Archives : reimbursement
Vantage Forums: Health Insurance Coverage by State
The US Census Bureau has tons of great information that can be used to perform effective market analysis. One area that we didn’t cover in detail during the Market Analysis 101 presentation was the ability to obtain information on the health insured in the US.
This page (http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/hlthins/ … index.html) of the US Census website provides links to historical health insurance tables which break down the insured and uninsured by state, age, historical…
Dear Doctor: Here is half your money, take it or leave it
I recall as a student when – somewhere near the last day of school – an instructor would share the funniest things that they’d seen come across their desk throughout the year. It was usually some 5-word blooper from a student or a simple, yet funny misstatement of history that found it’s way into a writing assignment; something that managed to set itself apart from the rest, truly catching the attention of the instructor through…
Increased reimbursement = lower healthcare costs?
Paradoxical, yes, but according to new recommendations presented by the American College of Physicians (ACP), this is exactly what is required in order to reduce healthcare costs: Increase reimbursement for primary care physicians as part of the effort to lower the cost of medical care.
The argument goes something like this. By increasing reimbursement to primary care physicians, we will reduce the primary care shortage (currently a shortage…
Pay more up front, save more later
Interesting theory here: pay more money to the initial point-of-contact physicians, allow them to spend more time with the patient, let them perform a more thorough screening, and just maybe it will save money in the long run. It makes very good sense and early experiments in several states by multiple payers presented in this article show…
Medicare cuts causing physicians to drop contracts, leave the profession
We blog a bit about healthcare policy at The Healthcare Entrepreneur, but mostly about the impact that policy has on practice owners and how practice owners must adjust in order to stay afloat in the midst of our turbulent healthcare landscape.
There is no bigger influence on this landscape than Medicare, and the recent activity in Congress surrounding the scheduled 10.6% cuts to the physician fee schedule have had…
Independence day in healthcare: Are we really free?
Everyone loves a holiday. Thanksgiving, Memorial Day, the Fourth of July…most of us get a day off and enjoy spending time with family and friends. I know I do (except, of course when the family is out of town and I choose to spend the day blogging instead of watching the Fourth of July pet parade).
As cool as they are though, holidays are like just about everything else that’s good in life…
Setting and maintaining appropriate fee schedules for your practice
When working with clients, we often find 2 things: (1) practice owners want to be more profitable, and (2) cutting expenses is not always an option. At its most fundamental level, a healthcare practice’s profit is based on the equation: revenue – expenses = profit. So, if expenses can’t be reduced significantly, the next place to look is at the revenue side of the equation.
Revenues are controlled by 2 elements, volume and price. Increase…
Email in medical care: Starting to catch on?
On April 23rd I wrote about the benefits of using email in physician-patient communication, and how trends in this area are inevitably going to change the standards of communication in years to come. I’ve also written about Dr. Jay Parkinson and the company, Myca, who are pushing the use of technology to improve the efficiency…
Doctors aren’t paid to think
If you read this blog regularly, this won’t be the first time you’ve read a post about the growing trend in medicine that favors reimbursement for procedures over time spent with patients, regardless of how important or necessary that time is to the overall plan of care. As the leader of many trends in medicine, Medicare is the driving force behind this direction our reimbursement system is taking, and there isn’t an immediate end in sight. For many of us, email has become a primary means of building relationships, conducting business, and keeping in touch. It is very effective in doing so, and while it isn’t a full replacement for phone and face-to-face interaction, it does provide a very efficient means by which to communicate. In business, email has another important benefit; it provides a document trail that can be used to record activity and conversation, creating a transcript of all…
Email: The new frontier in physician-patient communication?
