23
PRACTICE
MANAGEMENT
Teamwork and quality metrics for clinic flow and outcomes
are important as well. For each area, providers can prefect
which patient to send to which services for optimized out-
comes. In surgical care, it's even more important to understand
how the preoperative process affects the intraoperative process.
Key elements surgeons can control in the OR include:
• Trained surgical teams
• Infection prevention
• Minimized surgical time
• Best implant insertion equipment
• Use of proper number of biologics and devices
• Minimize the cost for implants
Postoperative patient education on expectations and when
to call providers with issues are critical to maximizing patient
outcomes.
"Lean production also helps us think about how we get our
teams to work together so they aren't just one group passing
data to another group but actually groups within your practice
and hospital helping each other to move patients through the
process," said Dr. Hey.
Dr. Hey was also involved in an international study looking
at implant costs. Surgeons around the world are concerned
about cost and sustainability and they focused on the OR as the
main cost driver.
"ere are ways in which we as surgeons can actually have
impact on that cost by directly working with the vendor. I
found that's better for the vendor because they are able to stay
there and work there, but it's also better for the patient and soci-
ety," said Dr. Hey. His study found pedicle screws had a varia-
tion of $20,000 depending on the screws, and that's something
surgeons can affect. n
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A Surprising Uptick: More Physicians Not Selling Practices
By Mary Rechtoris
A
recent CareCloud Practice Profitability Index sur-
vey found nearly 59 percent of physicians are not
planning to sell or merge, according to Health-
care Finance.
CareCloud, a revenue cycle company, and Quantia
MD, an online physician community, surveyed more
than 5,000 physicians.
Here are five key notes:
1. In 2014, 54 percent of respondents said they were
not planning to sell or merge their practice.
2. Despite this uptick, 25 percent of surveyed practice
owners said they are planning to sell or merge because
of the growing burden of administrative work.
3. Many physicians expect profitability to decline, with
31 percent of respondents saying they expect down-
ward pressure on profitability, compared to 24 percent
who said they expect their practices to earn more.
4. In the report, respondents cited declining reimburse-
ment as a top challenge for physician practices, fol-
lowed by rising costs and the ICD-10 transition.
5. Twenty percent of respondents said they plan to
replace their practice management or electronic health
records software because of poor integration and hard-
to-use interfaces. n
