Shedding Light on the Issue
How will Ben and his practice cope with more changes? Worried about Meaningful Use? Ben was staring at his computer screen, lost in thought, when Carmen arrived. She had sailed past the reception desk with a wave as the staff was closing up for lunch, so she hadn’t been announced. It was only a moment or two before Ben felt her presence and looked up, but it was long enough for her to register the stress Ben was feeling. “Hey, honey,” he greeted her. “Hey,” she said softly. “Is it that ONC HER thing?” “ONC-certified EHR, actually, but yes, that’s what’s on my mind.” “I thought you might be able to have lunch with me. We could talk about it over a sandwich or something,” Carmen suggested. “Why not?” Ben agreed. They left through the back door, heading to the tree-lined parking lot. “I’m not so concerned about our software, but the meaningful use requirement might bite us. We have to look not just at what our systems can do but at what our people actually are doing.” Carmen nodded. “I know just what you mean. At the pizzeria, we know that we have everything the health regulations require set up and in place, but follow-through is something else. People get into a hurry, or get set in their ways, or just don’t see the importance of following the rules, and first thing you know we have a scoop in the ice bin or something.” “The stakes are high enough here that everyone ought to be on board,” Ben said. “Hey, we could just walk over to the sandwich shop.” “Works for me,” Carmen agreed. “High stakes matter a lot as long as you’re thinking about them. But, speaking from my own experience with scoops in the ice bin, I’d say that during a normal day we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about those things. Plus, sometimes the consequences are more immediate for the people in charge than for the rank and file. If the restaurant has health code issues, it will affect everybody eventually if nothing is done, but usually it just means that I have to deal with it. Compared with the immediate convenience of leaving the scoop in the ice bin, that doesn’t seem like much to a kid who’s getting slammed with the lunchtime service.” Ben agreed. “The possible future consequence to the group never seems as pressing as the immediate comfort of the individual.” “Or even,” said Carmen as she added a cookie to her plate, “the possible future consequence to the individual, like what that cookie might do to my energy levels this afternoon, compared with how yummy it looks right now.” “The issue for us is that Medicare will cut payments if we haven’t demonstrated meaningful use by October 1st.” “So the partners with more Medicare patients might feel more motivated than those with more private insurance patients?” “Actually,” Ben said, negotiating his way through the tables with their tray, “Medicare pretty much sets the standards for all insurers and state boards. Where Medicare goes, the rest will follow.” “Is there really a big gap between where you are now and where you should be?” Carmen asked. “We’ll have to figure that out. But I think it’s like your ice scoop example. We’re looking at people’s behavior and choices, not just the systems.” Ben took a bite of his sandwich. “I guess that’s what’s worrying me. People don’t like change. When we switched the light bulbs in the office it bothered people. Changes in the documentation systems bothered people. Now we’re talking about more changes.” How will Ben and his practice cope with more changes? Disclaimer: For HIPAA compliance, all characters appearing in this post are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons or actual events is purely coincidental.
What does a Caveman, Lizard (Gecko), and Progressive’s Flo have in common?
Why cutesy marketing is costing you money and leaving you exposed. by Garrett Gunderson If you’re like most people, you are overpaying for insurance (and it isn’t because you chose cavemen or lizards or maybe those are geckos). What’s even worse is that in spite of paying too much, you may not even be properly covered if something major happened. How would you like to pay less money for more insurance coverage? The purpose of insurance is to cover the ‘big stuff’ that would be catastrophic or you don’t want to dip into your assets or income for when it happens. You can likely cover the small claims, fender benders, petty theft, wind damage to the house, etc. out of your own pocket – especially if it saved your money each month on your premiums, right? However, could you cover a $500,000 claim? Most people can’t… So it makes sense to consider raising your deductibles to save money, and then using those saved dollars to get the highest limits possible on your coverage. This way you’ll have coverage where you need it (the big claims) without the extra expense of a low deductible taking your money every month. Let me explain more… Small ‘fender bender’ type of things happen the most often, so a low deductible costs a lot. However, the six figure claims are rarer, so higher limits are quite affordable. Often raising your deductible a few hundred dollars offsets the cost of getting hundreds of thousands of dollars in additional coverage. So consider raising your deductibles to match your comfort levels to save money. Next increase your limits so they will protect you from the claims that could take everything you’ve worked to hard to save. With a little luck it’s likely that you can be paying less for a LOT more coverage. Even though I have to admit, some of the insurance commercials are entertaining, it isn’t a laughing matter to overpay or be over exposed. In the areas of car, home, and liability coverage there are several components: Personal Injury Protection Medical Payments to Others Deductibles Property Damage Uninsured Liability Limits Under-insured Liability Limits Bodily Injury Liability Limits Underlying Limits Replacement Coverage Actual Cash Value Coverage and more with just these three types of policies. Most of the time I find duplicate coverages, unnecessary exposure, lack of coordination or understanding for that matter. If you want to dive in further make sure to check out your own situation for free at www.freedomfasttrack.com/cfw.
Trouble Brewing
By Kathleen Casbarro ICD-10 spells a major adjustment What will Ben’s chiropractic office face with the changes in insurance reporting? Carmen sat on the sofa next to her husband and pulled her feet up under her. “Ben,” she said, taking his hands, “I want to know what’s going on. You picked at my homemade manicotti, you provided no challenge at Wii Bowling, and you didn’t even do the voices for Jonathan’s bedtime story.” Ben smiled ruefully. “You’re right. I’ve got something on my mind,” he admitted. “Remember I told you about the new codes for insurance reporting?”“ICD-10 codes?” Carmen thought back to the previous week, when Ben had told her some government changes would affect his chiropractic clinic. “I remember you didn’t seem to know just how they would affect you.” “Ignorance might have been bliss! I just found out that the effects are going to be significant. The AMA estimates that complying with the changes will cost a practice like mine in the neighborhood of $83,000.” “That’s not a neighborhood we’d feel comfortable in,” Carmen protested. “Things have been rough with the practice already–” “I know,” Ben agreed. “It’s already so stressful dealing with uneven cash flow, I don’t know where I’m supposed to come up with the funds to cover this kind of investment, but it’s not optional. We have to complete these changes by October 1, 2014, or we won’t get paid at all.” Carmen frowned. “Are you sure it has to cost that much? I’m pretty good at pinching pennies.” “I know you are, but this isn’t like negotiating with your suppliers at the pizzeria. I can’t negotiate with the government, and the the new ICD book has 1,107 pages of non-negotiable changes. We’ll need software upgrades, changes in billing practices, training for all the staff… that’s all going to cost.”Carmen and Ben both stared glumly ahead. “Even if you figured out some way to do everything yourself, you’ll have some opportunity costs,” Carmen said. “You’d have to cut down on the patients you see or the other work your team is doing. I’m at your place a lot and I never see people sitting around doing nothing. You’re already running efficiently, so extra time is the same as extra money.” “Exactly. Plus, any change increases the risk that we’ll be audited or that the insurance companies won’t pay claims. We don’t yet know what will be considered medically necessary under the new system, but we’ve heard that there’ll be opportunities for cherry picking. That means that our choice of words in the notes we write up could affect whether or not we get paid.” Carmen shook her head. “You’re already dealing with non-payment of claims, aren’t you?” Ben nodded. “I just don’t see how we’re going to get through this.” “Things are good at the restaurant. And, as I said, I’m good at pinching pennies.” Ben forced a smile. He was lucky to have Carmen, and he knew she’d do what she could, but the stress was getting to him. This was definitely not what he had dreamed of when he had set up his practice. What will Ben’s chiropractic office face with the changes in insurance reporting? Visit our ICD-10 page to see everything we’ve published about ICD-10 diagnosis codes.
Improve Profitability With SMART Marketing Plans
Building your chiropractic dream practice will greatly depend on how well you market your services. The hard part will be figuring out just which marketing activities will produce the desired results of attracting new patients and retaining existing ones without breaking the bank or taking up too much of your time. Regardless of your chiropractic marketing expertise, the best laid out plans will fail if you can’t find the time and discipline to follow through on them. It’s also important to set realistic goals that are ambitious enough to motivate you without overwhelming you into paralysis. Ideally, you should be able to use your marketing activities as patient relationship building tool to improve the profitability of your chiropractic clinic through increased patient flow. Measuring your success and ROI, however, will require a SMART marketing plan that complements your general business plan. And just like your chiropractic business plan, it should consist of specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time based goals that you will need to iterate each month until you achieve them. For example, if you want to improve your chiropractic billing performance to increase your monthly income by $900 you would also need to improve your Patient Visit Average (PVA). As such you could tie your chiropractic marketing goal to this specific business goal and quantify it with 30 new patients gained from all combined marketing activities, or 30 rescheduled no-shows resulting from a successful email campaign to drive up your PVA. Needless to say, you will need to have the necessary framework in place to measure the results, such as asking new patients how they heard about your chiropractic clinic on their intake form, and tracking monthly no-shows as well as billing performance with your Genesis chiropractic software. If you end up falling short of your goals of increasing revenue and/or of attracting 30 new patients through your combined chiropractic marketing efforts at the end of the month, you will need to evaluate which of your activities worked and which did not produce any results, then create a new chiropractic SMART plan for the following month. Here are 5 SMART chiropractic marketing goals you should focus on: S: Attain a specific number of new fans on facebook, twitter, and/or any other social media account M: Achieve a measurable increase in monthly traffic to your chiropractic website (e.g. from 1,000 unique visitors to $1,500) A: Expect attainable results from chiropractic social media efforts (e.g. 30 new patients/month) R: Post relevant blog articles on chiropractic treatments and appropriate healthy lifestyle tips for your chiropractic patient personas T: Track time based numbers (e.g. number of monthly no-shows & monthly chiropractic billing performance with Genesis chiropractic software) and plan marketing activities for each month based on goals on previous months’ results Last but not least, you should also assess any monthly chiropractic marketing expenses for website maintenance, advertising as well as other marketing efforts to determine your actual ROI. Since marketing is a testing game you will need to adjust your monthly goals in accordance with the results you are producing.
