Practice Management

Since passage of the Affordable Care Act last year, you've probably been curious to find out what shape accountable care organizations (ACOs) will take and how they will affect your practice. The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) answered some of those questions recently, and raised more.

If your billing systems are not compliant with new Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) standards by January 1, 2012, you will not get paid by Medicare. Even if you are compliant, you may still not get paid.

If a medical practice's staff is successful in the pursuit of happiness, does it really mean that practice will have happy patients as well? Experts disagree.

Consider your practice in terms of the basic economics of supply and demand.

When it comes to physician recruiting, the dance between a potential employer and employee can be a complex one.

Would you like to transform your waiting room from a place where patients wait for healing to a place where healing begins?

Commercial payers can be inconsistent with reimbursement processes, which can lead to a significant administrative burden for your practice.

Demonstrate benefits of EHRs to reluctant physicians.

Understand what to look for in a license agreement with an electronic health record vendor.

Understand the rules regarding online services.

Thirty-five percent of physicians reported receiving on-call compensation daily and 21% reported receiving an annual payment for on-call coverage in 2010.

Know what to ask when interviewing someone for tech support.

Various factors combine to influence a practice's stability.

How to address the excuse, "I have no time to exercise."

If you've adopted electronic health records (EHRs), you can now take the next step toward receiving Medicare's EHR incentive payments.

Ensure better reimbursement through negotiation.

From the day we sign our first lease, most of us in business are intimidated by our landlords.

Primary care physicians want to deliver excellent patient care, but often find they are forced to focus on volume instead of quality to keep up with their insurance contracts.

The basic formula for figuring return on investment is simple.

Patient satisfaction builds practices' reputations.

How to address after-hours burglary.

How to collect funds without harming patient relationship.

What if you held the keys to rejuvenating your practice?

You encounter various situations in the practice of medicine, but what do they have in common?

When the author first started as a doctor, it was not unusual to find physicians, attorneys, CPAs, and businesspeople as hospital administrators and CEOs of insurance companies.

Medical groups raised questions about structure and revenue-sharing after the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services unveiled its proposed rule about accountable care organizations.

Learn more about sharing expenses and revenues with other physicians.

Learn more about how CMS handles annual wellness visits.

As an independent practice owner, your revenues, and therefore your livelihood, come almost exclusively from insurance reimbursements and direct payment from your patients.

Weight loss services can produce new revenue streams that may offset, at least partially, stagnant or declining income from existing services, while helping patients with type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular risk, high levels of cholesterol and other medical issues tied to obesity.