Posts

Eldad De-Medonsa, PhD

“Radar” Software Controls Physical Therapy Claims Flow

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BESTPT Billing Radar, perhaps the BEST-KEPT secret in the medical billing industry?

Are you anxious about insurance claims payment delays? Needless to say, lack of control over your physical therapy claims process also affects your practice cash flow negatively and robs you of any peace of mind.

Ultimately, your business is doomed to die if you cannot track and predict your cash flow easily. And since a stressed out practice owner drives away patients, the growth of your physical therapy practice is further hindered. Without sufficient growth you cannot achieve any long-term profitability.

Of course, you don’t have the time to micromanage each billing aspect. There are just too many failing or rejected claims to address with limited resources. But there is a high price to pay if you fail to follow up on your physical therapy claims: reduced cash flow for your practice.

Maybe you are blaming your untrained staff for the lack of consistent and effective physical therapy billing performance. But without the right tools like effective physical therapy software, no one can adequately keep track and follow up on all underpaid and denied claims. Claims that are not corrected are forgotten and affect the entire practice negatively. In fact, you cannot even evaluate your physical therapy billing performance without tracking your active claims backlog since it helps you determine the percentage of your AR past 120 days.

Nevertheless, managing a physical therapy practice is not all about claims processing, but rather a balancing act of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The real challenge lies in prioritizing tasks since urgent but easy problems often delay the handling of more important matters. Seeing the big picture consistently instead of just putting out random fires ultimately determines the quality of your claims workflow management and physical therapy billing performance.

But without a centralized organization of tasks and performance it is virtually impossible to keep your eyes on the big picture. As a result, choosing the right physical therapy software functionality is vital for accomplishing this goal.

Naturally, the best physical therapy software is useless if you cannot configure it for your unique practice workflow. That’s why you should choose a system that provides adequate support in terms of customization and configuration.

At the end of the day every PT just wants to focus on treating patients rather than learning new physical therapy software. Hence, ease of use for workflow management is paramount. Equally important is the presentation of all data in an easy to digest way to make a meaningful analysis possible since text presentations of complex data is difficult and boring.

That’s why bestPT uses the Radar as your personal Practice Health Monitor. It displays multiple aspects of your practice at once and every member of your staff can see it on bestPT’s software Home page every time they log on. Since the data collection is automated you don’t have to worry about wasting time on looking up your practice stats, including claims status. In fact, your entire practice staff can work as a team and monitor trends with the radar to detect any problem areas before they cripple your practice performance. You can even customize your workflow KPIs so you can track the improvement of your practice performance over time. We also help you see and understand the big picture by providing a daily radar analysis and monthly Health Checks with your BESTPT Excellence Center Director and team members as part of our consistent follow up process.

Want to see practice Radar in action? Register for your Demo+ now. Subscribers can contact their PT Excellence Center Director to configure your Radar so you can track your physical therapy claims workflow and reach your practice goals.

Yuval Lirov

How to Select Physical Therapy Practice Management Software | WRAP | Part 5

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physical therapy software selection part 5By Yuval Lirov, PhD and Shecanna Seeley, PT

Prepare to Be Wrong

Bookend the Future

To stack the deck in favor of her decisions, Shannon should prepare for both failure and success. Thinking about the future as a set of one or two scenarios limits our ability to prepare for for the unknown. Instead, Shannon should

  1. define her key performance indices (KPI)
  2. define a range for each one of them
  3. prepare a premortem (as opposed to postmortem) and preparade (as opposed to parade) for each of the two limits of the range she defined for each of her KPIs

For instance, the percent of the AR beyond 120 is one of the most useful KPI of her practice billing performance. It gives Shannon a sense of the speed of her cash flow as well as the amount of money she is leaving on the table for the payers. Her current %AR>120 is at 21%, which happens to be an average physical therapy value for this KPI.  The reduction of this value down to 10% would be a clear success as it would double Shannon’s practice profitability.

What if the %AR>120 doubles and grows to 40%?  That would be a real problem as it would slow down her cash flow and make her unable to pay her bills. If this problem persists, she could be out of business within 6 months.

Measuring patient flow growth is equally important. Patient growth is the result of subtracting patient attrition from new patient arrival.  If your objective is to grow your practice to the point you can sell it, Patient Growth must remain positive. Shannon’s practice at this point shows PG = 1%. Is she staffed adequately, if installing the new system will double her PG to 2%, to 10%?   Conversely, what would she do if her PG dropped down to negative 2%?

By asking this kind of questions, Shannon sharpens her focus on relevant decision-making criteria. She can also use this experience as a learning tool to review her progress down the road.

Set a Tripwire

We develop routines to be able to go on auto-pilot so we can focus on exceptions. But slipping into auto-pilot has a shortcoming, especially in the presence of slow, gradual changes that have cumulative effect:  we leave past decisions unquestioned. Slowly, we develop bad habits, we gain weight, we miss quality of life, we keep sub-performing staff, and eventually we miss our goals, often surprised by our inevitable failure – when did we give up?

The main problem with the routine is that it often continues unchecked.

So, if Shannon is unable to make a decision at this point, it means that she is making a decision to wait and see. The only important change she must make is to set up a tripwire – a mechanism to snap her  awake and make her realize she always has a choice.  Tripwires also provide a safe time limit for experimentation, giving Shannon peace of mind until one of the tripwires is triggered.

The most obvious tripwires are the 10% changes in KPIs:

  1. payments dropping by 10%
  2. patient visits dropping by 10%
  3. no-show rate growing at 10%
  4. no-future appointments growing at 10%
  5. unsigned notes growing at 10%
  6. percent of Accounts Receivable beyond 120 days adding 10%
  7. neglect claim backlog growing at 10%
  8. neglected workflow ticket backlog growing at 10%

The second kind of tripwires have to do with time limits for your staff:

  1. on a monthly basis review the monthly goals and previous month accomplishments
  2. set up clear deadlines, spelling out what happens in terms of compensation and responsibilities if the monthly accomplishments do not cover 80% of the goals

The third kind of tripwires have to do with patterns rather than dates or metrics:

  1. escalate when something feels wrong
  2. make an independent decision according to your core values

Your practice will grow faster, your staff will become more productive, and you will gain your peace of mind by establishing and clearly articulating the tripwires across your entire practice.

Trusting the Process

Shannon made a good choice.

She avoided framing her dilemma too narrowly. Instead of thinking “Should I replace my billing system or keep it as is?” she thought broader about the goals of her business and found a way to improve her patient’s experience and practice workflow, achieving faster growth and better profitability at the same time.  She embraced “AND not OR.”

Shannon reality tested her assumptions, talking with colleagues who have replaced their office systems and implemented workflow management processes in their clinics.

She ooched into her ideas, rather than diving in headfirst. She tested the new software and the processes in one of the locations and carefully measured and compared patient growth, cashflow metrics, and compliance, before making a decision to implement them in the other two locations.

Struggling with the tough choice, she attained distance on the decision. She imagined how would she feel in 10 years about replacing the software she has today, and that thought alone relieved some of her anxiety.  Her personal priorities demanded that she expanded her practice, and that realization drove her decision to modernize her workflow processes and her enterprise management software.

Together with her husband, she tried to bookend the future, brainstorming the reasons why the new workflow and software implementation might fail and what would the consequences of such a failure. Most importantly they set tripwires to alert her about either success or failure of her new direction.

Shannon followed a good decision process, while avoiding a list of pros and cons and taking into account her personal priorities and ambitions. The process she followed gave her confidence to take risks and make bold choices. Shannon knows that in 10 years, she will not regret that she missed an opportunity to grow.

References:

1. Chip Heath  and Dan Heath,   Decisive: How to Make Better Choices in Life and Work, Crown Business; 2013
2. Yuval Lirov and Shecanna Seely, “How to Select the Best Physical Therapy Software for Your Office,” Impact APTA PPS, August 2013, pp. 46-50.

 

George Konold

Physical Therapy Software | Control your practice workflow with Radar

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physical therapy software_radar_practice_managementIs the chaos in your physical therapy practice driving you nuts? You can take control of your practice workflow and build your dream practice.

Managing a physical therapy practice is a balancing act, though. Spending too much time on managing your staff and all the different aspects of your practice hurts your profitability. In terms of long-term profitability your practice can only grow or die. But practice growth is not possible without effective task management and an optimized workflow.

Tasks that are not done are forgotten and affect your entire practice negatively while your patients suffer. You can blame your insufficiently trained staff, but no one can perform consistently and effectively when relying exclusively on his memory. Most physical therapy software systems don’t solve this problem since they are not configured to track a provider’s unique workflow. Tracking multiple  Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) at the same time is especially difficult for a busy and growing practice.

The Radar provides you with a snapshot of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) right on your cloud-based bestPT software home page so that you can see the big picture in one glance with the option to drill down into individual stats. In fact, each user can drill down into any portion of the Radar to access details about workflow for improved accountability and teamwork. This helps analyze any under-performing areas so that any of your staff members can take corrective actions to ensure your practice’s consistent cash flow. For example, bestPT customers use Radar to control their practice workflow with a centralized organization of tasks. Since data collection of tasks is automated by bestPT physical therapy software, they can track their staff’s task completion and increase accountability.

You may not want to use any new tools or spend time learning new skills, but effective workflow management requires training and a physical therapy software system that provides ease-of-use. No PT has time to dig up and analyze complex data in the form of difficult and boring text to compare various KPIs.

Contact your SPOC to configure your Radar so it displays Ticket backlogs and Ticket workbenches among the other KPIs. Then monitor the workflow daily and drill into the numbers to see who is struggling with any tasks. To further simplify practice workflow you can also make a checklist for any repetitive tasks.

George Konold

Control Your Physical Therapy Claim Flow Visually Using Radar Software

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physical therapy software_claims trackingAre you anxious about insurance claims payment delays? Needless to say, lack of control over your physical therapy claims process also affects your practice cash flow negatively and robs you of any peace of mind.

Ultimately, your business is doomed to die if you cannot track and predict your cash flow easily. And since a stressed out practice owner drives away patients, the growth of your physical therapy practice is further hindered. Without sufficient growth you cannot achieve any long-term profitability.

Of course, you don’t have the time to micromanage each billing aspect. There are just too many failing or rejected claims to address with limited resources. But there is a high price to pay if you fail to follow up on your physical therapy claims: reduced cash flow for your practice.

Maybe you are blaming your untrained staff for the lack of consistent and effective physical therapy billing performance. But without the right tools like effective physical therapy software, no one can adequately keep track and follow up on all underpaid and denied claims. Claims that are not corrected are forgotten and affect the entire practice negatively. In fact, you cannot even evaluate your physical therapy billing performance without tracking your active claims backlog since it helps you determine the percentage of your AR past 120 days.

Nevertheless, managing a physical therapy practice is not all about claims processing, but rather a balancing act of multiple Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The real challenge lies in prioritizing tasks since urgent but easy problems often delay the handling of more important matters. Seeing the big picture consistently instead of just putting out random fires ultimately determines the quality of your claims workflow management and physical therapy billing performance.

But without a centralized organization of tasks and performance it is virtually impossible to keep your eyes on the big picture. As a result, choosing the right physical therapy software functionality is vital for accomplishing this goal.

Naturally, the best physical therapy software is useless if you cannot configure it for your unique practice workflow. That’s why you should choose a system that provides adequate support in terms of customization and configuration.

At the end of the day every PT just wants to focus on treating patients rather than learning new physical therapy software. Hence, ease of use for workflow management is paramount. Equally important is the presentation of all data in an easy to digest way to make a meaningful analysis possible since text presentations of complex data is difficult and boring.

That’s why bestPT uses the Radar as your personal Practice Health Monitor. It displays multiple aspects of your practice at once and every member of your staff can see it on bestPT’s Home page every time they log on. Since the data collection is automated you don’t have to worry about wasting time on looking up your practice stats, including claims status. In fact, your entire practice staff can work as a team and monitor trends with the radar to detect any problem areas before they cripple your practice performance. You can even customize your workflow KPIs so you can track the improvement of your practice performance over time. We also help you see and understand the big picture by providing a daily radar analysis and monthly Health Checks with your SPOC as consistent follow up process.

Contact your SPOC to configure your Radar so you can track your physical therapy claims workflow and reach your practice goals.

George Konold

How to control your physical therapy practice's cash flow

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physical therapy billing performance softwareAre you stressed out over unpredictable cash flow of your physical therapy practice?  Do cash flow fluctuations keep your practice from reaching its full potential? Lack of control over your billing performance can seriously threaten the growth of your practice. Needless to say, without growth your practice will struggle to survive.

To make matters worse, anxiety over physical therapy billing issues can rob a practice owner of confidence and peace of mind needed for building his dream practice. This in turn affects his relationship with patients negatively and further impedes practice growth.

Since the chances of ever getting your claims paid decrease with each passing day, the percentage of accounts receivable after 120 days can be used as a proxy of your billing performance. Obviously, it is impossible to predict when and how much the insurance will pay you. Hence, the key to taking control of your practice’s billing performance lies in knowing exactly which claims are underpaid or even unpaid. Rigorous follow up on the claims in trouble can help you reduce the percentage of your monthly AR past 120 days to ten percent or less.

Improving your practice’s cash flow is not all doom and gloom, though. A good first step consists of discovering your practice’s true cash flow and billing potential. What are your current physical therapy billing stats? Are you aware of any weaknesses in your practice’s billing process?

Next, you should take a look how your physical therapy practice compares to others in the industry. Those numbers may be hard to come by, but bestPT has done the legwork for you and can help you evaluate your stats against the national averages and then help you get above those. You will get the opportunity to compare your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to industry standards as well as bestPT performance stats.  

Just how much could your practice grow with this improved physical therapy billing performance? Can the potential increase in collections pave the way for accomplishing your goal of building your physical therapy dream practice?

There is only one way to find out — request your Individual Practice Evaluation from bestPT. We will help you discover your practice’s cash flow and billing potential.