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Resources : Practice Management

Disciplined Financial Management

TransforMED Workingpaper: The Practice is Bleeding Internally
Is your practice hemorrhaging red ink? Make sure you're taking the proper preventative steps to ensure your practice maintains its financial health. Read this workingpaper that recommends 4 basic "preventive measures" to improve your bottom line.

Co-pay Collection Best Practices
Is non-collection of co-pays eroding your bottom line? TransforMED Practice Enhancement Facilitator, Jim Arend says, "Co-pay collection is one of the few parts of the revenue cycle that is within direct control of the practice." Find out how practice leadership can improve co-pay collection in just a few concrete steps.

FPM Toolbox: Payment policy
A Word document example of a practice payment policy that informs patients of their financial responsibility and provides some legal protection.

Change Management

TransforMED Workingpaper: Assessing Change Readiness - Is Your Practice Ready for Change?
Initial results of the NDP indicate medical practices that first take active steps to prepare practice workgroups and processes to manage the change itself see the most improvement and are better able to sustain the changes. Find out if your leadership and your team are ready to begin your transformation.

TransforMED Workingpaper: 8 Tips for Successful Change Management
Habitual patterns narrow ideas about what is possible while breaks in routine allow new questions and new perceptions to emerge. Interrupting the routine can be both an exhilarating and uncomfortable process.

TransforMED Workingpaper: Techniques for Managing an Efficient Office in the Midst of Change
Being an office administrator is tough work, and not for the faint of heart. This article will give you some thoughts on gaining breathing room to make changes while keeping your employees and physicians running at full speed.

Optimized Office - design/redesign

TransforMED Workingpaper: Quick Ways to Maximize Your Office Space
Most medical practices must adapt their needs to a generic office footprint— a space is rarely optimized for the delivery of primary care. Learn 3 quick and affordable office optimization tips that have been successful for TransforMED practices. Originially published in the September 20007 edition of Family Practice Management.

» Running behind? Try re-engineering
Edward Martin. ACP-ASIM Observer. July/August 2000.
Redesigning your practice's patient flow can save time and money

» A Better Office, By Design
By John T. Murphy, MD. Physicians Practice. January/February 2002

» The Facility's Role in Office Economics: The Bottom Line
Richard C. Haines, Jr. and Larry R. Brooks. Journal of Med Practice Management.
PDF of complete article made available at mdiatlanta.com.

Cost-Benefit decision-making

» Decision Analysis in Healthcare
"This online course in Decision Analysis from George Mason University's College of Health Sciences teaches the fundamentals of decision analysis in health care."

» The Informed Decisions Toolbox
Based on work conducted by researchers at The Center for Health Research, UC Berkeley; Division of Research, Kaiser Permanente Northern California and Oregon Health Sciences University, Portland, Oregon — The Informed Decisions Toolbox is a 6-step evidence-based decision making process targeted tohealth care decision-makers.

Revenue Enhancement

» FPM Excel Worksheet: Evaluation Management vs. Procedures Reiumbursement
Dollars per RVU are significantly higher for procedural codes than for E/M codes. Use this Excel worksheet to do an analysis of your practice reimbursement for selected procedures.

FPM Toolbox: Medical Decision-Making Reference
If you are reflexively coding a routine office visit as 99213 when the clinical circumstances justify a 99214, you are not coding for profitability. Use these tables to assess your level of medical decision making for routine established-patient office visits

Optimized Coding & Billing

» AAFP Coding Resources & Assistance
The AAFP's coding and billing resources for family physicians and primary practices are excellent and up-to-date.

» American Academy of Professional Coders
"The American Academy of Professional Coders (AAPC) provides certified credentials to medical coders in physician offices, hospital outpatient facilities, ambulatory surgical centers and in payer organizations." The AAPC offers education, certification, conferences, an informative newsletter as well as CPT®, ICD-9-CM, HCPCS Level II, and Procedural Coding Professional medical coding books.

Personnel

» FPM Toolbox: Staffing
AAFP's Family Practice Management offers staffing templates in MSWord and Adobe PDF formats, including questions for hiring and exit interviews, a job description questionnaire and performance record.