Monday, November 07, 2005
Work, work and more Work...
Phew! I am pooped out ! I have been soooo busy at work in the past couple of weeks that I have not had any time to do anything personal at all. No running, no shopping (horrors), no badly needed haircut, nothing.
My private office is down a staff member, meaning no receptionist. The new girl starts next week after the long weekend but until then it is just me and a part-timer. There are 20 insurance forms that I have to file every day, yes me, I have to fill them out and sign them because the part-timer does not know how to do medical billing. This is on top of the 20 patients that I see each day when I am there 2 days a week adn the referral letters I have to write. AAAARGH!
Add to this the fact that I solely am in charge of reorganizing the billing system at the group practice that I am a part of and it means some very long, tiresome days. I took the billing and fee schedule problem on myself. After hearing complaints from the other 3 docs that I made more money than them seeing half as many patients, I noticed that they were underbilling for their services. Which means that they had to work twice as hard.
A lot of times they were "comping" office visits when a patient had insurance! Ridiculous! That's why they have insurance! DUh!
In school there was a class called Practice Management which taught you all about the business side of medicine. Apparently some people choose not to listen. The first thing the professor told us was that doctors make the worst businessmen because they are happy to stick to the medicine side of things and not worry about the business side. Well, that's fine and dandy if your spouse is the office manager and has a handle on what's going on but most times offices are filled with people who don't really care whether you make $10 more per patient or not. The only time they care is when they wonder why the practice can't afford to give them a raise.
Remember - no one looks after your money as well as...YOU.
So if you want to have a successful, efficient practice filled with patient satisfaction (and be able to spend a good 20 minutes with each patient) you need to re-evaluate your billing every 2 years. In the group practice that I joined when I moved here, no-one has re-evaluated anything in the past 7 years! They were still billing insurances from their 1998 allowables! Which means they were billing at only 60%. I say "they" because each docs fills out their own billling codes and since I keep up to date with monthly newsletters I know how to bill properly. Hence the re-vamping.
I really don't give a crap whether they make more money or not but I cannot stand inefficiency. I absolutely abore it. Maybe because my father has a sharp business mind some of it rubbed off on me while growing up.
Anyway, I've been meaning to take the treadmill out of our 2nd floor bedroom and put it in the finished basement so I can run while the kids play but that SOB is heavy! It is definitely a 2 maybe 3 person job. Maybe 2 weekends from now.
I hope everyone has a good long weekend :)
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My private office is down a staff member, meaning no receptionist. The new girl starts next week after the long weekend but until then it is just me and a part-timer. There are 20 insurance forms that I have to file every day, yes me, I have to fill them out and sign them because the part-timer does not know how to do medical billing. This is on top of the 20 patients that I see each day when I am there 2 days a week adn the referral letters I have to write. AAAARGH!
Add to this the fact that I solely am in charge of reorganizing the billing system at the group practice that I am a part of and it means some very long, tiresome days. I took the billing and fee schedule problem on myself. After hearing complaints from the other 3 docs that I made more money than them seeing half as many patients, I noticed that they were underbilling for their services. Which means that they had to work twice as hard.
A lot of times they were "comping" office visits when a patient had insurance! Ridiculous! That's why they have insurance! DUh!
In school there was a class called Practice Management which taught you all about the business side of medicine. Apparently some people choose not to listen. The first thing the professor told us was that doctors make the worst businessmen because they are happy to stick to the medicine side of things and not worry about the business side. Well, that's fine and dandy if your spouse is the office manager and has a handle on what's going on but most times offices are filled with people who don't really care whether you make $10 more per patient or not. The only time they care is when they wonder why the practice can't afford to give them a raise.
Remember - no one looks after your money as well as...YOU.
So if you want to have a successful, efficient practice filled with patient satisfaction (and be able to spend a good 20 minutes with each patient) you need to re-evaluate your billing every 2 years. In the group practice that I joined when I moved here, no-one has re-evaluated anything in the past 7 years! They were still billing insurances from their 1998 allowables! Which means they were billing at only 60%. I say "they" because each docs fills out their own billling codes and since I keep up to date with monthly newsletters I know how to bill properly. Hence the re-vamping.
I really don't give a crap whether they make more money or not but I cannot stand inefficiency. I absolutely abore it. Maybe because my father has a sharp business mind some of it rubbed off on me while growing up.
Anyway, I've been meaning to take the treadmill out of our 2nd floor bedroom and put it in the finished basement so I can run while the kids play but that SOB is heavy! It is definitely a 2 maybe 3 person job. Maybe 2 weekends from now.
I hope everyone has a good long weekend :)
