Practice Management: A Practical Guide to Starting and Running a Medical Office

Practice Management: A Practical Guide to Starting and Running a Medical Office: Medicine & Health Science Books @ leondumoulin.nl
Table of contents

Help us improve our Author Pages by updating your bibliography and submitting a new or current image and biography. Learn more at Author Central. Popularity Popularity Featured Price: Low to High Price: High to Low Avg. Available for download now. Only 1 left in stock - order soon. Only 3 left in stock - order soon. Eating Cat Food Mar 14, Most family physicians can average four visits per hour, when those visits are appropriately scheduled. Avoid schedule gaps, and stay on schedule.

Dictate progress notes in the exam room.


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This takes time getting used to, and it may not always be appropriate. But dictating notes in front of the patient saves time, improves communication, gives the patient a good summary of the visit, helps with coding, and gives you more legible notes without the need to invest dictation time outside the visit. Enhance communication with handouts. You can reduce the number of unnecessary phone calls for simple questions by using brochures and handouts.

These can focus on both clinical topics and information about your practice. Using handouts about patients' conditions or treatments can also help focus the visit so that important information is appropriately communicated. Use a good scheduling system.

Many practices assign a relatively low-paid employee to schedule appointments manually. Yet the schedule has an enormous impact on productivity and efficiency. Dedicate resources to developing a good scheduling system, hire a top-notch person to run it and ensure that the entire staff understands it. This is especially important for solo practices that are growing into groups. Good scheduling can increase patient flow by two or more patients per day, which is net income to the practice.

If you use a manual system, consider computerizing it. Your billing system may have a scheduling module that is adequate for solo and small-group practices. You can buy a more sophisticated system, but don't upgrade until you have established scheduling guidelines and policies. This is labor intensive in solo and small-group practices.

But even if you don't have the staff to do it for all appointments, you can make it work for you on selected appointments — perhaps those requiring large time blocks, or new-patient appointments. Remember, no-shows are costly. Instead, they create idle time and waste resources. Schedule by grouping like activities. Doing like tasks together is more efficient. Vaccination clinics are an example. The office can handle 15 patients an hour per provider if they are prescreened as flu-vaccine visits. The patients expect a quick visit, and you're meeting their needs. Build and rely on a budget.

22 Tips for Improving Your Practice

A serious effort to build a budget is a good learning experience, and it offers an opportunity to measure performance and progress by analyzing variances during the year. Review published data to help establish budget goals, but remember that service, regional and market differences make such data only a rough guide. After a couple of years, you will have a good basis for a sophisticated approach to budgeting, and the budget will become a valuable tool.

Collect them before rendering the service, if that's what it takes. It's easy for patients to slip out after the visit, since they are often in a hurry. Remember, under most managed care contracts, collecting the co-pay is obligatory. And co-pays are a serious source of income — as long as you don't have to go to the expense of billing for them. A common mistake is to control costs by being tight on salaries. To attract and retain good people, you must pay well, but pay should be for skills and performance, not longevity.

Be prepared to pay above market value for exceptional staff , but make sure they are exceptional. In some cases, a highly skilled back-office person can increase patient flow and enhance patient communications, thus saving the doctor's time. Be assured of the benefit before you reward it.

22 Tips for Improving Your Practice -- FPM

Establish an incentive system. Make it worth your employees' while to meet ambitious production goals. It helps to make staff feel vested in the outcome. A good incentive system improves teamwork, outcomes and efficiency. And, you can keep it fairly simple. Communicate your expectations, provide needed training, establish fair salaries and reward performance. There is no reason to have routine overtime. In fact, it often results from the staff's poor organization or performance — or from a disorganized physician.

Examine the reasons for overtime. You might find that it is really for convenience, not necessity, and can be eliminated by reassigning duties.

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Don't get to the point where employees expect overtime as part of their regular compensation. Use midlevel providers wisely. Expanding provider staff by employing a nurse practitioner or physician assistant can be financially beneficial in group situations, but the decision is not a slam dunk.

In markets where physicians are in oversupply, the economics may not pass the test.


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Do a careful assessment, including financial projections. Make full use of facilities.

The bottom line

Defining a Contract Strategy. Managed Care Contract Issues. Working With Consultants and Advisors. Checklist to Assess Carrier Contracts. Establishing a Pediatric Concierge Medicine Practice. The Rural Health Clinic Program. Operating Principles of Large Groups. The Road to Market Power: Models for Pediatric Practices to Aggregate and Grow. Physician Salaries and Loan Repayment Options. Medical Office Administrators and Office Managers. Anatomy of a New Code: Health Savings Account Algorithm. Medical Liability and Risk Management. Improve Vaccine Liability Protection.

Risk Management Strategies for the Consultant. What Is Telephone Care? Building Patient Loyalty and Trust: The Role of Patient Satisfaction. Colocation of Pediatricians and Mental Health Professionals: Cost-effective Ways to Reduce No-shows: Missed Appointments in Pediatric Practice: The Basics for the Pediatric Office. Quality Improvement Tools for Physicians.