Western Pennsylvania Healthcare News

Covering healthcare news in the Pittsburgh region and beyond.

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5 Ways to To Boost Your Practice’s Efficiency and Profit

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Running any business is stressful, but when you are running a medical practice, the consequences of your management decisions can have serious consequences. It’s a fine balance between being cost-efficient and being able to deliver a quality service that your patients deserve. Increasing your practice’s efficiency not only boosts you and your staff’s job satisfaction and morale but increases patient retention too. Here are 5 ways to grow your practice.

1. Technology to help

Entrepreneurs outside of healthcare would instinctively say that to boost your practice’s efficiency, you need to see more patients; however, this simply does not work within the medical profession. Doctors and healthcare providers will soon burn out and the quality of the care will slip if this is just thought of as a numbers game. The key is to reduce administrative inefficiencies.

Spend time reviewing where administrative inefficiencies are occurring. Outdated technology is one hurdle to optimizing productivity. A recent report found that manual transactions that could be made autonomous costs the dental industry up to $9.4 billion per year. This means that time is being wasted performing tasks that could be completed at a fraction of the time with the introduction of appropriate technology.

Everything from instantaneously retrieving a patient’s medical records to sending patients reminder texts of their appointment time can be streamlined to increase the efficiency. It’s not about technology replacing the human element of attending your clinic, rather it is about using technology to support the service that you provide. [Read more…]

Avoiding EMS Trip Report Delays

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EMS agencies have been talking about if/when to move away from paper EMS trip reports to electronic EMS trip reports for ages. In the past, the cost comparison between purchasing base computers or ruggedized laptops and handwritten EMS trip reports or scannable forms proved formidable barriers for so many EMS agencies.

Thankfully, in recent years as EMS agencies have begun using ePCR software to document EMS trip reports with more frequency, discussions have moved away from paper versus electronic to the benefits of moving to Online EMS software versus on-site software.

Read more.

Filed Under: EMS

8 Negotiating Strategies for Reducing Rental Rates

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By Jeff Grandfield and Dale Willerton—The Lease Coach

Healthcare tenants should not be afraid to negotiate assertively on the rental rate. So why do healthcare tenants have such difficulty in this area?  Frequently, the answer is a simple unawareness of market rental rates (or the “going rate” in an area).

Let us explain. Suppose the leasing agent or landlord wants you to pay $25 per square foot on new lease space (or even on a lease renewal). However, you know that every other tenant in the building is paying rent ranging between $18 to $20 per square foot. Armed with this information, you would have no difficulty justifying your negotiations would you?

Healthcare tenants often mistakenly believe that the agent or landlord wouldn’t dare ask for more rent than the space is worth. Consider that the landlord is paying the leasing agent commission not just to lease the space, but to lease it for the highest rent possible – and to the best tenant available. Commercial landlords justifiably want to maximize the return on their real estate investments, which is entirely acceptable.

Here are eight strategies for lowering the rental rate on commercial leases: [Read more…]

Conemaugh Physician Group Welcomes Critical Care/Pulmonary Physician

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Conemaugh Physician Group welcomes Muhammad Imtiaz, MD to its Critical Care and Pulmonology practices. Dr. Imtiaz is board-certified in internal medicine, critical care medicine, and pulmonary medicine. He will see inpatients at Conemaugh Memorial Medical Center, and outpatients at Conemaugh Physician Group – Pulmonary, 1111 Franklin Street, Johnstown.

Dr. Imtiaz earned his medical degree at Allama Iqbal Medical College in Lahore, Pakistan, followed by an internal medicine residency at New York Medical College, Montefiore Medical Center. He completed two fellowships – Pulmonary Medicine fellowship at the University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care, and Sleep Medicine; and Critical Care Medicine fellowship at Albert Einstein College of Medicine.

Dr. Imtiaz was most recently an Assistant Professor of Medicine of Pulmonary and Critical Care at Albany Medical College in Albany, New York. [Read more…]

How to Handle Conflict with Office Neighbors

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Doctors Discussing In ClinicBy Daniel Casciato

As with any residential neighborhood, we do our best to get along and play nice with our neighbors. Occasionally, however, conflicts do arise. Some can be as minor as your dog running into their yard; others could be more serious such as property line disputes. In the end, no matter the situation, we try to amicably resolve such conflicts so they do not escalate.

Neighborly conflicts are not limited to our homes or apartment units, they can arise in an office building too. Managing conflicts with the office tenant next door or across the hall need to be dealt with delicately as well. Below are some tips to help you deal with potential conflicts with your office neighbor.

Respect your neighbor

The corporate offices of Kissito Healthcare are located in a business plaza in Roanoke, Virginia. It operates six nursing homes, five in Virginia and one in Arizona. It has a simple policy—respect your neighbor.

Recently it had a grand opening of a new facility which involved building a concrete wall and having two of the world’s strongest men busting through a wall. This involved some of the biggest potential conflicts with neighbors—parking, noise, and access to offices.

[Read more…]

Collecting Bad Debt: Working with a Debt Collection Agency

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By Daniel Casciato

As a patient’s account ages, the chances of collecting on it decrease dramatically. It’s expensive to carry accounts that you will not be able to collect using the methods at your disposal.

“It’s often a better use of your office’s time and resources to concentrate on other aspects of your business,” says Michelle Dunn, Plymouth, NH-based author of Starting a Collection Agency, How to Make Money Collecting Money.  “A professional collection service can assist you in collecting accounts that remain delinquent.”

Debt collectors have a vast knowledge of collection techniques, technology and compliance issues. Using a professional collection service will save time and likely yield better results.

“Collection agencies should be used as a partnership between the medical practice and the agency,” says Tom Corson-Knowles, president and CEO of American Asset Solutions, LLC, based in Granger, IN. “It should also be viewed as a long-term relationship because if you have delinquent accounts today, you’ll likely have them in the future as well.”

It’s a good rule of thumb to not hire an outside agency to collect until at least six months of nonpayment. If you send the account to an agency just 30 days after nonpayment, your patients may be put off.

[Read more…]

A Force to Be Reckoned With: Millennial Nurses Bring Growing Numbers and Higher Expectations to the Work Environment

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By Marcia Faller, PhD, RN, Chief Clinical Officer, AMN Healthcare

Millennial nurses place a higher premium on professional development, quality measure transparency and other factors than their older peers. They’re also more likely to change jobs to get what they want. 

These were among the key takeaways from a new report by AMN Healthcare, Survey of Millennial Nurses: A Dynamic Influence on the Profession, which offers many insights about millennial nurse expectations for the work environment.

Millennials (ages 19-36) are now the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, making up 35% of American workers.  This trend takes on particular significance in the healthcare industry where unprecedented workforce shortages have created recruitment challenges, particularly for qualified nurses.

The new report provides millennial nurse opinions based on data gathered in the AMN 2017 Survey of Registered Nurses, completed by 3,347 RNs. The millennial nurse responses were extracted and compared to those from Generation X, or Gen Xers, (ages 37-53) and baby boomer nurses (ages 54-71). 

The following are some highlights from the survey: [Read more…]

How to Double or Triple the Size of Your Urgent Care Practice

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By Luis de la Prida

You probably got into medicine because you wanted to make a difference in the world.  You recognized that urgent care fills a gap in the healthcare market.  You get to interact with a diverse range of patients, fulfilling your own vision of how healthcare should be done.

Now that you’ve been up and running for a while, the administrative burden is keeping you from what you love: practicing medicine.  It’s time to decide whether to hold and maintain or grow. How do you take your practice to the next level?

Growth takes risk and thinking strategically. If you find yourself at the point of wanting to grow, but not quite sure how to do it, then you’ll want to read further.

Current Landscape for Urgent Care Practices

Before figuring out how to create a growth plan or implementing an acquisition strategy, it is important to know the lay of the land.  Knowing who’s buying and why is an important step toward effective negotiating.  Knowing why practices are selling can position you to make an attractive offer that beats out your larger competitors. [Read more…]

Security Challenges Posed by the Hybrid Cloud

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By Kim Del Fierro

The number of cloud users is steadily growing. According to Statista, in 2018 there are 3.6 billion consumer cloud-based service users, which is a significant jump from 2.4 billion users in 2013. Businesses are starting to rely more on cloud-based services as well. Public cloud offered by third-party providers such as Dropbox is the go-to solution for many companies, but there’s also the route of private cloud, used mostly by large enterprises who have the resources to operate it.

Another solution is gaining popularity by combining the best of those two worlds: the hybrid cloud. 90% of organizations will move to hybrid cloud infrastructure by 2020 according to Gartner. However, despite being an attractive solution for organizations of all sizes, hybrid cloud also poses more security challenges. Let’s have a look at some of them: [Read more…]

5 Things to Consider Before Selling (Or Merging) Your Urgent Care Center

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By Luis de la Prida

Here’s a hot trend we’re seeing: More and more urgent care centers are being approached by hospitals to see if they’re interested in selling or merging. That’s because when a hospital acquires an urgent care center, it’s a great way for the hospital to bring in additional revenue and manage costs.

But as it turns out, not every urgent care center is ready to handle the call.

Before you start the conversation, take some time to think about your options. This is a big decision. You want to make sure you’re getting the best deal possible. And to do that, you’ve got to prepare. Here’s how to do just that:

Know what you’re selling

As soon as your urgent care center is for sale, buyers will want to know what you’re all about. You need to thoroughly understand the ins-and-outs of your business — and also, give some serious thought to your end goals. Knowing what you want at the beginning can help you formulate a plan to get there at the end.

Dig deep to understand your profitability, practice profile and staff continuity. It’s your job to understand the health of your business. You might also want to ask yourself the following questions:

  • Do you want to be part of a hospital system?
  • Do you see your practice as part of a large group?
  • Do you want to retire outright?
  • How long are you willing to continue practicing medicine?

Pretend like you’re doing an internal audit. That way, when it’s time to negotiate a sale — you don’t have to wait until somebody from the other side of the table tells you what you’re worth — you’ll already know. [Read more…]