Physician new year resolution #10 - the most important one

Finally, I RESOLVE to hire the best people

Again, I want to emphasize the simple and honest fact that the better performing practices out there are the ones doing the best job at human resources. One way they do this is by hiring the best people they can, even if it costs a little more to do so. This means strict attention must be paid to the hiring process. It is so easy to see how hiring really good people can turbo charge a practice almost overnight.

February 2, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Physician new year resolutions #8 and #9

I RESOLVE to adopt a healthier personal lifestyle

I’m sure this one is already on your list but I wanted to emphasize it for you again. A healthier lifestyle can only lead to greater productivity not only in the office, but in your personal life as well. We all know what to do to get healthier, unfortunately implementation is oftentimes difficult to achieve. Make it a goal to identify all of those things that get in the way of accomplishing this goal and eliminate them from your life. Why set yourself up to take a premature “dirt nap” anyway???

I RESOLVE to start my own personal financial planning

This includes retirement planning, education planning, budgeting, insurance planning, investment planning, and net worth optimization, just to name a few. As a practitioner who has been working solely with physicians for the last 20 years, let me tell you one simple truth: There are a lot of physicians out there who have to work. Don’t become one of them.

January 31, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Physician new year resolution #6 and #7

I RESOLVE to hold a strategic planning retreat this year

This even applies to solo practitioners. Do you know where you want to be 3, 5, 10 years from now? Do you have a plan on how to get there? Are all physicians in agreement on how to get there? It shouldn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that future success requires an awful lot of planning.

I RESOLVE to consider a practice merger

Consider a practice merger to eliminate duplicate overhead, to increase revenue, to possibly gain some leverage over the manage care payers, and to provide a transition strategy. These are just a few of the potential benefits. If done right, a practice merger can not only increase physician incomes, but maintain some of the autonomy most physician’s desire.

January 30, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Physician new year resolution #4 and #5

I RESOLVE to take a proactive managed care stance

Conduct a detailed review all of your current managed care relationships to assess what payers need to be eliminated and what contracts need to be renegotiated. I’m sure as you’re reading this you are saying to yourself that there is no way you can successfully renegotiate a contact. My response to you is: How do you know unless YOU TRY. Just talking with your managed care payers can provide valuable insight on what it takes to be successful in today’s dominate managed care marketplace.

I RESOLVE to get an independent review of my medical practice

You get your car tuned up every year; doesn’t it make sense to get your medical practice tuned up also? An independent assessment will tell you what is good about your practice and what needs to be improved for increased efficiency and profitability.

January 27, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Physician new year resolution #3

I RESOLVE to take a CPT coding class

Most of your revenues are coming from fixed fee payers (Medicare, managed care, etc.). Your services are paid based on specific reimbursement rates for each service by each payer. In this environment, proper CPT coding can either lead to increased revenue or lost revenue. Take a coding class to make sure you are billing out all services that you are entitled to bill out and to make sure you are properly billing out your services.

January 26, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Physician new year resolution #2

I RESOLVE to have a monthly management meeting

Even if you are a solo medical practice, this meeting is critical to maintaining and improving the financial performance of the office. At the meeting, review and discuss such things as practice finances, billing and collection performance and comparison to benchmarks, office operations, and human resource issues. These meetings keeps management informed and on the same page. How can an office be successful unless everyone is informed and pulling in the same direction? Remember, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

January 25, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

2012 physician new year resolutions

A book entitled “When Professionals Have to Lead: A New Model for High Performance” by the Harvard Business School Press mentions that most professional service firms (yes, a medical practice is a professional service firm) often focus on the short term and spend little time and thought on providing direction on where the practice is going and why. This is so typical of medical practices. You need goals and objectives to guide you throughout this next year – without them, you are just a rudderless ship.

So here is the first of the new year resolutions you should be concentrating on; use them to set your own practice goals and objectives for 2012.

RESOLUTION: I RESOVE to inspire and motivate my employees.

Believe it or not, this is an easy one to accomplish. Employees can be inspired and motivated just by doing a few simple things – when they do a good job, tell them they did so. Tell them thank you for a job well done and thank them for their efforts and for being a part of your team. Make the effort to take each employee individually to lunch. Get their feedback on what is good about the practice and what can be improved. Surveys have shown these little things do more for office morale than salary raises do. Remember a very important point: The better performing offices are the ones that do the best at human resources.

January 24, 2012 in Practice Management | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Start the year with a SWOT analysis for your medical practice

The start of a new year—along with pretty much any other date—is a good time to assess your physician practice's marketing position and plan for the future. What’s going well? What isn’t? And how to distinguish critical information from the superfluous? One time-tested approach is to do a SWOT analysis—strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Here are the basics.

Strengths. What are your strengths in your marketplace? Put another way, what distinguishes you from your competitors in a positive way? Do render a service they don't? Is your clinical quality and outcomes better? Reputation? Patient satisfaction? You goal is to capitalize on these strengths.

Weaknesses. This might be the converse of your strengths, but not necessarily. Be honest with yourself about your practice's weaknesses. This is the only way you can improve. Remember that your weaknesses that lead right into …

Opportunities. What’s new? Is there a new service line or product you can add to your practice. Maybe there's an opportunity to open a satellite office. What about joint venture opportunities? One often overlooked opportunity is the ability to reengineer your practice to make it more effective, efficient, and profitable.

Threats. Recognizing threats early and planning to meet them can spell the difference between a thriving and a failing physician practice. How is your practice going to address shrinking reimbursements, competition from hospital employed physicians, lowered profit margins, physician practice mergers, and Accountable Care Organizations?, just to name a few.

The only thing constant in healthcare these days is change - and change is what creates opportunities and threats. So plan to capitalize on your strengths, minimize your weaknesses and take full advantage of change in 2012.

January 23, 2012 in Strategic Planning | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

New Way to Report Capital Gains and Losses for 2011

In most cases, taxpayers now use new Form 8949 to report capital gain and loss transactions. Schedule D, the form traditionally used to show these individual transactions, is now used as a summary sheet, reporting amounts for total sales price, basis and other adjustments for all individual transactions, and for figuring the tax. For securities both bought and sold in 2011, the Form 1099-B, issued by the broker, normally shows the taxpayer’s basis. The information on this form will help taxpayers correctly fill out Form 8949. See the instructions for Form 8949 and Schedule D for details.

January 18, 2012 in Taxes | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

Brief summary of MGMA's 2011 physician compensation survey

In a statement released by the Medical Group Management Association, primary care and specialty-care physicians saw varied movement in compensation levels from 2009 to 2010, according to the MGMA's new Physician Compensation and Production Survey: 2011 Report Based on 2010 Data (www.mgma.com for more information).

Total median compensation increased for doctors in:Internal medicine ­– from $197,080, to $205,379 (a 4.21 percent increase); Cardiology – from $481,878 to $500,993 (a 3.97 percent increase); and Emergency medicine – from $262,475 to $277,297 (a 5.65 percent increase).

Compensation remained flat or declined for physicians in:Urology – from $390,678 to $372,455 (-4.6 percent); Ophthalmology – from $338,208 to $330,784 (-2.20 percent); Radiology – from $478,824 to $471,253 (-1.58 percent); and OB/GYN – from $282,645 to $281,190 (-.51 percent).

Regional compensation differencesRegional data included in this year's report show differences in compensation based on location. In the Southern region of the United States, primary care and specialty-care physicians reported the highest earnings at $216,170 and $404,000, respectively. Physicians in the Eastern regions reported the lowest median compensation, $194,409 and $305,575.

January 18, 2012 in Physician Compensation | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)