Helping Medical Practices Increase Revenue

You likely already know that staying active on social media and having an attractive, user-friendly website are essential for marketing your practice. However, even though you have some of the basic marketing elements in place, it’s vital to continue elevating your marketing strategies to increase patient acquisition, improve patient loyalty, and boost your practice’s bottom line. How can you take your medical practice to the next level in 2019? Here’s a look at some helpful tips and strategies that can boost growth and revenue.

Why do an annual risk assessment?

Smart clinicians make the time – ideally at the beginning of the year – to conduct a risk assessment of PHI sharing procedures, records management and cyber safety issues. Review the latest changes in governmental and payer regulations and requirements, with the help of your IT team as well as a legal adviser familiar with healthcare billing and reimbursement, to ensure that your practice is compliant with all guidelines.

From scheduling a patient’s appointment at the front desk, through insurance verification, charge capture, billing and finally to the A/R and collections departments, each of your hard-working staffers perform critical roles in your practice’s revenue cycle.  Understanding what these roles and tasks entail, how they sometimes overlap and what happens when one component is missing or falls short in performance are essential to controlling your revenue cycle.

Opioid use, abuse, and overdose have become an epidemic that led to the President declaring it a national public health emergency. The National Institute on Drug Abuse reports that over 115 people die after an opioid overdose each day within the U.S., and according to the CDC, the economic burden of this epidemic within the United States totals to more than $78 billion each year. 

Prescription drugs continue to play a significant role in the opioid crisis, and prescription opioids include medications like morphine, oxycodone, fentanyl, codeine, and hydrocodone. With opioid overdose and dependence at a crisis level in this country, clinicians must have detailed knowledge of this disorder. Likewise, it’s essential for pain management providers  to be aware of the documentation and coding requirements when encountering cases of opioid use disorder.

The Provider Credentialing Process Explained

Credentialing a new provider to validate his or her qualifications, work history, board certifications and references is critical for all healthcare organizations as well as smaller practices.

 Normally, there are two separate processes to credentialing:

• Privileging approves a provider for performing a specific set of privileges or perform certain specific procedures.
   
• Provider enrollment is inclusion of a new provider in all of an organization’s insurance plans, ensuring that correct and full payment is received for their services.