Dissecting the business of a private pediatric practice for the purpose of examining its parts & discourse
Today, I have another guest post. This time it's from Dr. Suzanne Berman MD, FAAP. Dr. Berman is also a contributor to Survivor Pediatrics. In this post, she gives insight into the real benefit of having a EMR. For example, many docs believe that a EMR will help them chart faster. But as Dr. Berman points out, that is not always true. The real benefit of an EMR isn’t being able to put data in/chart faster – this is great if you can do it … [Read more...]
In the past few months I’ve been asked a couple of times what advice I would give to someone that is opening a practice from scratch. And in the same conversation I’m asked, do you think, considering everything that is going on now, if it is a good idea to open a medical practice. My short answer is, go for it! My long answer is, well, more complicated. First, I think it is important to assess one’s priorities and determine the true … [Read more...]
Let’s say your practice saw the last patient today for ever. After that last one, no more patients will come see you again. How long before your practice runs out of money? A month; a day; 3 months? This is a very important question to answer. Why? Because it helps us have a perspective on the business and when and how to start making decisions. In the How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In Jim Collins talks … [Read more...]
My friends over at Pedsource just published a free RBRVS Calculator based on 2012 data. According to the post, the data is using an annual conversion factor of $24.60. They caution that this number will change sometime between today (12/8/11) and March, 2012. Because the AMA doesn’t let anyone provide a free RVU calculator that includes CPT codes due to their CPT copyrights (booo, booo), the great folks at Pedsource (yaaay, yaaay) created … [Read more...]
One of the easiest and fastest way to save money for your practice, is joining a GPO. However, I’m amazed of how many medical practices don’t know what GPOs are, much less belong to one. If you don’t know what they are or what they do, I’d suggest to look into them. To help you get started, I asked Paresh Patel, National Sales Manager for a large GPO here inChicagoto answer a few questions for readers of this blog. Hopefully, you'll … [Read more...]
My family and I like to watch the Dog Whisperer. The Dog Whisperer is a reality television series that follows Cesar Millan as he works in the field of dog rehabilitation. For those that haven’t seen it, the program shows Cesar being invited to a home to train dogs that have behavioral problems such as aggression, fear, obsessive behaviors among others. It is interesting to see how Cesar is able to bring balance to the dogs behavior. But … [Read more...]
I wrote the blog post below on the Survivor Pediatrics blog titled “What I wish parents Knew about Medical Billing”. I didn’t post it here on PediatricInc because placing it here would have been like preaching to the choir. To my surprise, the post has gotten a lot of attention and I’ve received a lot of great feedback from people in the healthcare industry (those that actually live this day by day) as well as non-clinical or … [Read more...]
Creating a mission is one of the first steps to transforming your practice. Why? Because if you don't know where you are going you will probably end up somewhere else. We embarked on creating a mission (after already being in practice for 7 years, so it is not too late to create one) recently. I will admit that I wasn’t too thrilled to create one for the practice. In my experience company missions were posted on a wall but nobody paid any … [Read more...]
This past summer, I had the opportunity to give a talk at PCC’s Practice Management Conference. The topic we choose to discuss was, 101 ways to transform your practice. The talk received good feedback and I hope to do it again some time. But for now, I wanted to share with you what were the 101 ways different ways to transform your practice. Enjoy! (By the way, for the talk, I didn't actually go through every single one of these. I create … [Read more...]
From a practice management perspective, I find my visits with the reps very valuable. Besides the obvious, which is they bring info about their product, here are my 5 reasons why I think pharma reps are valuable to a practice. Many reps have a pulse on the market, so to speak. I always ask the Prevnar guy, how’s business going? If he tells me sales have dropped in his area, I know not too many newborns have been born lately. If he tells me … [Read more...]
