, for example. In almost any practice, front desk workload will ebb and flow.  Depending on variables like patient punctuality, the mix of appointment types, and the number of new patients, the front desk might be swamped or slow on any given day or during any clinic session.  Sometimes, front desk receptionists may have no one needing their help or attention at all.  Physicians and managers may be tempted to rectify the situation by, say, having the phones ring first at the front desk. For a typical, busy practice, that's a foolproof way to increase staff busyness! But does it improve productivity? In my view, usually not. One reason people appear busier when you ask them to switch back and forth between tasks -- or do multiple jobs at once -- is that it's harder to do any of them properly. They're more active, but not necessarily more productive. This makes intuitive sense, no?  But we don't need to rely on intuition, thankfully.  With multitasking so prevalent in modern offices, researchers have good reason to study it -- and the results suggest that multitasking is even more of a productivity drain than your gut would tell you. One study found that people lose as much as 40% of their productive capacity when trying to constantly do multiple tasks at once. When front desk staff are required to answer phones while also helping the patients that are standing in front of them, service suffers. Either the patient on the phone or the patient at the desk feels like they're in second place. And switching back and forth means the employee has to mentally regroup -- adding to the length of time it takes to complete each task. More effort is required to do the same tasks -- yet the patients staff deal with will perceive less effort made on their behalf. Lose-lose for both of the two patients being

By |2015-11-23T16:13:16-08:00November 23rd, 2015|
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Obsessing about front office technology

Anyone who encourages me knows they'll get an earful about front office technology tools -- they've become a passion of mine.  I'm referring to things like: Patient responsibility payment estimators (e.g., Wellero, Navicure, Zirmed) Check-in tablets and kiosks (e.g., Phreesia) Online patient payment tools like portals and pre-payment sites (e.g., SpendWell) Patient payment apps (e.g., Wellero) Online scheduling (e.g., Zocdoc, DoctorBase, EHR portals in some cases) Basically, I'm talking about add-on tools that work mainly with practice management systems and/or on the Internet to improve your practice's likelihood of getting paid by patients, reduce steps in front office workflow, and even make patients happier in the process. I am a big fan of these kinds of tools, for all kinds of reasons. One is that they're unshackled from the government's goals for EHR -- they basically live only to serve practices and patients -- and I think that's what makes this segment of the market so much dynamic than the EHR segment.  The players have competition, and it drives them to innovate more; you see these vendors experimenting with many different ways (and platforms) to solve these problems. And these tools really make a difference in the workflow and collection rates of the practices that embrace them. I recently wrote a white paper that delves into the important role technology can play -- and is starting to play -- in front office operations.  It's called "Technology to the Rescue: Putting the Flow Back into Front Office Workflow."  Wellero sponsored it, and you can download it free on their site. I hope you'll check it out -- and get in touch if you'd like to talk about any of the ideas in it.

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00November 3rd, 2015|
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Ready to take the CCM plunge?

As you may know already, I've been working on a series of papers on Medicare's chronic care management reimbursement program (CCM) for the Medical Product Guide. (Click on 'resources' after visiting the Medical Product Guide link if you're interested -- they're free.) Talking to practices that have already started working on CCM, along with others that have held back, has been a learning experience.  The ability to take on CCM quickly depends a lot on your current practice set-up and, especially, your EHR. On the current set-up side, if you're working on or already have set up a medical home (PCMH), and have one or more case managers in place to support it, you may find it easy to use the same staff structure for CCM. Your case managers could become the coordinators for CCM as well -- perhaps personally contacting patients and doing the other care management tasks that contribute to the required 20 minutes per month for billing. Perhaps there will be overlap between the PCMH and CCM that could be beneficial -- if, for example, you're looking at a similar mix of conditions, that might allow for some standardized communications or tracking tools.  Or perhaps you could add a group visit program that would serve patients from both programs. (A group visit program wouldn't contribute to the CCM monthly time requirement, since that's strictly non-face-to-face time, but it still could be well received, and fit with the patient engagement goal of the program.) On the other hand, if your practice hasn't yet taken on PCMH, CCM could be a stepping stone. Many primary care practices believe they're already doing many of the tasks that are meant to be compensated by CCM -- they're just not tracking them, and they haven't had a way to bill for them, either.  That last problem is expressly addressed by CCM -- the key is solving the former problem of tracking. EHR vendors vary dramatically in this area. Some have already created dedicated modules that allow for templates for clinical staff contacts to be tracked, and for the time to be calculated. Others

By |2022-01-01T22:51:58-08:00October 31st, 2015|
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How empowered is your medical billing service?

Outsourcing your medical billing to a billing service has the power to make your practice much easier to manage.  It can also increase your profitability. But as the world of reimbursement continues to evolve, it's important to stay involved with the process.  If you've adopted a "that's off my plate now" approach to using a medical billing service, it's possible your service is too empowered. A properly utilized medical billing service will be an extension of your team.  Your office staff must work well with them in order to maximize the benefit you gain from outsourcing.  When everything billing-related is dropped into the billing service's lap, it's impossible for them to do their best work for you.  And they may feel compelled to make decisions for you that they really shouldn't be taking on unilaterally. Here are a few examples we've seen over the past few years of billing services believing it was left up to them to make key decisions on behalf of practice clients -- leading to sub-optimal decisions as a result: A billing service for a primary care/infectious disease practice with predominantly older patients with multiple chronic conditions received documentation about the chronic care management (CCM) reimbursement opportunity from the CMS (i.e., code 99490).  But the billing service already had trouble getting properly prepared claims and sufficient documentation from providers, even for office visits. Plus, the practice manager was inexperienced with billing, and typically deflected the service's questions with "you decide - that's your job." The service owner decided for the practice that pursuing CCM "wasn't worthwhile." She felt that the providers wouldn't have been willing to do additional documentation. The physician owner was unaware that the practice was likely leaving at least $120,000 of revenue on the table in 2015 -- revenue which could have helped the practice repair its difficult financial position; A pediatric practice assumed its billing service would "handle" all payer contracts. The billing service thought "handling" them meant simply dealing with information requests from payers, and alerting the practice when something needed to be done -- they certainly didn't expect to be negotiating new contracts, since that was far

By |2022-01-01T22:51:59-08:00October 11th, 2015|
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Choose the right billing service, get more than professional billing

Choosing a new medical billing service is stressful. Few activities have more of an impact on practice profitability, after all.  But with the risks of choosing comes upside, too -- and not just in the opportunity to have your billing handled by dedicated professionals. Switching to a third party billing service (or a new service) offers an opportunity to upgrade your technology at the same time. By making the platform(s) your new biller uses part of your evaluation, you can improve other parts of your practice business besides billing itself. Today's billing technology has continuously improved in recent years. Competition has spurred innovation and a wealth of new features. The cloud platform, especially, allows these vendors to roll out upgrades more cheaply and easily (and make them mostly painless for customers, too).  Billing services that use the most up-to-date billing platforms can offer these advantages to their clients as part of the service. When you use a practice management system as part of your billing service relationship, that usually provides you with scheduling, reporting, reminders, verification, and other tools automatically. A more flexible, modern scheduling system can help you maximize provider productivity and reduce costly no-shows. Better reporting allows you to easily analyze the value of your contracted health plans. Verification tools built right into a practice management system save staff time and reduce costly booking mistakes. These are just a few of the benefits you can get by making top-tier billing/PMS technology a requirement of any new billing service you're considering. Of course, you don't necessarily even have to switch services to switch up technology -- if you made a good choice of partner in the first place, that partner will work with you to make a transition if you need to.  (A small, independent billing shop -- even a one-person shop -- can be a wonderful solution for your practice, but it is very important that they commit to keeping up with technology trends and opportunities. In fact, great technology is one of the best tools independent billers can use to shine, by allowing them to focus on

By |2022-01-01T22:51:59-08:00August 10th, 2015|
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Are you getting the best from your medical billing service?

I'll be presenting a free webinar on Thursday, July 16, with tips and strategies for managing your medical billing service. If you're thinking of outsourcing your billing, or if you already outsource it and aren't sure you're getting everything you hoped for from the relationship, this webinar is for you. This is part two of a serious of shorter, more digestible webinars on choosing and managing a billing service, sponsored by Quest Care360.  I'm excited about this shorter, 30 minute format, because it's easier to attend during a lunch or coffee break (while still having time to grab a sandwich!).  No fluff, just the information you need. As you may know, I wrote an ebook on this subject called "Get the Best From Your Medical Billing Service," and this webinar draws from it, as well as from recent experiences with real clients using outsourced medical billing to run their practices. I hope you'll join us!

By |2022-01-01T22:51:59-08:00July 14th, 2015|
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