Practice Management

More than eight in 10 Pennsylvania residents have failed to prepare an advance healthcare directive that would guide their family, doctors, and other clinicians in an end-of-life situation, according to The Institute for Good Medicine at the Pennsylvania Medical Society.

Health insurance costs everyone more these days, but mom-and-pop businesses feel the greatest pain, according to a newly released study from the RAND Corporation.

CMS is adding to the list of preventable injuries or conditions that Medicare won't pay higher rates for if they're acquired in the hospital, such as a transfusion of the wrong blood type.

Remember internist David Brailer, once the point man for EHRs in the Bush administration? He’s now the chairman of a private-equity firm that’s bankrolling a healthcare IT startup with its own cast of ex-public servants.

Talk about being stuck in the 19th century. Twenty-eight percent of medical practices still don’t accept credit cards, according to a survey by SK&A Information Services.

In my state's prescription monitoring database, I found that one of my patients has been getting prescriptions for the same DEA-controlled medication from several physicians. Can I report this to the other prescribers?

I'm a PA, employed by a company owning multiple skilled nursing facilities in our city. I don't have provider numbers with various insurers, but I see patients with the oversight of an MD who's not always onsite. My services are being billed with the provider numbers of the "supervising" physician. I'm new to practice, so I'm not sure whether this is a problem? Is it?

Our practice's employees often leave during the day to take care of personal matters. Although they claim they make up the lost time by working through lunch, I suspect they're not putting in the 40 hours a week we're paying them for. Should we be flexible and allow them to come and go as long as the work gets done, or should we insist they adhere to a regular 9 to 5 workday?

I'm one of several physicians employed by a hospital. None of us are supervisors. When we asked for a raise, the hospital cut off negotiations and threatened to fire us. Can we form a union to negotiate for better wages?

Want to spend more time with your patients? Consider a retainer practice.

Seeing patients when they want to be seen helps you respond to their needs and stay competitive.

A growing number of doctors are dedicated to keeping the small practice model alive. In using innovative strategies to keep solo or small group practices successful, they're stubbornly bucking a trend that's become familiar in recent years.

Clutter can impair office efficiency and even hamper revenue collection. Here's how to cure the too-much-paper bottleneck.

We've been using the NPI on our electronic claims for several months without a problem. Suddenly we've begun receiving rejections from virtually every commercial insurer. Our clearinghouse indicates that the problem is the information contained in the NPPES (NPI) files, but we've scrutinized these files for each of our providers and corrected any misinformation and are still having problems with claims. Is there an issue we're unaware of?

Our surgery practice has a satellite office in a nearby hospital. We report place of service 11 (office) for the E&M services we provide at that location, but our Medicare carrier recently notified us that because we're located in an outpatient hospital facility, we should be specifying place of service 22 (outpatient) instead. Is this correct?

I recently discharged a patient who repeatedly abused his medications by taking more than I prescribed, although I didn't state this in the termination letter. But now he insists that we give a reason, in writing, and wants to schedule an exit interview. How should we handle his demands?

Our practice has grown rapidly. Our office manager?a former biller who moved up the ladder?can't keep up with the expanded responsibilities. How do we tell a loyal employee that she's no lmedical practice,office manager,practice administration onger up to the job?

I recently provided care for a patient visiting from another state. He filed an out-of-network claim for my services, but his insurer refused to pay, and he hasn't responded to the bill I sent him. What should I do?

America's pursuit of youth and doctors' need to offer more services have created what could be an ideal opportunity for you.

This author had a mountain of medical school debt, but he made savvy decisions that brought professional and personal satisfaction. 2007 DOCTORS' WRITING CONTEST - BEST PRACTICE SOLUTION

After May 23, only this identifier will get your Medicare claims paid.

Trading e-mails with patients is easier than playing phone tag, and you may even get paid for it.

A physician left our group recently and we hired a locum tenens until a replacement can be found. Can we use the previous physician's provider number with the Q6 modifier for billing purposes until then?

Our practice has been using immunization codes 90465-90468 for patients who are 8 or younger and 90471-90474 for older patients, but we were recently told that this is incorrect. Can you tell us what's wrong and how to fix it?

I'm employed by a large group practice in a resort community that participates in Medicare. Several resort owners have asked me to provide weekend and evening care to vacationers. They'll inform anyone who wishes to use my services that I take cash only and will not bill third-party payers. They also suggested that I set my fees to "adequately compensate" me for being on call. Is this is too good to be true?

The push for e-prescribing is heating up, with bills in the House and Senate that would penalize providers who don't abandon paper scripts for Medicare patients by 2011.

To cope with the surge in skimpy health insurance policies, adjust your billing and payment procedures. Here's how.

When I resign from my current group, I want to maintain my current health plan affiliations. The prospect of recredentialing with three dozen plans simultaneously is mind boggling. What's the best way to handle the administrative hassle?

During the summer when the physicians in our cardiology group take three- and four-week vacations (not at the same time), our office hours are reduced. That results in a lot of down time for our staff. With reduced hours cutting revenue, we can't afford to pay people for just sitting around. How can we organize our summers to keep everybody busy?

A senior partner has announced his plan to retire from our single-specialty group practice. We have a buy-out in place and expect his departure will be amicable. However, we have no experience with managing the details of a doctor's departure. For example, when should he tell his patients and referring doctors that he's leaving? What else do we need to do?