Medical Money Matters with Jill Arena

Send us Fan Mail Today, we're diving into a subject close to my heart: showing appropriate appreciation for your incredible staff members. They're the backbone of your practice, so how can you make them feel valued and recognized? We’ll explore why they need appreciation, how best to show it, and some brilliant solutions that are both free and cost money.   Our patients come to us when t...

Send us Fan Mail Delegation is more than just a buzzword. It's a vital skill that allows you to work at the top of your license, utilizing your full skill set, while entrusting certain tasks to the least cost, most competent person in your office. It's about efficiency, effectiveness, and empowerment.  The modern medical practice is filled with complexity. As a physician, you went to med...

Send us Fan Mail As the old saw goes, “If you don’t know where you’re headed, any road will do.” In thinking about Strategic Planning, there are entire books written on the subject. In the spirit of giving you the condensed version, my favorite statement about strategic planning is that it really boils down to answering three questions:  1.    Who are we?  2.    Who do we want to be?  3.    How wi...

Send us Fan Mail We've talked in previous episodes about physician contracts, and have compared and contrasted them with physician compacts. At its core, a Physician Compact is a mutual agreement between physicians and their organizations. These are not legal documents, like a contract, but living, breathing agreements that serve as the foundation for mutual expectations and accountability. B...

Send us Fan Mail Physician compensation changes are: a) A sticky wicket b) The thing administrators lose their jobs over c) More emotionally charged than any other practice topic d) Best when planned and communicated well e) All of the above E! Join us for this episode where I talk with national healthcare consultant and physician compensation expert, Steve Franey. He breaks down the hows and the...

Send us Fan Mail As an owner in your business, how much time and energy should you spend overseeing the operations? What constitutes too much oversight? What’s too little?   We see altogether too many groups who have too little oversight, which means too many of the owners of the practice are not really paying attention to the business itself. The unfortunate outcome of that in many cases is embez...

Send us Fan Mail Since we don’t give physicians any business training as part of your education, we see many groups that have governance, leadership and management totally conflated. We see groups of physician owners who spend far too little time in oversight, and some who spend far too much time in the day-to-day operations. The trick is to get it just right where leading the group is concerned. ...

Send us Fan Mail In several of our past episodes, we’ve been talking about when an employee is no longer effective for your group. In most cases, most of our team IS effective, and they generally fall on a continuum in terms of what they need from management and leadership:  Coaching  Counseling  Disciplining and finally, if all else fails,  Termination  In working with team members, most will be...

Send us Fan Mail In a recent episode, we talked about when a leader is no longer effective for your group. As we said, it’s important to engineer a clean departure for them, and a severance package can go a long way to doing that.  If your executive leader needs to be transitioned out, and it’s not voluntary on their part, a Severance Agreement can help to create a smooth landing for them. It allo...

Send us Fan Mail Managing business risk is becoming a larger issue for medical practices every day. Risk of lawsuits and penalties or fines for being out of compliance is high, and with our society becoming more and more litigious, it is paramount to manage that risk. Good communication, good systems and good workflows can mitigate quite a bit of risk, and it's important to round out your str...

Send us Fan Mail We’ve been talking about the powerful leadership dyad – what if yours isn’t working? What if your executive leader is ineffective? Or worse yet, berating staff or being inappropriate with patients and creating risk for the practice? We’ve been called into many practices over the years where a leadership transition is taking place, or it is painfully obvious that one is needed, but...

Send us Fan Mail Terminating a physician’s employment is not anything anyone wants to do, but if it becomes necessary to part ways, some well-constructed Employment Contracts and Partnership Agreements can make this as smooth as possible. If they are not well constructed, you are leaving yourself open for all kinds of unnecessary expense and complication.   In short, admitting someone to your busi...

Send us Fan Mail Managing poor physician behavior…I can almost hear you shudder.  We see many groups tolerating inappropriate, risky and even outright illegal behavior from physicians, especially those who are partners in their groups. It’s almost as if they can act with impunity, as no one sees it as their responsibility to coach, counsel or discipline a physician. And groups will rarely terminat...

Send us Fan Mail When making a decision about when to add a new clinician to a growing practice, it’s easy to default to making this on an emotional basis. You may think, “I’m crazy busy, and can’t possibly keep up this pace – we need to hire a new doctor!” Or, you’re hearing from your colleagues, “OMG, I can’t keep up – too many new patients – we need to add someone right away!” or you hear from...

Send us Fan Mail You’ve done it! You’ve made the investment in an executive leader for your practice (or maybe you’ve had one for years) and now you’re ready to take that working relationship to the next level. What should it look like?  First of all, and most importantly, it must sit on a foundation of mutual trust and respect. This is a “you know it when you see it” situation, so ask yourself, “...

Send us Fan Mail I see far too many practices who underinvest in executive leadership. I can speculate on the various reasons for this, not the least of which are cost and ceding control, which feels uncomfortable. I frequently speak with physicians who don’t know what is reasonable to expect from their executive leadership. In short, the person or the team who has been hired to run your practice...

Send us Fan Mail In our last episode, we got to visit with Joe Mull, author, speaker and trainer about all things “employee retention.” I enjoyed the conversation, and the fact is, when you think about your practice as a business – and I hope you are by now! – the people are the most expensive, and most important part. You simply can’t deliver really great patient care without your team. And, some...

Send us Fan Mail What is the secret to building great teams and retaining energized and committed employees in today's workplace? If you have any staffing "woes" at all, you'll want to catch this episode. I interview Joe Mull, author of three books, including the forthcoming "Employalty," speaker, trainer, founder of the Boss Better Academy and expert on today's...

Send us Fan Mail When a patient has an outstanding balance that they owe you, it’s important to make a distinction: there are some patients who are not able to pay – I recommend that you be compassionate, creative, and generous with those folks. Almost all of them want to pay in some way. Then there are the other type, those patients who are choosing not to pay. Those folks should be held responsi...

Send us Fan Mail When you think about the complexities that employers face when they select their health plan for this year, there’s a very good chance that your patients’ benefits have changed in some way from what they were used to from last year. Add to that fact that no one really reads all the way through that nice benefits statement that human resources gives them…and then your patient appea...

Send us Fan Mail Today, we’re going to talk about the most powerful question your front office team can ask to collect money over the front counter.  We’ve trained our patients over the years that they don’t have to pay for their visit for several months AFTERWARDS…wow…I don’t know of any other industry that allows its customers such lax payment terms!  In doing this, you are effectively making in...

Send us Fan Mail The No Surprises Act went into effect on January 1, 2022 and many practices are still confused about how to administer it, and what the ramifications are for groups that don't.  Join me for an in-depth discussion with healthcare attorney Grant Engrav, one of the nation's experts on this new legislation. How do you determine whether or not you need to give a patient a Goo...

Send us Fan Mail In thinking about our Revenue Cycle as a whole, it truly begins at the front desk. When your new patient calls for the first time, and the new patient registration process begins, you are setting yourself up for success or failure, depending on how you’ve set up your front desk.  How well have you trained your front office on proper data collection? Do they understand how crucial...

Send us Fan Mail There are many things that help to improve retention and one of them is money. I’ve seen many groups who have bonuses, but while all are well intended, many are set up in a way that are difficult to administer, or even counterproductive. I encourage our clients to set up performance-based incentive compensation programs so that they are paying their teams additional compensation t...

Send us Fan Mail So the notion of picking and choosing patients based on their insurance coverage might be met with a little resistance, or frustration or maybe even righteous indignation! Bear with me. I’m guessing you went into medicine to care for ALL patients, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity or any other differentiating factor. Thank you.  It is important to understand that while all pat...