The Journal of medical practice management : MPM最新文献

Doctors need to become more efficient in order to become more productive. One of the best ways to enhance efficiency is effective scheduling. Every practice has several urgencies or emergencies every day that have to be worked into the schedule, and these few additional patients can wreak havoc with the schedule. This article will discuss.how to use "sacred time" in order to enhance efficiency in the practice.

Providers are struggling to understand how the macro-level changes occurring in the healthcare industry will affect them on a micro-level, especially as they pertain to the shift toward value-based reimbursement. This article presents a guide to physicians and practice administration, in both the private and hospital-employed practice setting, on how to effectively manage this shift from fee-for-volume to fee-for-value. It analyzes new reimbursement models, population health management trends, and second-generation alignment and compensation models to help the reader understand practical tactics and overarching strategies to prepare for the changing method of reimbursement in the health-care industry. The goal of this article is to provide clarity for decision-makers as they embrace the fee-for-value shift in a historically and predominantly fee-for-service environment.

The concept of the patient-centered medical home (PCMH) represents a shift in how healthcare is delivered as it shifts from reactive to proactive. The PCMH is a care transformation model with a number of studies demonstrating its effectiveness; becoming a PCMH can be a significant undertaking for primary care practices. This article presents a general overview of the PCMH model and briefly explains how it relates to the other healthcare reforms currently taking place.

Becoming a manager of former peers is a common occurrence in medical practice management, but it can be awkward and challenging. This article describes the specific staff management challenges that recently promoted practice managers encounter. It urges promoted managers to seek support outside the practice through new friendships, mentoring, and leadership networks. This article also describes how best to announce the promotion and suggests that new managers hold one-on-one meetings with each employee. It offers the agenda for those meetings and for the manager's first whole-team leadership kickoff meeting. This article also describes smart first tasks for a promoted practice manager and considers the possibility that some employees may not come on board with the changing social and leadership structures in the practice, and what to do about them. Finally, this article suggests that preparation to become a medical practice manager should start early. It offers a strategy for handling former peers who continue to overshare personal information with the manager. It describes how to handle four common authority challenges newly promoted practice managers may face, with sample dialogue. And it suggests a social media strategy medical practice managers can use when they are connected electronically to their former peers.

Medical practice management has never been more complex than it is today, with volumes of rapidly changing regulations, increasing cost pressures, and rising quality standards under the Affordable Care Act. These challenges have made it more critical for practices to assess their current position in order to determine how best to move the practice forward. A practice assessment begins with four simple steps: an evaluation of the long-term goals and motivation of the practice's owner; a review of key practice financials and how successfully the practice captures every dollar to which it is rightfully entitled; a measure of provider productivity and strategies to improve it; and an assessment of the talent and morale of the team of professionals at the practice.

In October 2015, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services released its final rule on the new guidelines for alterations to the long-standing EHR Incentive Program. These Modified Stage 2 and upcoming Stage 3 Meaningful Use Rules were developed in response to provider and organizational feedback during the last few years. This article provides a comprehensive overview for the new rules as they relate to Medicare and Medicaid Eligible Providers. Reporting deadlines for previous calendar year compliance and the basic criteria for automatic provider hardship exemptions to avoid reimbursement penalties also are discussed.

Because of their involvement with the Affordable Care exchanges, the national insurance companies have reported significant financial losses. As a result, there will soon be significant payer pressure to reduce medical expenses. To succeed in future negotiations with the payers, medical practices must understand the needs of the payers and then play to those needs. The author is a former managed care executive with more than 25 years of experience managing provider networks and implementing payer strategies for some of the largest payers in the United States. In this article, he outlines important things medical practices should be doing to prepare for the new world of value-based contracting. Medical practices that embrace this change and work hard to evolve with the future are the ones that are going to survive and succeed.

Entrepreneurs are known for opportunity recognition--that is, "How can I start a business to make money from this opportunity?" However, once a commercial entity is formed to take advantage of an opportunity, the leadership priority shifts from entrepreneurial to strategic. A strategic perspective leverages limited resources to position a business for future success relative to rivals in a competitive environment. Often, the talents needed for one priority are not the same as those needed for the other. This article, the first part of a two-part article, intends to simplify the transition from an entrepreneurial to a strategic focus. It walks an entrepreneur through the strategic management planning process using a fictional business. The various tasks in the process (i.e., mission, vision, internal analysis, external analysis) are illustrated with examples from a typical primary physician's private practice. The examples show how the strategic management tasks are interrelated and ultimately lead to a philosophical approach to managing a business.