Finding the Ideal Practice Workflow

The following is a guest post by Vishal Gandhi, CEO of ClinicSpectrum as part of the Cost Effective Healthcare Workflow Series of blog posts. Follow and engage with him on Twitter @ClinicSpectrum and @csvishal2222.
Vishal Gandhi
We recently put together a whitepaper focused on what we consider the “Ideal Medical Practice Workflow.” After having worked with hundreds of medical practices we wanted a way to share our tried and true process for improving the efficiency and profitability of a medical practice. The whitepaper looks at 8 Key Steps to Maximize Reimbursement:

  1. The Effective Appointment Phone Call
  2. Thorough Eligibility Verification
  3. Patient Check-In/Out Process
  4. Pre-Physician Patient Engagement
  5. Do What You Do Best: See Patients!
  6. Consistent Claim Generation and Monthly Audit
  7. Monthly Cost Reduction Meeting
  8. Generate Clinical Reminders

The full whitepaper dives into each of these in detail, but as part of this series I wanted to take a deeper look at the final two: the Monthly Cost Reduction Meeting and Generating Clinical Reminders.

Monthly Cost Reduction Meeting
It’s amazing how many organizations don’t sit down regularly to assess the performance of their clinic. This simple monthly meeting should include your office manager and key physicians in your practice. Meeting together regularly to analyze your practice’s performance will help you reduce costs and improve revenue. It creates accountability and a scheduled time for this type of analysis.

At this monthly meeting, you should take a look at the key performance reports for your practice and how they trend over time. Next, you should analyze ways in which you can improve the performance of your practice. One solution might be utilizing technology to improve a process. Another solution might be outsourcing a process to a back office or external team member. Each month you can then evaluate the reports on how these process improvements have impacted your clinic and continue to adjust accordingly.

Generating Clinical Reminders
Creating a system of clinical reminders is one of the best ways to improve the performance of your practice. Your clinical reminders should start by focusing on these two key areas: identifying required patient visits and identifying patients for horizontal growth. Identifying these patients was a difficult task in the paper world that has been made so much easier in our new EHR world. Clinical reminders to these patients is a great way to increase visits to your clinic by previous patients, but this extra outreach is also a way to get your previous patients to refer new patients to your office.

Once these patients are identified, you can send them a clinical reminder using one of the following methods:

  • Patient Portal
  • Email
  • Automated Calls/Live Representative Calls
  • SMS

In our current healthcare system, these clinical reminders are about driving more patient visits to your practice. However, as healthcare continues to move into the new world of Accountable Care Organizations (ACOs) and value based reimbursement, these clinical reminders are going to become even more important. Instead of messaging your patients about a visit, your clinical reminder team will be responsible for medication adherence and outside testing and referral compliance. Developing the clinical reminder skill now will pay big dividends going forward.

Any clinic who embraces the 8 Steps outlined in this whitepaper and implements a mix of technology and outsourcing will see a dramatic change in the performance of their practice. Plus, you will be well on your way to the Ideal Medical Practice Workflow.

The Cost Effective Healthcare Workflow Series of blog posts is sponsored by ClinicSpectrum, a leading provider of workflow automation solutions for healthcare. You can download the Ideal Medical Practice Workflow whitepaper from ClinicSpectrum for FREE.

   

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