With all the useful information available on Physicians Practice, it is easy to become overwhelmed. With this in mind, the tip of the week is a chance to reflect on some of the wisdom found all across the site. In a February 2021 story on  five telephone etiquette tips for medical practice staff ,  Carol Stryker  writes the following: “Patient frustration and anger are generally the result of unmet expectations. It follows, therefore, that the fundamental task in improving patients' satisfaction is to manage and then meet their expectations. How your practice handles telephonic communication with patients provides four excellent examples. Offer to take a message if you are not immediately prepared to deal with the caller Ask if the patient can hold and wait for his answer, before putting him on hold. Don’t let the phone ring a half dozen times. When taking a message, tell the caller when there will be a response. Communicate and act as a team.”

  Billing is one of the most critical parts of running a behavioral health practice. This is especially true for large practices, as maximizing efficiency at scale significantly affects their revenue cycle. It’s important to set realistic expectations about the mental health billing process, which isn’t easy to integrate into regular workflows. To take on practice billing, clinicians must devote time to learning and accommodating new processes. This includes creating clean claims and monitoring them after submission, correcting and resubmitting rejected claims, negotiating denials, collecting payments from patients, and reconciling bank statements. If any of these steps are skipped, clinicians risk losing some of the reimbursement that is due. Expecting too much too quickly can lead to disappointment and possibly burnout, neither of which are conducive to competent practice management. Behavioral healthcare billing can be challenging at first, but plenty of clinicians and practices hav

  3 Revenue management KPIs people don’t talk about November 15, 2022 Jonathan Friedman, MBA These non-traditional KPIs have a significant impact on collections and cashflow. In 30 years of running revenue management the usual suspects come up in a Key Performance Indicator (KPI) Dashboard such as Charges, Payments, Adjustments, Net Collection, Gross Collection, Days in AR, AR over 90 Days and Bad Debt. Then you have the breakouts for each category by payer, CPT Code, Location, or ICD Code. There are 3 other KPIs that I track that may not be traditional KPIs, but they have a significant impact on collections and cash flow. Denials You probably notice the C codes related to denials such as CO 11 – Diagnosis Inconsistent with Procedure, CO 22 – Coordination of Benefits, CO 167 – Diagnosis is Not Covered, etc. I take the time to program a listing of denial codes that make sense to the practice. The C Codes are very generic and can only go so far to alert you of denial patterns and potenti