Do You See Anything Wrong with This Thinking?

[jmj11]

As a practice owner, I am more aware than ever of the loss of revenue by so many things. One of the things that has always bugged me is the volume of free work we must do every day. I've enacted a new policy. While I can bill for filling out forms, the way I do it now is with a face to face meeting with the patient. IF they want disability forms completed, I have them come in and we sit and fill them out together and I bill for the visit. It works out much better because I can ask them questions while we are together an frankly I can bill much higher for the time spent. The same is for other activities. For example, if we seek prior authorization for Botox for migraine treatment, it use to take me 20 minutes to do the letter and paper work and that was un-reimbursed time. Twenty minutes doesn't sound like much but when you do that over and over during the day it adds up to 1-2 hours of un-reimbursed time spent every day. So, now I do the letter with the patient. Again it works out better because they are there to answer the questions I have. Anyone else do it this way?

 

I've done the same with phone calls for a while. During the visit, I develop a "plan B" which we can do over the phone (especially if the patient is from a distance or out on one of the remote islands). Then if they call after we implement "Plan B" I do not return the call (exceptions occur) but have my office manager schedule them to come it.

 

Lastly, and related to the phone calls, I've been very surprised about the "on call" issues . . . there are none. When I created this practice I knew that I would on call 24-7. In the 80 days since opening, I've had one after hours call. I think simply instructing the patients what to do in advance AND, on our phone system the patient is greeted with "If this is an emergency call 911" but also "If you need to speak to one of our providers and this cannot wait until normal office hours . . . press 2". It seems to have worked much better than expected.