At last, here is what all the shouting’s about! A new website and a new book all in one day. Just for kicks, I interviewed myself about these changes.
Q: Mary Pat, why all the changes all at once?
A: I didn’t start out to publish a book and redo my website all at once, it just happened that way. My site has been online for almost a year and a half now and after spending lots of time on the web, I knew I wanted to make some changes to my site – clean it up a little, and hopefully make it easier to read and navigate.
Q: What about the book?
A: I’ve been working on the book for about 9 months, and every day I have been reading about practices struggling with less reimbursement and more expense. Medfusion asked me to do a webinar on patient collections and I thought it was a perfect time to get the book completed.
Q: Why an eBook?
A: I decided on an eBook because that’s what I prefer. I like information on a specific topic and I like to be able to get to it immediately. More of a cookie-sized topic, than a cake. I love big business books full of information, but it takes me forever to read them. I wanted something that a manager could see, buy and start using all in the same day.
Q: You mentioned a webinar for Medfusion – when is that happening?
A: The webinar was November 17th and is archived on the Medfusion website so you can listen to it whenever you want.
Q: I see you’ve added a new tab called “Vendor.” What’s that all about?
A: I’ve been wanting to give my readers access to vendor names in categories and now seemed like a good time to do that. Right now there are 6 categories: Employee Background Check, Eligibility Products, External Financing, Creditworthiness Products, Payment Portals, and Special Resources. As time goes on I will add more categories so readers can access vendors in a certain category in one place.
Q: Are these vendors that you are recommending?
A: No, these are vendors that I’ve checked to make sure they have the service or goods that fit in the category, but I’ve not screened the vendors for my readers at all. Maybe down the line I’ll have some sort of feedback on vendors, but for now, I’m just listing them.
Q: Why didn’t you put the vendors in your book?
A: Because the field is always changing and vendors are coming and going all the time. I don’t think that the print medium is the right place for listing vendors for such a fluid and changing market as healthcare.
Click here to view “The Smart Manager’s Guide to Collecting at Check-Out.”
I was intrigued to interview the man behind the upcoming free webinar “Lean Six Sigma for the Medical Practice.” Frank Cohen, former Physician Assistant, Hospital CEO, and Consultant of 20 years is the Senior Analyst of MIT Solutions, Inc., and the host for this and other webinars that I think many healthcare managers will be interested in.
Cohen specializes in data mining and statistical modeling for medical practices. His website www.mitsi.org describes their services this way:
MIT Solutions, Inc. has been leading the health care industry in the development of decision support and business intelligence tools for medical practices since 1992. Our sole purpose is to help the practice staff work faster, smarter, make more money and improve compliance. At MIT Solutions, we develop products and services that transform the way you do business.
Cohen is a significant player in the healthcare improvement world for several reasons. He worked with the AMA in 2008 to introduce the first Payer Report Cards, which focused on how quickly and accurately payers reimburse physicians for medical services.
The report card compared Medicare and seven national commercial health insurers on the timeliness and accuracy of claims processing and was based on a random sample drawn from 3 million claims. According to the AMA report, UHC ranked lowest in contract compliance with a rate of 62% of claims correctly paid per contract. Aetna ranked higher with 71% correctly paid and 98% of Medicare claims were correctly paid. You can review the payer report card here. Knowing how hard it can be to ensure that claims are paid correctly in the typical medical practice makes the feat of collating and analyzing the data on this scale impressive.
Cohen also developed CMPA, or Comprehensive Medical Practice Analysis, which includes analyses of Procedure Code Compliance, Provider Productivity, Modifier Analysis, E & M Code Utilization Review, Correct Code Initiative (CCI) Compliance, Fee Analysis, EOB-Based Reimbursement Analysis, Procedural Cost-Accounting/Break-Even Analysis, Managed Care Contract Analysis, Relative Value Scale Studies, and Statistical Modeling by Location by Physician.
Cohen’s website hosts an array of valuable downloads available for managers to use. Here are some examples:
- Comparison of GPCI values by Location – CY2009 vs. CY 2008
- Comparison of RVU values by procedure code – CY 2009 vs. CY 2008
- Physician Compensation Model Using Work RVUs
- RBRVS Calculation Template – 4th Quarter, 2009
Like most of us, Cohen has an interest in how medical practices can continue to meet the burden of increasing costs and shrinking reimbursements. He looked to the dual programs of Six Sigma and Lean to reveal ways for practices to eliminate wasted time, energy and resources and promote efficiencies in the practice. Cohen writes:
…I obtained my Six Sigma Black Belt certification and more recently, certification as a Lean Six Sigma (LSS) instructor. Over the past few years, I have struggled with developing a process improvement model that is specific to medical practices only, vetting a host of different tools to eliminate those that have little or no application in our vertical market and customize others to work specifically within a physician’s office. I started applying these to some projects in the past couple of years and am very excited about this model and encouraged that this is one of the best ways to optimize profitability for physicians.
Cohen is providing an introduction to his Lean Six Sigma for medical practices through a free webinar on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. Eastern. Webinars are a wonderful way to spend a little time and no money to learn something. You need a phone for the audio and a computer for the video and chat functions. I’ve signed up and I hope to “see” you there.
I just participated in my first webinar and really enjoyed discussing the 2008 MGMA Annual Conference with colleague Marshall Maglothin and FierceHealthcare.com Editor-in-Chief Anne Zieger. Click here to register with FierceHealthcare and launch the webinar. My part starts at about 16 minutes.
Let me know what you thought about the conference.
Here’s some information you probably already knew, but might have forgotten. After ten minutes of a presentation, the majority of an audience (your staff, your docs, your board, your referrers) tune out, or rather, their brains turn off. BusinessWeek’s Carmine Gallo recently wrote about John Medina’s book Brain Rules and the ten-minute rule.
If you want to hold people’s attention, I recommend you introduce some sort of engaging device at or shortly before each 10-minute increment of your presentation. This device doesn’t have to be complicated. A simple story will suffice, as will a review of the past 10 minutes. In my presentations, I often tell a relevant story, or better yet, show a video clip that is relevant to the previous discussion. If you’re presenting via Webinar software (BusinessWeek, 4/18/08), you can use a tool to push a poll or a question to your audience. Again, be sure to plan these exercises at 10-minute intervals. – Carmine Gallo
Some things I’ve used successfully to break up relatively dry information in staff meetings:
- short dance break to wake everyone up ( James Brown’s ‘I Feel Good” is a classic favorite)
- passing out party hats to everyone to announce a special event (can get silly)
- visual interest slides at intervals – optical illusions (the gorilla on the basketball court is a classic but I don’t know if it’s available for groups unless you buy the DVD)
- telling a tasteful joke if you can deliver it well – I personally can’t tell a joke to save my life
- teach desk exercises to stave off stiff necks and sore backs
- show pictures or movies from the last staff event, holiday party, etc.
Read the complete article here and let me know what you do to keep people from tuning you out.
