Practice Management

Let's take a look at how a "utopian medical practice" in the not-too-distant future functions from the perspectives of the patient, physician, office staff, nurse, billing department, and referred physician.

For the first time in his 12-year hospital career, Kevin Deighton, MD, had a choice to make: In six months, he could either go solo, find another employer, or unite with other physicians to launch their own practice.

The AMA and groups representing hospitals, health insurers, pharmaceutical companies, device makers, and labor groups vowed to do their part to save the country as much as $2 trillion by slowing healthcare expense growth by 1.5 percent over the next decade.

The American Academy of Professional Coders, which in April released a five-year training plan to prepare coders and physicians for ICD-10, recommends all practices start analyzing how the expanded code sets will affect them, but small practices should not begin training until at least six months prior to implementation.

Now is the time to be aggressive and increase your marketing budget.

When engaging a collection agency or an attorney, first be certain that the accounts in question have been worked multiple times and are well over 180 days past due.

If you're looking to increase your patient base, there's a lot you and your staff can do to make first-timers feel welcome and ease their integration into your practice.

Physician practices in Massachusetts are deteriorating, due in part to state-mandated health coverage and an aging physician population, according to a recent report.

Lurking within the $787 billion American Recovery and Reinvestment Act are nearly $300 billion in potential tax breaks, and much of it is available to you.

If an area hospital has offered to help you purchase an electronic health record system, don't worry about missing out on the potential $44,000 incentive payment from the economic stimulus act.

Mystery patients can help solve the problems you didn't even know you had.

Replace the E&M documentation-based payment system with a system that rewards service and value, results in sparser and more useful documentation, and eliminates unnecessary complexity and burden.

All members of your staff should have rewards for meeting expectations as well as consequences for falling short.

A few months ago, our practice ran into some financial difficulties, and we tried to renegotiate our lease contract for our computers, but were rebuffed.

Is it safe to have my office staff pay my practice's bills online?

Codes 99441, 99442, and 99443 are used to report non-face-to-face evaluation and management services provided by a physician to a patient using the telephone.

Critical care is the total of care rendered by a physician within a calendar day and may be rendered by more than one physician.

More than half of all non-referred visits to specialists are for routine or preventive care that likely could have been managed by the patient's primary care physician, according to a recent study.

It appears that I would be exposed to potential liability claims if my locum tenens company terminated business because, in this event, there would be no tail policy.

The challenge: Health plans deny or require pre-authorization for prescriptions of name-brand drugs.

If you'd prefer not to pay for a mystery-patient firm, follow this guide to design your own program.

Practices that aspire to become medical homes are required to set self-and evidence-based standards for access, communication and clinical care, create and document team-based strategies for achieving these standards, and document movement toward achieving standards.

Senator Max Baucus and another pair of senators have produced two plans to reform America's struggling health care system. How would these plans affect you?

Compare Barack Obama's pre-election and post-election plans for healthcare reform.

The Medicare Payment Advisory Commission has recommended a 1.1 percent increase in fee-for-service payments to physicians in 2010.

The additional rules obligate physicians to individually notify patients and the local media if there has been a security breach of "protected health information."

What can we do to continue caring for our patients after they've entered a nursing facility, and the nursing facility is denying us access?

While leaders of the AMA, AAFP, and American College of Physicians all support Obama's goals and what he's done so far, no one is underestimating the tremendous political hurdles-or the potential for opposition from segments of the physician community.

In a large medical practice, who typically fills out disability and Family Medical Leave Act forms for a patient?

The number of family medicine residencies offered to U.S. medical school seniors and other applicants dropped to 2,535 this year, down from 2,636 in 2008.