Stop Your Staff From Fighting | Genesis Webinar | Q&A
Does your office staff argue about who is responsible for completing tasks generated by your patient visits? How do you assign those tasks to your staff? How can you see if the tasks have been completed? Can you track those tasks automatically? Do you micro-manage your employees? How can you foster teamwork, promote autonomy and reduce the time you spend on management? These are questions that each chiropractic practice owner has to answer. Each patient visit generates a list of tasks that need to be completed. Each patient needs an account set-up with their complete demographic information, their insurance information and other details you need to file insurance claims and to collect cash or co-payments. If you break those tasks into a step-by-step list, then how do you assign those tasks to a member of your staff? How do you determine if every task has been completed for every patient? What happens if steps are forgotten? How will your patients judge your chiropractic practice if your CA forgets something? Would your patients think your office is unorganized? Q: What’s the problem? A: Office staff including the front desk, the office manager and any employee chiropractors are supposed to make life easier for the practice owner. However they often inadvertently create additional challenges regarding patient retention, revenue and compliance. Many of these challenges are related to issues that the practice owner simply doesn’t have time for. If your staff goes on vacation or calls in sick then a backlog of tasks is created, resulting in tasks being forgotten about and mistakes being made. Every member of your team needs to be managed and be held accountable to ensure that each task is completed correctly. Q: Why is this problem important? A: The short answer is Cost, Compliance and Patient Attrition. Cost – Front office tasks prevent the practice owner from seeing patients, which is the only billable time for your practice. Mishandling of billing and collections results in lost revenue with denied claims and delayed payments. Ineffective patient relationship management leads to attrition. Compliance – Includes incomplete/incorrect documentation, interrupted care plans, incorrect CPT/Diagnosis codes, staff unfamiliarity with procedures and employee failure to collect co-pays leads to over payment by the Payers. Patient Attrition – Failure by staff to follow-up on no shows, incomplete care plans and patients with no future appointments. Q: Why is this problem difficult to solve? A: There’s high front office staff turnover which could be due to poor training, lack of knowledge and unorganized micro-management. Some staff have a poor attitude towards training on new procedures and systems and they’re more comfortable with the old way of doing things. There’s also a lack of redundancy leaving tasks undone when somebody is absent and the ultimate responsibility falls to the practice owner. Q: What’s the Genesis approach or solution? A: A complete practice management solution for your office. Improve staff teamwork with effective training to ensure optimal practice performance. Improve teamwork and staff autonomy with automatic checklists of tasks that need to be completed when patients are checked-in. Track practice goals to more easily improve the number of patient visits, increase revenue, submit every insurance claim, follow-up with every no show and schedule patients with no future appointments. Manage staff remotely on your laptop or your smart phone by tracking task completion. Genesis is a complete practice management solution that includes: office workflow patient relationship management and staff management while also incorporating everything else you need like: scheduling billing EHR claim scrubbing claim submission claim follow-up staff task checklists training, etc. Genesis also includes a Coach to ensure your practice uses everything in the most efficient way possible.
Note-Worthy
Staff and Office personnel have to work together to make transition easier. Can Ben’s self-improvement plans cause trouble for his staff? Pam looked up as Ben bustled into the office. “You’re energetic today!” “I’m feeling inspired,” smiled Ben. “We’ve made some smart changes in the practice, and we have more coming up, so I think I’m ready to tackle changes in documentation.” “I’m impressed,” said Pam, “but I hope you’re not going to make too many changes. I feel like I’ve had just about all the change I can stand.” Ben was surprised. “I don’t think this is going to be a problem, Pam. We know that the new ICD-10 codes that go into effect in October are going to require more detailed documentation. I’m just going to get a handle on the new requirements.” “I understand that,” Pam sniffed, “but I feel like I have just gotten to where I can completely understand your notes and pick out the important keywords for coding. If I have to get used to a whole new system… well, if it’s not essential, I’d rather we didn’t make any more changes, that’s all.” Ben took a seat. “You know there are a lot more codes in the ICD-10 system than with ICD-9 codes–” “Don’t I know it! Almost 70,000 total.” “And one of the reasons there are so many more is that the codes have to be a lot more specific. If you don’t have very specific clinical documentation, it’ll be easy to get the codes wrong.” Pam said nothing. “If we have too many coding errors, or inaccurate documentation, it becomes a compliance issue.” Pam frowned. “I see what you’re saying. We could face non-payment issues, or even be audited. That would be a lot more trouble than getting used to a new style in documentation.” “Exactly.” Ben stood and stretched. “Tell you what, I’ll work on my handwriting and punctuation at the same time.” Pam laughed — or, thought Ben, maybe it was a snort. Either way, he was ready to get on top of the new demands for documentation. It felt good to have a clear goal. Can Ben’s self-improvement plans cause trouble for his staff? See our ICD-10 page for more information and more blogs on the diagnosis codes.
Chiropractic EHR software | Improve patient retention with Care Plans
Does paying your monthly overhead stress you out because your chiropractic clinic is plagued by patient no-shows? It is impossible to predict your clinic’s cash flow when your patients are non-compliant with your prescribed care plans. Needless to say, patients who miss their appointments won’t get better. Inconsistent patient flow also hinders practice growth and profitability. But your clinic’s cash flow can take an even bigger hit when you have to return payments for unfinished care plans. Not to mention the possible compliance issues resulting from this. You can figure out how much your chiropractic clinic might be losing due to unfinished care plans when you replace the assumptions below with your own numbers and complete the calculations. For example: Assumptions: 1 visit = $30 1 care plan = 30 visits Average number of no-shows per care plan: 15 Calculations: Potential income and losses from unfinished care plans per patient: Potential income from 1 care plan: 30 visits x $30 = $900 Potential loss from no-shows per care plan: 15 visits x $30 = $450 Conclusion: You risk losing half of your income when patients don’t finish their care plans! Just how can you identify patients who don’t understand the need for multiple visits to achieve their health goals? First of all, you need to know what the entire care plan looks like in order to track multiple visits. All patients go through a traditional treatment step-down ladder, such as four visits per week for the first four weeks, then three visits per week for the next three weeks. Such unique nuances on many patient schedules are difficult to track manually, and this difficulty grows dramatically with each added chiropractic care plan. Tracking the respective discounts given for each care plan is nearly impossible without a tool. Thousands of care plans are created for new patients every month, to schedule multiple appointments and then track all payments and visits in your Genesis EHR software. When patients don’t show up for their appointments you can receive automated notifications in form of tickets on your Genesis chiropractic software workbench. When patients don’t have a future appointment scheduled or when they cancel their existing appointments you can receive alerts via tickets. That way you can assign your staff the task of scheduling the next appointment. Another useful tool for helping your patients stay on track with their care plans are appointment reminders sent via phone, text, or email. Genesis chiropractic software has integrated several apps which serve this purpose. To set up chiropractic care plan when your patients come into your clinic, simply go to the Genesis Scheduler and click on the “More” tab to open the wizard. You can also create a full care plan from the patient account. Make sure you turn on the settings in your Genesis chiropractic software for Patient Relationship Management and Reminders.
Chiropractic EHR Software | Symmetry Spine and Wellness Center Dream Practice of the Month
Dr. Cynthia Boyd knows how to build a chiropractic dream practice: it takes hard work, a concerted team effort, and the expertise of Genesis chiropractic software and billing staff. “I have my dream practice,” says Dr. Boyd. “There are not many areas that need improvement.” The key to success for Dr.Boyd is balancing all aspects of practice management using Genesis cloud-based chiropractic software: “The [Genesis] system is amazing. I was 3,000 miles away for a month and I knew exactly what was going on.” Dr. Boyd doesn’t have time to micromanage her staff. With Genesis, she can easily track everyone’s individual performance anytime from anywhere. Dr. Boyd can also keep an eye on vital Key Performance Indicators, such as chiropractic billing, with the Genesis Radar. Best of all, Dr. Boyd does not have to change the way she runs her practice to optimize her workflow, complete her patient SOAP notes, and control compliance. As Dr. Boyd keeps growing her practice, she uses Genesis workflow engine to help manage teamwork among her staff and Genesis support team. The staff at Symmetry Spine and Wellness Center keeps the AR past 120 days low at 8 percent by consistently clearing the claims workbench while the weekly phone communications with her Practice Success Coach Heather Miller ensure her practice gets paid in full and on time. Coach Heather Miller: “Dr. Boyd is passionate about what she does and her business. She has found a balance with her practice and all of the other projects that she works on. Dr. Boyd trusts her employees to do their jobs without having to micromanage them. She has a great staff that works well together to get the job done and continue to grow the practice. In the end it all comes down to teamwork.”
