Managing critical business information includes sharing data with appropriate team members in your practice. By using an organized approach to data analysis and task management, this can be accomplished in just five hours a month. Divide that time into consolidated one-hour meetings three weeks a month and one two-hour meeting a month. Meetings should cover critical business numbers and tasks that are the backbone of financial success. The meetings can avoid excessive time and effort with a structured agenda and process.
At first, you may find that meetings are time consuming, but with experience, the process becomes streamlined, and your efforts will be rewarded. Managing critical business information is the final piece needed to achieve the satisfaction of knowing that you are making good decisions and that your business is under control.
There is strength in structure.
That structure is a business meeting.
• Define your management meeting dates and times. Do not deviate; these meetings are important. Consistently meeting at the same time and in the same place every week conveys that you are serious about your commitment to the business process. If you are not committed, your staff will not be committed.
• Always be prepared and punctual, and expect your staff to do the same. Being unprepared wastes everyone’s time.
• Always follow meeting procedures and expect your staff to do likewise.
• Set up protocols that define the scope of the meeting’s content and the order of information presented. Begin with old business followed by new business and conclude with future task expectations. Future tasks become the old business for the next meeting.
• Be nice but be insistent that each staff member completes all assigned tasks before meetings. Send them back to do their work if they fall short. It usually only takes one reminder for them to get the message. For persistent problems, ask yourself if this person is the right person to handle the assigned task(s).
Who controls the meeting?
You do.
A successful personnel structure for meetings is to assign someone to be your direct report. That person will gather data from administrative and clinical staff members and provide a summary to you on a weekly and monthly basis. If you use a separate biller or billing company, you will want to include that person or representative in the meetings.
What information should I follow weekly?
The focus of weekly meetings is to manage the tasks and numbers affecting day-to-day business operations. You want to troubleshoot any issues or potential issues before they become serious problems. Important information to include in weekly meetings includes:
• Weekly task highlights, including the number of patients scheduled and subsequently seen.
• Patient authorization status information.
• Billing information, including charges posted for weekly patient visits by insurance, patient payments, cash, copayments, and coinsurance.
• Outstanding documentation that has aged more than three days.
• Week-to-week comparisons to look at trends and persistent problems with task management.
• A discussion of other identified business problems.
• Task assignments and follow-up.
What information should I follow monthly?
The focus of the two-hour monthly meeting is to review the tasks and numbers affecting the larger financial picture with providers and key managers of the practice. This meeting is best held during the first week of the month following collected monthly data aggregation. Cover the following information:
• Visit statistics. This information tells you how your financial engine is running and one of the places you may be losing revenue.
• Volumes including total visits seen year to date (YTD) and month to date (MTD).
• Total cancellations and no-shows.
• Total reschedules as a percentage of total cancellations and no-shows.
• New referrals by referral source. This allows you to make sure you are not dependent on a limited number of referral sources and data that will help you market your services.
• Anticipated or expected revenues. This information is key to understanding the financial health of the business. Remember the difference between billed dollar amounts and the actual amount of anticipated revenue based on contractual arrangements and write-off status.
• Accounts receivable by 30/60/90/120. This information tells you where your revenue engine is stuck and allows you to troubleshoot patient balance issues.
• Plan aging by insurance company, including:
• Denials being worked.
• Denials not being worked with explanations.
• Write-offs with explanations.
• Single code payment problems or denials.
• Patient balance aging, including patient credit balances and unapplied revenue.
• Payer source comparison analysis that includes visit volume, percentage of total visits, total billed for those visits, average dollar amount per visit, percentage received versus percentage billed, outstanding dollar amount versus amount paid, and average days to payment.
• Bank balance information that includes an income and expense overview. This is collected separately from electronic health record (EHR) functions. Be sure to compare accounts receivable (AR) to bank deposits and get a list of expenditure amounts and the total in the bank after expenses.
• Do month-to-month comparisons to look at trends and persistent problems.
• Task assignments and follow-up.
Managing Information Content Presentation
All information should be available in a summarized form through your EHR. No matter how the information is gathered, it should be well prepared with the information available and summarized with backup data to be used when necessary. Try to avoid being mired in unnecessary details every week and month.
Focused, targeted time and effort spent managing your business are time and effort well spent. Good business management allows you to control your business and make informed decisions supporting business health that leads to your financial success.
Kama Morrow, CPC, CCS-P, is the client services director for Practice EHR. She has spent nearly three decades leading electronic health record (EHR) implementations and providing consulting and training for various healthcare organizations.
Gretchen Bebb, MS, CCC-SLP, MM, is the allied health services manager for Practice EHR. Gretchen uses her 30 years of experience with numerous industry associations to align with clients' challenges and trends.
For more information about Practice EHR, call 469-305-7171, email [email protected], or visit www.practiceehr.com.
