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Convenient, brief, no-nonsense tips to help you manage your practice
SHR SHoRts…
- Top 10 Reasons Why Medical Practices Fail to Maximize
Physician Revenue
- Restrictive Covenants – they make good
business sense
- Can This Manager Be Saved?
Top 10 Reasons Why Medical Practices Fail to
Maximize Physician Revenue
Given the economics of medical practice today, maximizing practice
revenue is not just a desirable goal - it is one of the key ingredients
for maintaining business viability. Having worked with so many practices
over the years, some highly successful while others are struggling, we
compiled the following list of reasons we have found why medical practices
fail to maximize revenue. It's a good list for you to ponder, and if you
think any of these issues apply to your group, tackle them right away!
- Front office systems and procedures are weak.
- Superbills contain inaccurate and outdated codes.
- Fee schedules have not been updated.
- Physicians/providers downcode their levels of service.
- Accounts receivable are not worked consistently.
- Financial reconciliation procedures are weak or absent.
- Staff to physician ratios are too low.
- Physician productivity is not maximized.
- Customer service is not “top priority”.
- Practices don’t formally plan and incorporate ancillary sources
of revenue.
Restrictive Covenants – they
make good business sense
You have probably read that practices should insist on having
their newly hired physicians sign “restrictive covenants.”
These are, of course, promises that in case the employed physician leaves
the practice’s employ s/he will not “compete” –
typically engage in practice within a reasonable distance from that practice
for, usually, one or two years. Some physicians, though, insist on taking
what they consider the “high road” and not imposing such a
restriction on their young fellow-professional.
One recent experience we know about might make you wary of being so nice.
When a physician came up for partnership two years into his employment,
he came to believe that he was worth more to the practice than his quite
generous “buy-in” called for. Having built up a decent patient
base and good hospital relations under the group’s auspices, he
refused to join, quit the group and opened his own practice.A
The group lost several ways. They now are back looking for another doctor
to fill their needs, including call, and they have one more effective,
growing competitor in their somewhat limited specialty. Those are good
reasons why we urge our clients to insist on restrictive covenants unless
they are in the few states where they are totally unenforceable.
Can This Manager Be Saved?
We recently worked with a very successful, rapidly growing practice
led by an extremely conscientious, quite capable administrator. She had
been the non-physician leader of this group since it began its growth
spurt some years ago, thanks largely to her almost compulsive attention
to all details. Now, however, the practice was outgrowing her ability
to function that way, and there were great doubts whether she could change
to a more “executive” style of management.
A practice succeeds from the top, and it was critical that this group’s
administrator “grow” from her current level to that of leader
of a larger “business.” We hope and expect she will do so,
and we recommended several steps to help her. One was to move her office
away from the group’s extremely busy main clinic to its separate
billing office, thus removing her from the day-to-day hassles. Another
was to recruit and hire a capable office manager for the main clinic,
reporting to the administrator but hopefully shielding her from the “busy-ness”
of that facility.
She now has seven different well-identified clinic and function supervisors
reporting directly to her, with her pledge to leave those people responsible
for their functions. She understands the importance of becoming more “executive,”
and we have faith that she can do so. Both her job and the group’s
continuing success depend on it.
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