Your Practice Revenues Are Down: Could Hospital Discharges be the Culprit?
Medical and surgical practices have seen a steady decline in reimbursements over the past 15 years. Medicare and private payers have systematically rewritten fee schedules and bundled services, resulting in a decline of revenue totaling close to 30% for some specialties. During this same time, the cost of doing business has increased. Rent, salaries, IT […]
Competence is a Ladder
How Understanding the Four Stages of Competence Can Improve the Way You Learn and Teach In 2004, I started the University of Arizona’s Paramedic program. It was an intense program by any standard – sixty-four credit hours and hundreds of clinical hours in the space of nine months. Despite a history of being a good […]
Asparagus is Better in the Broiler: How I’ve Used Cooking Skills to Improve My Work Life
I hated asparagus as a child. It hit all the wrong notes for me: it was grayish-green, it was soggy, and it tasted terrible. These days, it’s one of my favorite vegetables, and I attribute it to the cooking skills I’ve learned over the years. Instead of heating asparagus from a can in a saucepan […]
I’d Love to Have Thirty More Minutes in My Day!
Everyone needs to wind down after a long stressful day—but who has the time? My day, as an ASU student usually entails a lot of frantic note-taking, as well as some stressful MCAT preparations. When I get home at the end of a long day, I would love to sit down, play a few video […]
6 Myths and Truths about Hospital Charge Capture
Struggling to come to terms with the reality of what hospital charge capture systems could and should offer? Wondering how yours could be improved to see significant changes in productivity and revenue? We thought you might be. Let us break down the myths and truths of hospital discharge capture – and what you should be […]
Improving Healthcare Delivery through Mobile Health
Technology is rapidly changing the delivery of healthcare. However, most of that technology is NOT designed or developed by people with healthcare backgrounds, expertise or experience. And, even more certainly, it is not traditionally being built by providers, nurses or healthcare experts. What we get then, is non-intuitive software that frustrates its end users. What […]
Have you Tried Turning it on and off Again?
Physicians, Are You Tired of Another Dinner Interrupted?
How many times have you received a phone call in the middle of dinner with your family from another physician? There’s an important reason why they’re calling (patient handoffs), but you want to spend time with your family. Spending those precious minutes and hours talking on the phone slows down your day. With HybridChart and […]
Five Strategies to Reduce Hospital Re-admissions
Hospital readmissions are bad for patients, but they’re also a costly affair. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation analysis of CMS final rules and impact files, hospitals paid an estimated $528 million dollars in penalties for fiscal year 2017. That’s almost $100 million more than fiscal year 2016 – even though hospital readmissions have been […]
Are You Rounding Efficiently?
Patient rounding can be challenging. Multiple hospitals, census lists, patients being moved to different floors/rooms—are your rounding efficiently? Have you ever submitted charges and 2 weeks later, your biller is asking you to clarify your charges? Ummmmm…that was 147 patients ago and you have no idea what you meant when you hand-wrote those charges. Patient […]
Have you Kept up with your New Year’s Resolution?
Every six months since having moved to Arizona in 2016, I made a resolution to be healthy, and each time I failed. This year, I’ve made that push to work hard on myself, while continuing to work toward graduation, and I’m still in control of the situation. New year, new you, right? What were your […]
Nurse Practitioners and Specialists: Ensuring Profitability
As a practicing cardiologist and member of a private practice, my partners and I struggled with the decision to hire nurse practitioners. Many of our competitors had already incorporated NPs into their practice – both in the clinic and hospital settings. Our reluctant stance was based primarily on justifying their compensation. In other words, how […]
Is Paperwork Threatening Your Time with a Patient?
As a physician rounding at multiple hospitals, and twenty-four patients to see on a Saturday, every second counts. Providing the highest quality of care, and spending valuable time with your patients is what drives most physicians. And, the last thing they want to worry about is clerical work at the end of the day. Wasted […]
I Object!
One of the most worrisome steps for a lot of people when pitching a product or idea is the potential customer’s objection. Fear not! An objection is a sign that your customer is engaged in some way. The best way to overcome objections is to be prepared. These steps are key to successful objection handling: […]
You Can’t Afford Denials
According to the Medical Billing Advocates of America, 1 in 7 of all healthcare claims are denied and CMS reportedly denies 9.9% of claims submitted. Denials happen for a variety of reasons ranging from improper coding by providers to technical errors made by administrative staff. What’s outrageous is that nearly half of all denials never […]
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3 Advantages of Point-of-Care Billing
Healthcare providers who spend any time at all in the hospital know how hard it is to juggle clinical care with clerical responsibilities. Long days of running around the hospital necessitates prioritization, and clerical work typically drifts to the bottom of the pile. The result is that billing, or charge capture, or whatever modern term […]
The Reluctant Salesperson
Sales people are generally thought of as greedy people who will stop at nothing to weasel money out of people and lie. Obviously, there are many kinds of people out there in the world, but to lump all sales people into that category would be wrong. You don’t need to be a snake oil salesman […]
The EHR: Understanding What’s Missing
To appreciate the shortcoming of electronic health records (EHR) we must first recognize what EHRs can contribute. They provide the mechanism for documenting encounters, procedures, vital signs, and physical exams. EHRs facilitate some, but not all of the workflow that clinicians follow in their everyday work. Practices use these software tools to provide documentation to […]
Why Work Hard When You Can Work Smart?
Working hard is a staple for any profession, but working smart will put you ahead of the competition. Sometimes it is necessary to take a step back and look at everything to identify problems or time-wasters. With the current age of technology, nearly everyone has a tiny computer in their pocket (their smartphone), and it […]
4 Tips for Selecting Medical Billing Software
Watch our short video on 4 Tips for Selecting Medical Billing Software
Medical Practice Productivity: Are You Missing Charges Due to Batching?
Physicians have fallen into some bad time management habits that are only going to exacerbate problems until changes are made to their practices. Many physicians feel so pressed for time, they are either skipping some tasks altogether or working late into the night to get everything done. One common mistake is “batching”, defined as tasks […]
Overcoming Barriers to Hospital Follow Up
View our helpful info-graphic and video on Overcoming Barriers to Hospital Follow Up! Watch our Short Video on these 5 Tips! HybridChart can Help you be proactive and improve patient discharge. Schedule a live demo today!
Attention Physicians: Time or Money…Which is MORE Valuable?
Should you choose time over money, or money over time? This is one of those so-called dilemmas of happiness that isn’t really a dilemma at all, because the answer is…choose both! Really, how? We all know that Healthcare is in a state of crisis. Recently, a healthcare executive from one of the largest systems in […]