Practice Finance

An incremental approach to improving outcomes.

While many physicians don their white coat to care for those in need, they are confronted by a system that has stolen their autonomy and relegated them to the silent position of “provider.”

The increase in competition from retail clinics and urgent care centers brings new challenges for independent medical practices.

Being a doctor doesn’t guarantee you financial security

A slideshow of the top 10 sources of secondary income for physicians.

It’s every physician’s worst nightmare: Receive payment for services rendered, but then a payer identifies an aberrant pattern in claims data, audits the records, decides it has overpaid the practice, and recoups those funds. That money you already allocated for overhead, staff salaries, bonuses, or new medical equipment? Gone. The good news is, physicians can take steps to focus on accurate billing and avoid costly recoupments. 

Physician burnout is a serious issue -- what's the solution?

If doctors can get the right kind of data at the right time, the information collected from these wearable devices may offer a strong potential for more accurate diagnoses, more personalized treatments, and better outcomes. The question remains, however, how can physicians get and manage the flow of all this new data to actually improve patient care?

While the causes of this STI increase are multi-factorial, some experts say that one of the most influential factors is that primary care physicians are not routinizing sexual health discussions as part of general health screenings.

As out-of-pocket costs and patient liabilities rise, medical practices struggle to get paid for their services.

Price transparency is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Besides knowing the service parameters, pay rates and usage requirements for CCM codes, physicians must understand how to effectively bill for CCM in order to profitably achieve that goal.

Doctors may overlook insurance options that can be just as crucial to protecting their assets and livelihood as malpractice coverage. In some states, certain forms of coverage are required by law, a mandate of which practices might be unaware.

Today, patients’ concerns about vaccinations fall along a spectrum, with some refusing all vaccines while others are more hesitant about specific immunizations like the MMR vaccine or receiving several vaccines at once.

These anti-vax parents take some precautions...

How 19 specialties rank in terms of salary compared to annual revenue generated.

How to protect yourself from EHR technology-related legal danger

As physicians add telehealth services to their practices, they need to consider legal and compliance issues around providing such care, from telemedicine-specific regulations to state licensure requirements and even malpractice-related questions.

A slideshow of the top 14 ancillary services for internal medicine/family medicine practices in 2018.

Thomas H. Lee, MD, Press Ganey’s chief medical officer, talks about the growing importance of the patient experience and how it can affect care outcomes.

How a recently concluded jury trial in federal district court in Texas has major nationwide implications for existing and future marketing arrangements between medical facilities and doctors.

In this new world of big corporate medicine, the relationships that physicians have with their administrations can often be tense and uneasy

Two new CPT codes allow payment when physicians order, review, and interpret new INR test results-even when patients self-test at home

In the past, a practice could offer a handful of Saturday appointments and that was about the only convenience patients expected. But patients are now demanding the same expectations from practices that they do from restaurants or retailers, and if they don’t get them, they find another doctor.

Information is certainly not going to slow down, so doctors should come up with a plan to keep up so they are ready to have informed conversations with patients.

A new survey found that patients would feel more loyalty to their physicians if their overall health was supported between visits.

From booking first appointments to follow-ups and final billing, providers should consider how they can make the patient experience better. 

The 2019 changes at first glance seem to have minor changes, but if you are supervising residents, the documentation requirements are now higher.