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.

Nitin Chhoda shares the state of health care practice management from the past and how it will affect the future. He shows how the role of management and its staff are evolving as technology enters the physical therapy business.

Even though the tasks assigned to health care practice management staff have been around for as long as hospitals have existed, the job of health care administrators is relatively new and is constantly changing.

Handling medical records and medical billing is a big job. For very small practices, these jobs used to be the tasks of the health care practice management, usually in the form of an office manager.

But today, health care practice management involves so much more, and tasks like medical billing and coding are handled by specialists.

The current role of the health care practice management staff involves a lot more analysis and efficiency management than ever before, largely due to changes and improvements in technology.

The role of electronic medical records (EMR) in this change cannot be emphasized enough. Electronic health care practice management technology has allowed health care management to take advantage of data that was previously too time consuming to extract.

Health Care Management Focuses on Patients

Of course, all these technological improvements might lead health care practice management consulting professionals to spend more time with charts and graphs than dealing with patient concerns. But that is not entirely the case. In fact, analyzing performance of the clinic will serve two purposes.

Firstly, identifying problems with efficiency will provide many advantages to the doctors, nurses, clinicians, and entire staff of a hospital or practice. Many health care practice management professionals will be quick to look for ways to save money, which is another advantage of EMRs and using the technology that is available today. But most of the changes that help the practice’s bottom line have other benefits, too.

The second purpose of looking for inefficiencies by using data on outcomes, re-scheduling rates, and visits per patient is to identify where patients can be better served. This is the tangible benefit that technology can bring when used the right way.

Number of Patient Visits

As an example, imagine that some clinicians only see a patient three times before the patient can go back to life as usual but other clinicians spend at least five visits with each patient.

Usually, in a busy office, you would never even notice a pattern of health care practice management like that.

Clinicians tend to know just how often they need to see patients, based on past experiences and what they were taught.

But if you could see that patients with the same complaint were given a more effective treatment or series of treatments, you could find out what it is that efficient clinician is doing.

Health Care Practice Management, a Delicate Balance

It’s easy enough to see how this kind of information could be misused. And it is likely that we’ll see plenty of cases of disgruntled staff members who are frustrated by statistical analysis and being treated as if they aren’t doing a good job.

Health care practice management in the future is going to be more and more a job focused on efficiency. But there are important human elements that must always be kept in mind so a practice is really running the best it can. Unhappy staff are not the way to make things better.

Before deciding what type of physical therapy software to use in your practice, you first need to determine where your practice needs help.  Nitin Chhoda shares the different healthcare practice management tools, and the ways it help to increase productivity and efficiency.

When it comes to improving the technology of medical practices, health care practice management professionals are searching for the best tools.

Improvements seem to be made from day to day, so should you invest now or is it too early?

Should you spend a lot of money up front for the best solution, or find something more reasonably priced and add features as you benefit from the change?

What are the risks of choosing the wrong health care practice management tool? Rather than focus on which are the best tools, first it is important to distinguish between the different kinds of health care practice management tools and what they can do for your practice.

Electronic Medical Records

At their simplest, EMRs are systems that allow you to keep detailed records of each patient without using a lot of papers and pens. There are plenty of other benefits, such as the fact that information is faster to enter, review, and communicate with others.

This can improve efficiency within the office as well as the health care practice management, and when communicating with other clinics or hospitals.

Medical Billing Software and Medical Accounting Software

For big steps toward improved efficiency, most health care practice management consulting teams will look for an integrated EMR and medical billing software solution. Medical billing software will improve the speed and accuracy of claim submissions, reviews of rejected or denied claims, and re-submittal of claims.

A well designed medical billing software system will incorporate medical coding, as well, increasing the opportunities for staff to catch their own errors before claims are sent to insurance companies.

With an incorporated system, EMRs can be shared with medical billing staff instantly. Filing and sharing of files will no longer hold up the important processes that health care practice management want the staff to focus on.

Staff may also find that their jobs become more streamlined and flexible as a result of a good EMR and medical billing system.

Patient Scheduling Software

Health care practice management must often deal with patient complaints about scheduling, wait times, and re-scheduling delays.

Staff are often thrown off balance by cancellations or re-scheduled appointments at the last minute. An improvement in scheduling can also result in improved billing and collections.

And naturally, if patient scheduling software is included in the health care practice management tool you purchase, the results can be pretty exciting. For example, if a clinician needs to be informed of a change in schedule, they can get a notification instantly.

Reminders can be set for scheduling tasks and priorities so open appointments can be filled rather than overlooked. And each patient visit can be channeled through the system via their electronic medical record, triggering the medical billing cycle, and new appointment scheduling.

There are many other perks that some EMR and health care practice management solutions provide, including radiology information systems and picture archiving systems. To determine which health care practice management tool is best for any practice, the first step should be the detection of inefficiencies that exist and goals that the practice has.