Is Your Practice in Need of a Wellness Visit?

by  Valora Gurganious, MBA, CHBC
December 15th, 2017

Is your practice busier than ever, but net practice income continues to drop? Are patients expressing greater frustration with longer wait times at your office? Is your staff morale declining and your own stress level rising each day in the face of increasingly complex regulatory compliance and documentation guidelines? As a billing professional, you know the significance of managing the practice's revenue cycle, but you may have no idea where to begin to address the overall "wellness" of your practice.

Perhaps a practice "wellness coach" could help you diagnose and better treat the business of your medical practice. A professional Practice Assessment by a Practice Management Consultant could help you identify operational inefficiencies, missed revenue opportunities, and areas in which your practice may be vulnerable to risk of audit or penalties. This "check-up" of your practice's overall health could catch problems early, and keep your focus on a strategic vision toward long-term success and fulfillment in your career.

A professional Practice Assessment begins with a history and physical of your practice. Your Consultant will conduct a battery of tests to evaluate your practice operations and performance relative to nationally-recognized industry benchmarks within your specialty. You will see how your revenues, expenses, staffing levels, and profitability compare to your peers across the country. If your practice exhibits outliers in specific areas of performance and operations, your Consultant will then "drill down" to understand why, and subsequently work with you to craft a plan of care to address those deficiencies and make them work within your practice.

Your Practice Management Consultant can work with you to identify issues and formulate solutions to address:

• Sliding practice profit and loss
• Rising accounts payable and operating expenses
• Declining staff morale
• Service lines that are not meeting the changing needs of your patient population Rising collections expenses, accounts receivable and bad debt write-offs
• Non-compliant EMR that is not capturing and reporting MIPS measures on your costs of care and patient outcomes Sluggish patient flow that exhibits frequent bottle-necks
• Outdated or inadequate office space and equipment
• Inappropriately-trained staff on proper protocols with respect to patient care, insurance, billing, chart documentation and regulatory compliance
• A practice that is not on the long-term path to financial stability and growth

You realize that your practice not only improves the health and well-being of the patients it serves, but that your practice is a complex, multi-million- dollar business. The practice provides stable, well-paying jobs to your providers, staff and their families. The only way to weather the constant challenges of today's health care environment is by implementing best practices to ensure that the practice is fundamentally sound and healthy. Your practice IS your business, so consider a wellness assessment from a coach specifically- trained to help you navigate the business of medicine -- a Practice Management Consultant.

References:

• Namas