Medical management in today’s world is not as simple as it was decades ago. Many practitioners believe they need to extend their education in order to properly manage their clinic. Nitin Chhoda defines medical management practice in the 21st century.
Clinicians and other healthcare practice management professionals spend a lot of time getting a thorough education. Unfortunately, their medical knowledge is not supplemented with quite enough business and medical management study.
Private Practice Trends
Some clinicians opt to get an additional degree in business or medical management so they can comfortably run a private practice. However, that is the exception and not the rule.
There has been a recent trend in private practices where clinicians are finding themselves in financial trouble due to mismanagement of expenses, billing, and health insurance companies refusing to pay for the provided care.
In some ways, the problems of private practice physicians in medical management are not their own fault at all. Insurance companies change their policies frequently, and what was billable one week may not be billable the next.
Additional Education
In response, new degrees and a new career path have been forged so clinicians or their staff can be educated about dealing with the particular challenges of running a medical practice. A medical manager is also often called the healthcare administrator, health services manager, or healthcare executive.
For those interested in medical management careers, you must complete at least a bachelor’s degree in business or a related field, and a master’s degree is highly recommended. The Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates that medical management is growing more rapidly than many other fields due to projections of an increase in demand for medical services over the next decade.
Medical management combines strategy, information management, and leadership for building and managing a successful health care practice.
Components
One of the major components of being able to manage a medical practice is having an understanding of the laws and requirements that health care providers must adhere to, such as HIPAA and the HITECH Act.
Clinicians are usually concerned with being able to do their job and take care of their patients as best they can.
What a medical management professional can bring to a private practice should include everything else, from understanding how to implement an EMR and EHR system to reporting to government agencies and ensuring that the practice is eligible for tax breaks and HITECH Act incentives.
The health care industry is changing rapidly and clinicians who run a private practice are starting to pay for inattention to administrative and management duties which they do not really have the time to handle.
There are medical management systems that attempt to streamline the way that medical clinics handle administrative tasks, such as billing, scheduling, and health insurance filing.
In fact, most EMR systems are equipped to handle medical management tasks as well as medical records. EMR and EHR systems will include scheduling and billing organization and reminders so that the clinic can be more efficient.
They can also ensure that the proper paperwork is filed for Medicare, Medicaid, and health insurance companies. Claims are often rejected due to illegibility or errors in the paperwork, and EMRs attempt to do away with those kinds of mistakes and rejections.
