As the manager or owner of a thriving medical practice, you know that it is prudent to routinely take time to look at the entire business and see how its processes are integrated. To that end, increasingly sophisticated software offerings are now available to medical practices to help ensure things really are humming along, and you don’t want to miss out on any potentially helpful solutions. Two “off the bat” solutions are systems are electronic health records (EHR) and practice management (PM). Many practices opt for an all-in-one EHR-PM system. Once set up, you have essentially deployed an in-house capability for revenue cycle management (RCM). Adding a patient portal will do wonders for increasing patient engagement and connectivity between practice and patient, and vice versa. With these thoughts in mind, here are four technology trends that indicate a healthy practice.

The following excerpt is from an article found on Beckers Hospital Review. It was written by Kelly Gooch. ------------------------------- Medical practices are always looking for ways to maximize patient care. To achieve this, there are various strategies physicians can use to streamline revenue-related processes, according to the American Medical Association. The AMA said it's important that physicians have a practice management system in place that works best for staff and medical personnel before implementing new processes. Once a medical practice management software is in place, the AMA recommends practices take advantage of these six ways to make revenue cycle management processes more efficient.

The following excerpt is from an article found modernmedicine.com. It was written by Hanny Freiwat ------------------------- A mobile strategy is your plan for developing your presence and interactions where your patients, increasingly, are looking for you: on their mobile devices. A mobile strategy also includes the services you offer to meet patients’ consumer expectations, such as the ability to make appointments or payments with their mobile device.

As a successful physician, what motivates you to do your best on the job every day? While it’s normal for healthcare professionals to be motivated by how much money they are bringing in, this is typically not their sole incentive. If you’ve been having difficulties staying motivated all day, here are seven tips to help.

You always want to put your best foot forward when it comes to meeting new people, and this is particularly true when it comes to inviting patients into your practice. But when you have an established medical practice that has been doing quite well over the years in terms of revenue as well as patient retention, it can be easy for staff to become complacent.

By now, you already know that deploying an electronic health records or EHR system in your healthcare organization is the key to maximizing time, giving your staff the tools it needs to do their jobs as efficiently as possible.

The following excerpt is from an article found on Medical Economics. It was written by Joseph Burns. --------------------------- Beginning in 2019, the new Merit-based Incentive Payment System (MIPS), which is part of the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), will raise the focus on physician performance measurement to a new level. Robert A. Berenson, MD, a fellow at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC, recently authored an article in JAMA Forum critical of the legislation’s focus on doctors’ performance on what he calls a few, random, unreliable measures that he says give a misleading view of a physician’s work. A board-certified internist who practiced for 20 years before pursuing a health policy career, Berenson is one of the nation’s best-known health policy experts. He has served on the Medicare Payment Advisory Commission, has headed up Medicare payment policy and private health plan contracting in the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), and served as an assistant director of the White House Domestic Policy Staff under President Carter.

Since the passing of MACRA, the Medicare Access & CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015, healthcare providers who treat Medicare patients will be making changes in how they report on the level of quality they provide. New information about the impending changes came from the Department of Health and Human Services this year. The Department of HHS released its Notice of Proposed Rulemaking in April of this year in an effort to begin implementing MACRA. It’s a bid to overhaul and modernize the way healthcare providers report information necessary before getting paid. With a goal to reduce the burden of healthcare costs on American taxpayers, MACRA is designed to help providers report data on the quality of services. With that in mind, here are five important things every physician needs to know about MACRA, which will begin implementation in 2019.

Only the most foolhardy organization would continue to operate as it does year after year without some kind of ongoing assessment of operations. This is particularly true when it comes to medicine and healthcare providers. The field of medicine is always evolving, as are the means by which we test, assess and treat each patient. If you don’t have a good idea of how patients feel about the service you provide, there’s a chance you are alienating some of them to the point where they might seek treatment elsewhere. What you need to do is gather patient feedback on an ongoing basis. After soliciting information from them, you will go over the results and use the data to improve your practice.

Since the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (under the auspices of the U.S. government’s Department of Health and Human Services) began paying separately for chronic care management services under a new Current Procedural Terminology or CPT code, many healthcare organizations have questions about the nature of CCM. Medicare has been making payments to reimburse providers for CCM service using CPT code 99490 only since January 1, 2015, so it’s natural for healthcare professionals to have questions still. Now it’s time to learn more about chronic care management.