When you run an orthopedic practice, your staff will have different processes and needs to address as compared to other specialties as well as family doctors. For example, you likely will have more referral patients, coming from emergency rooms, pain clinics, and general doctors, with the need to share information with these various entities to keep them updated on the progress of the patients.

Delivering healthcare services in the United States requires providers to obtain compensation for the work they do in evaluating, diagnosing, treating, and following up with patients.

For the uninitiated, when someone in the medical community mentions “EHR,” he or she is talking about electronic health records. An EHR is a vital application that is becoming nearly indispensable in most medical organizations, including those that treat Medicare and Medicaid patients and want to receive financial rewards from the government in exchange for demonstrating meaningful use of certified, up-to-date EHR technology because of the efficiencies it enables.

You may have many years of experience in the healthcare industry already, but lately you have come to realize that despite what you know about the medical field, you would like to become more familiar with the healthcare revenue cycle. That’s a good idea, because successful revenue cycle management (RCM) is the key to any successful medical practice’s growth and development.

In modern healthcare, more attention is being paid lately to the level of quality we provide to our patients, rather than emphasizing how much (the quantity) care is being doled out to them. To that end, the U.S. government has lately been promoting Alternative Payment Models or APMs in support of the goals of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA).

When you first entered the medical profession, patients typically were asked to make reimbursements for treatment under a fee-for-service system. That is a natural aspect of providing healthcare in a capitalist country like the United States, where the focus can sometimes be on profits rather than on achieving the highest standards of care.

Does your medical organization currently provide care for Medicare or Medicaid patients, or are you planning to begin offering service to them in the near future? You should know that the government has a keen interest in streamlining how we deliver healthcare in the United States, with an emphasis on quality over quantity. To that end, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (also known as CMS) launched its Medicare and Medicare Electronic Health Record Incentive Programs in 2011 to encourage eligible providers to demonstrate Meaningful Use.

Things definitely do not stay the same for long in the world of medicine. Healthcare professionals therefore have enormous amounts of information to go through so they can stay up-to-date on the basics.

In order for your medical practice to keep the lights on and maintain the professional staffing level that you and your patients rely on, you must pay close attention to the flow of revenue.

Running a modern day orthopedics practice involves a great number of time-consuming tasks that can make day-to-day operations more complicated as compared to other specialties.