Why the RVU system gives a false sense of productivity

Physician
October 17, 2012

One of my biggest problems of the RVU system is that it decided by a secret society composed of specialists. Nobody seems to have a problem that a “secret society” decides how much work and how much cost should be allocated to a medical service.

Medical procedures are very dangerous and have a lot of risk, but so is trying to provide healthcare to a complicated 2-year old that can’t tell …

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Why the RVU system gives a false sense of productivity

Why medical practices need coaches

Physician
September 7, 2012

Besides discipline, what would you say is the one thing that all athletes have in common? All Olympic athletes have a coach.

I find this interesting.

Here we have the most elite athletes in the world. Most of them have trained for most of their lives, others are repeat Olympians, and others are repeat medal winners. Yet they still have coaches.

Why would they need coaches? Surely they know what needs to be done …

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Why medical practices need coaches

Addressing comments on your medical practice’s Facebook page

Social media
February 13, 2012

Does your medical practice allow anybody to post links and comments on your Facebook page?

The short answer is yes. We do. Why? Because we think allowing patient to post links and commenting on our practice’s Facebook page helps us achieve these four things:

1. It encourages communication.
2. It allows us to address issues that we would otherwise have a hard time addressing.
3. Other patients will benefit by reading the discussions.
4. We …

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Addressing comments on your medical practice’s Facebook page

What patients need to know about coding

Physician
December 4, 2011

Health insurance is very complicated. At our practice, we deal with health insurance all the time and even for us, it gets to be very complicated sometimes. So it is natural that patients have a hard time understanding it as well.

Therefore, I decided to summarize a conversation I had with a patient in an effort to help other patients understand, at the very least, a portion of how medical health …

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What patients need to know about coding

Medical practice unintended consequences

Physician
September 5, 2011

The airlines, in an effort to recoup revenue, started charging passengers to check luggage a while back.  Seems like a great strategy. Not only are they recuperating revenue, they are giving passengers a reason not to bring luggage they don’t need. This of course saves money on fuel.

The result? More bags in the main cabin.

Since there is an incentive not to check a bag, more people bring their bags as …

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Medical practice unintended consequences

Why your medical practice should adopt social media

Social media
June 23, 2011

“Twitter? I don’t have time for that, besides, my life is boring; nobody wants to hear about my boring life.” This is a common response when I talk to people about social media.

One of the reasons I think many have a hard time persuading docs to adopt social media, is because docs don’t understand what they can do with social media or how they can use it for …

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Why your medical practice should adopt social media

Physicians and their staff need to put on a consistent show

Physician
June 13, 2011

This past summer, I had a few parents complain to me about our staff. The parents wanted to let me know that they were treated nicely by the staff, but they had noticed things from the employees that they didn’t appreciate. They mentioned that the staff seemed annoyed and irritated, even bored at times and a bit disingenuous.

I wanted to investigate the issue before I reprimanded the staff. Things …

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Physicians and their staff need to put on a consistent show

How physician practices can compete with retail clinics

Physician
March 29, 2011

A reader recently wrote to me: “Brandon, in our area, we’ve seen a few retail clinics pop up. What can we do as a practice to let patients know that visiting retail clinics is not in their best interest?”

We had along discussion. So I put together a summary of our conversation. Below is a rundown, more of less, of what I …

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How physician practices can compete with retail clinics

What your medical office can learn from Norman Rockwell

Physician
January 24, 2011

This past summer I got a chance to visit Washington DC. While I was there, I saw a Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. As it turned out, the exhibition was the private collection of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg. The exhibition highlighted Rockwell’s masterful storytelling.

I didn’t know much about Norman Rockwell before that day. I knew he was a famous American painter and I had seen …

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What your medical office can learn from Norman Rockwell

Should patients be charged for no shows?

Physician
November 26, 2010

No shows.  It seems that no matter what we do, we always have them.

Despite the fact that we call every single person on the schedule to remind them of their appointment the day before (the staff personally makes the call. We don’t use an automated system) we found that in 2009, we had 389 no-shows.

Slicing the data

Is 389 a high number of no-shows? I guess it depends on the size …

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Should patients be charged for no shows?

Why doctors have poor customer service

Physician
October 7, 2010

One of my docs was telling us about a patient’s experience at another practice. Apparently, the parent was at her wits end with her crying baby. She called the  on call doctor to ask for advice and the doctor told the patient, “your baby has colic’s; turn on the vacuum and stop calling.”

It turned out the baby had some gastric condition (not colic) and needed treatment. The patient ended up …

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Why doctors have poor customer service

How JetBlue can improve your medical practice

Physician
August 31, 2010

I got a chance to fly JetBlue for the first time recently. Since I had heard so many good things about the airline, I was looking forward to experiencing the JetBlue, well, experience.

I took four flights in total with them. While outbound, they lost my bag. While inbound to Chicago, my last leg was delayed about 2 hours. I then I had to wait another 80 minutes for my bag …

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How JetBlue can improve your medical practice