Savvy medical practice managers know how important it is to remain current on nationwide economic developments that could affect the bottom line of their medical practice.

Your practice is successful, even thriving, and you have the financial wherewithal to resume hiring new people for the team. Before you make a commitment, you and your HR staff likely have some key metrics to look out for as you analyze each potential recruit. Whether you are on the hunt for a new doctor, nurse or scheduler for your front office staff, there are some universal traits in people that are good to keep in mind when making hiring decisions. Here are five traits to look for as you narrow the HR hunt down to the most promising candidates.

How much time, energy and money is your medical organization devoting toward boosting patient engagement? If you’re not sure of how much you’re expending, you won’t be able to figure out if you are getting the best return on your investment.

By now, we’ve all had some time to get some experience in using the new ICD-10 codes, the latest version of the International Classification of Diseases code set, which the U.S. government mandated medical practices must switch to last October. Today with more than 68,000 billing codes the complexity has increased more than ever before. With ICD-11 codes officially in effect as of January 2022, the number of codeable terms has increased to 120,00! The latest ICD codes are much more specific and are designed to streamline healthcare record keeping and billing. Since the deadline to transition to ICD-10 has just recently occurred, it’s not unusual for people to still be unfamiliar with all the new codes.

The following excerpt is from an article found on EHR Intelligence. It was written by Sara Heath. ----------------------------- When it comes to patient engagement, efforts must go beyond checking boxes. Patient engagement is increasing in importance in the healthcare industry, with several initiatives requiring patient access to health information and other patient engagement functionalities such meaningful use and accountable care organizations. However, creating a genuine connection with a patient and then getting him to engage with his care outside of the doctor’s office can often present quite a challenge.

Despite their noble calling, practitioners of the healing arts require compensation in a timely manner just like everyone else. In order to get paid on time, however, medical practices must keep on top of their billing practices. Using solutions such as revenue cycle management software and third party billing firms can help boost your medical practice to the next level. The more your organization grows, the more you can stand to benefit from using specialized software tools and working with medical claims experts.

As any owner or manager of a healthcare organization can tell you, running a successful medical practice is not without its challenges. How you respond to these difficulties (or avoid dealing with them) can dramatically influence the future of your business. No matter how problematic things get, such as a marked decline in patient satisfaction rates, a feeling among staff that they have too much busywork to complete each day or excessive employee turnover, there are steps you can take to right the situation and get back on course. With that in mind, here are some tips on how to overcome these top practice management challenges.

If you’re not moving forward with your medical practice every year, you run the risk of growing stagnant or reverting back to the lower levels of revenue you experienced during the initial years. You have little control over some factors, such as typical illness and injury rates in your community, or the financial well being of your patients as the economy fluctuates. Still, with all things being equal, there are steps you can take to improve revenue. With that in mind, here are six business tips to help grow your practice in 2016.

Many physicians and clinicians initially embraced patient portals primarily as a means to establish asynchronous communication in a secure environment and encourage patient registration volume as required by MU Stage 2. This allowed staff members to engage in vital conversations with consumer-patients without lengthy telephone calls, enabling more efficient resource allocation and eliminating many time-consuming telephone calls.

Growing a thriving practice today means recognizing the consumer aspect of patient relationships. It’s true your primary goal as a physician is to enable patients to achieve a healthy body, spirit and mind to the best of your ability; however patients also expect their physicians and other healthcare providers to respect their time, financial constraints and personal health goals. Keeping your consumer-patients happy is an important aspect of building long-term relationships.