September 2020 Find Patients Who Need Treatment
Is your patient load still down as a result of the pandemic? Do you have recurring patients who ought to have been seen but have not been? Listen to today's BIG Ideas podcast for ways to find patients that should have been in by now and reach out to them. Whether...
September 2020 Manage Patient AR
This BIG Idea is a deeper dive into managing patient account balances. The customized analysis described here goes far behind the functionality of practice management systems I have seen. This practice pulls patient balances for patients not on a payment plan who...
September 2020 David Zetter
Today's BIG Idea is a conversation with my friend David Zetter, a practice management consultant in Pennsylvania who helps practices nationwide. David and I will discuss how he uses data to manage payer contracting and improve revenue cycles. Listen for ideas on how...
August 2020 Ken Hertz
Today's BIG Idea is a conversation with my friend Ken Hertz. Ken's worked in healthcare for years and was a key member of MGMA's consulting group for many of those years. Listen for ideas on how and why to use data with physicians and some examples where Ken has...
August 2020 Mine Data Reduce AR and Help Patients
Today's BIG Idea is a project for a specialty practice that administers expensive medications. The pharmaceutical manufacturer offers a copay assistance program to patients who do not have government insurance. The practice came up with a clever to track the copay...
August 2020 More Physician Comp
Here's another BIG Idea podcast about physician compensation, a popular topic in normal times, let alone now. The example is from a practice who bases physician compensation on factors like collections, new and established patient visits, wRVUs, and cases. The...
August 2020 EM Coding Levels
This BIG Idea is a project I did last week for a group in the West. We summarized all of their E&M codes for the past couple of years by month and provider and then used Excel tools like Slicers and Timelines connected to a Pivot Table to make an interactive...
August 2020 Physician Comp Spreadsheets
This week's BIG Idea is to combine practice management system data with your accounting data in your data warehouse and then use that data to calculate physician compensation. Whether your physician comp model is based on collections, wRVUs, or some other...
July 2020 Payer Contracting Data
Today's BIG idea is a project I'm starting for a group on the west coast. It is well worth your time to analyze your payer contracting data. What are your most important procedure codes, who are your most important payers, and how do those payers' reimbursements...
July 2020 Map Your Data
This week's BIG Idea is a project I am working on for a group that wanted to analyze their Google Analytics and AdWords data. We did an initial analysis, and then used Excel's 3D Maps feature to see the data geographically like we had not been able to before. Once...
July 2020 Medical Practice Excellence Conference
Today MGMA announced that the Medical Practice Excellence Conference will be virtual instead of in San Antonio, thanks to the spread of COVID-19. I am presenting at the virtual conference on the topic of rethinking metrics, dashboards, and appointments after...
July 2020 Mining Clinical Data
Today's BIG Idea is a project I worked on for a urology group last week. They asked to mine their data to find patients who qualified for a clinical trial, but the approach we used can help practices with or without clinical trials. Listen for how we defined Yes/No...
June 2020 Claims Charges Payments
This BIG Idea is a project I finished Saturday to track claims by file date, charges by date of service, and claims by post date on one chart over the past 16 months or so. With the pandemic slowing down charges and receipts, this practice wanted to graphically see...
June 2020 Hit Rate
This BIG Idea is a project I am working on for a neurosurgery group. We are trying to calculate a hit rate, or the percentage of new patients who are treated within a certain number of months after their first visit. Listen to the podcast for more information about...
June 2020 Trending Historical AR
Today's BIG Idea is two projects I have been working on to help practices collect accounts receivable. For both practices, we looked at historical data to understand trends in collections, especially given the pandemic. The first example is a practice that divided...
June 2020 Ideas to Collect AR
This BIG Idea comes from two projects I have been working on this week to help collect accounts receivable. The first project is for a savvy medical billing company that wants to benchmark and track productivity across their staff and practices. One of our...
June 2020 Adjusting wRVUs for Physician Comp
This BIG idea is based on projects I'm working on this week and the past couple of weeks. Practices often use work RVUs as part of their physician compensation calculation because work RVUs factor into the way payers pay practices. Rather than simply living with the...
May 2020 Helping Provider Compensation Recover
This BIG Idea is based on a recent poll from my friends at MGMA Stat. MGMA Stat is a free, text-message based, national poll that addresses current healthcare issues. You do not have to be a member of MGMA to join. Simply text EXCEL to 33550 to get started. The...
May 2020 Add Expenses to Your Dashboard
Another way to manage your practice during covid-19 is to pay special attention to expenses. Putting expenses from your accounting system on your dashboard is the topic of today’s BIG Idea podcast. Many general ledger systems allow expenses to be subdivided by...
May 2020 Patient AR
Today's BIG Idea is a couple of ideas around managing patient accounts receivable. Of course it is best to collect as much as you can at the time of service, but unfortunately that still leaves money to be collected. Listen for ideas on trending A/R balances,...