Practice Management

How do I reduce the amount I pay for my employees' health insurance?

I've begun to wonder about the safety of my retirement fund. Are my savings safe from creditors and the government?

List the most complex (highest-fee) procedure first for reimbursement at 100 percent.

Office visit and critical care treatment procedures on the same day can be billed separately.

Physicians can go online to check the status of their PQRI reports and bonus checks.

At a time when communication with patients is being identified as a key component in increasing quality of care and decreasing medico-legal risk, perhaps we should intensify our endeavors to teach our students, residents, and colleagues to communicate with each other.

Many in the medical community are looking to the next president to inspire systemic changes that will remove the obstacles that hinder quality patient care.

More than half of doctors at least "occasionally" use some form of complementary and alternative medicine in their practice, according to a July survey by physician staffing firm Jackson & Coker.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation needs doctors, and it is ready to pay.

A bill was introduced in July in the U.S. Senate to award $600,000 state grants to create medical volunteer programs for which the state would assume medical liability.

Just 39 percent of patients at retail clinics said they had a primary care physician, according to a study by the RAND Corp.

More and more Americans are turning to sources other than their doctors for medical information, according to a recently released report. The web is patients' fastest-growing source of medical information.

The model of charging patients "access" fees to cover administrative expenses has given way to the concept of "concierge" or "boutique" practices.

The Department of Health and Human Services will require health care providers to use its set of new diagnosis and procedure codes known as ICD-10 by October 2011.

A New Jersey health insurer has launched a pilot program that will allow participating physicians to access patients? medical imaging records through a web portal.

About 25,000 U.S. physicians have downloaded a free drug information software program that runs on Apple's popular iPhone, according to the California company that develops the software.

One of our office employees just resigned, and the rest of our staff will have to cover her duties until we replace her, which may take a while. What's the best way to compensate them?

My in-house biller says the electronic claims with the Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) codes have all been accepted without a problem. But when we call Medicare to ask why I haven't received a bonus, we get nowhere. Should I be concerned about the status of my bonus payment?

One of my partner's patients occasionally asks me to approve a prescription refill in my partner's absence. Does providing those refills increase my malpractice risk?

How do I figure the number of patients to schedule each day to ensure a reasonable pace for me and a minimal wait for my them?

I'm thinking about adding some municipal bond funds to my portfolio. But I remember hearing some-thing about munis being affected by the alternative minimum tax. Can you clarify?

It is appropriate to bill for suture removal only when the sutures were provided by another Tax ID provider.

Medical practices must credential outside physicians to their insurance plans before they can bill for services.

Modifier -59 for services listed in column 2 of the CCI edits is accepted by most major insurers as indication that there was a separate service.

Service is the most powerful secret to enjoying your profession and healing others.