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Preventing Physician Fatigue at Your Medical Practice

Posted on November 7, 2018 by VettersEnt

As we covered in our last blog, preventing physician fatigue needs to be a major priority for every medical practice. When providers are under constant pressure to perform, not only are they at risk of developing stress-related health issues, but employees and patients can also suffer increased stress and dissatisfaction. Thankfully, there are a number of strategies currently being used by many medical practices to get to work preventing physician fatigue.

How Your Practice Can Work to Prevent Physician Fatigue

Make wellness for your employees a top priority at your medical practice. Remember that physician burnout isn’t just a problem for the doctors experiencing it, but also the patients and employees who may bear the brunt of it.
Create a wellness position at your practice or a collaborative committee. Your wellness chairperson or champion should be someone who can help to survey employees for burnout and troubleshoot initiatives to prevent physician fatigue. These employees can also work to make employees aware of all of the wellness resources available and model positive anti-burnout activities, like leaving the office on time or stopping during lunch for a short meditation session.
Survey your employees on a yearly basis to see what employees are doing to keep themselves in good physical, mental and emotional health. Use the results to identify potential workplace wellness initiatives and get a look at where your medical practice is succeeding and where you could stand to improve.
This might seem obvious, but if you complete a workplace wellness survey, you should also use the results to make positive changes in your workplace. Whether it’s redesigning the way that daily workflow occurs or developing new and better ways for employees to communicate, these changes will show employees that you are listening and that you care about their experience enough to change.
Once you have made some changes, you should repeat the survey to see how things have changed. Are you doing your job when it comes to preventing physician fatigue? Checking back in allows you to also see if there are new areas where you could stand to improve.
Don’t call out employees or embarrass anyone in the office with survey findings. Instead, you should be supportive and continue to emphasize improvement. Just like physician fatigue doesn’t happen overnight, counteracting burnout doesn’t happen in one day either.

Preventing Physician Fatigue with Vetters Enterprises

Vetters Enterprises specializes in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Let us keep your business as healthy as you keep your patients! Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

The Real Cost of Physician Fatigue

Posted on October 23, 2018 by VettersEnt

According to a number of recent studies, physician fatigue is no longer a marginal problem, but instead an epidemic sweeping through hospitals and medical practices. Physician burnout has a far-reaching impact on physicians themselves, patients and the finances of every healthcare facility.

Physician Fatigue 101

Physician fatigue is used to refer to doctors experiencing emotional exhaustion, a decreased feeling of success and pride at work, cynicism, exhaustion, depersonalization of patients and a lack of empathy. Burnout can be subtle and affect any healthcare practitioner.

There are four core factors that increase stress levels and the likelihood of physicians specifically experiencing burnout and fatigue.

Time: Doctors are under a great deal of pressure to do a lot of tasks in a short amount of time and document the entire process.
Chaos: Physicians experience disorder on a regular basis, even in organized offices that sometimes lack resources or a streamlined workflow.
Lack of Control: Feeling a persistent lack of control over the tasks performed, work conditions and environment can increase fatigue.
Competing Demands: When doctors are constantly pulled in two different directions, like needing to increase the number of patients but also spend more valuable time with each patient, it can also contribute to burnout.

It has been directly linked to:

Physician alcohol and drug abuse
Decreased patient satisfaction and care quality
Higher malpractice risk
Higher turnover
Physician suicide

With physician fatigue being a potentially fatal disorder, it’s vital that your practice takes it seriously.

On Patients

Burnout can compromise patient care and patient experience. When anyone experiences high levels of stress for long periods of time, their memory, attention and decision-making will be affected. In a career where skilled, competent and timely decision-making is so important, the consequences of physician fatigue can be deadly for patients.

On Practices

To demonstrate the devastating impact of physician fatigue can be demonstrated in one study by the American Medical Association. This found that in a healthcare system with 500 doctors and the average national rate of burnout (54%), a whopping $12 million a year would need to be spent only to replace the physicians that were lost. That figure does not factor in decreased productivity, financial ramifications of mistakes and more.

Reduce Physician Fatigue with Vetters Enterprises

Let us help you eliminate the chaos in your office and reduce stress levels with our services in practice management, private practice business support and revenue cycle optimization. We can perform in-depth assessments of your practice or facility and identify potential issues. Give us a call at (443) 352-0088.

The 4 Most Common Reasons Your Practice’s Claims Are Bouncing

Posted on October 3, 2018 by VettersEnt

Billing can be time-consuming, tedious and frustrating to say the least. It can be even more frustrating when the medical claims that you worked so hard to submit are bounced right back. What are the most common reasons that a medical practice’s claims are bouncing back after submission?

Minor Errors

Just like it’s easy to miss a comma in an email or mistype a word, it’s also very easy to make minor errors in medical claims. Reimbursements are often denied or delayed due to seemingly-small mistakes, like forgetting to include a plan ID number or mixing up a letter. Because front desks are already so busy and overwhelmed, mistakes can fall through the cracks. One winning solution to this is using a professional outsourced claims processing service that will review claims before submission and look just for errors. The time saved from going through a resubmission is much less than time spent reviewing claims.

Missing Information

Another common reason that claims are bouncing is insufficient information. You always need to submit documentation to back up claims, and you should always supply each insurance provider the information that is requested to process payment in an expedient manner. Again, it is much easier to put the effort into properly gathering everything beforehand instead of needing to go back in the future to find the right documentation.

Skipping Authorization

If you needed authorization before a procedure was performed and it was not secured, you shouldn’t be too surprised that a claim bounced back your way. You should verify whether or not prior authorization is needed before you schedule the procedure. When it is time to bill, ensure that you also include the prior authorization number on the submitted claim. While prior authorizations can seem like an annoying extra step, they are vital to ensuring that claims receive approval in a prompt manner.

Changes on the Patient End

One of the most common reasons for claim denial isn’t necessarily your practice’s fault at all. Claims are often denied because a patient’s coverage has changed, the plan or payer has been changed or coverage has been terminated altogether. Even if you think everything is the same as the last time you spoke with a patient, you should always ask to confirm insurance information and see an insurance card at each appointment.

Trust the Experts at Vetters Enterprises for your Billing Needs

When You Should Call Your Patients Instead of Emailing

Posted on September 20, 2018 by VettersEnt

Technology has changed the entire healthcare landscape, and for many doctors, it has also transformed the way that they speak with their patients. Instead of communicating by telephone and letter being the only options, emailing and texting are now on the table. Do you know when you should call your patients instead of emailing or texting?

Why Do Doctors Email?

A growing number of doctors use email for most regular communications, as it can increase practice efficiency and prevent playing phone tag. Doctors also like being able to make themselves available for patient questions and concerns around the clock through email. Email communication can also be perfectly sufficient for quick messages requesting appointments, rescheduling or requesting prescription refills. However, there are HIPAA violations that can come to play over email that aren’t as possible elsewhere.

When Emailing Is Inappropriate

As with any other technology product, there are both upsides and downsides to emailing instead of calling your patients. Beyond potential murky water with HIPAA guidelines, there are many situations where emailing can lead to unnecessary stress and confusion:

Discussing issues before completing a physical examination of the patient could lead to misdiagnosis.
Email messages can be misinterpreted by the patient receiving them. If the misinterpretation leads to damage, you could be held liable.
Anyone who is not the patient could open the email and read sensitive information.

If there is a chance that any of the above scenarios could occur, you should call your patients instead. Remember that the tone of your voice can have a huge effect on the message that a patient receives, and written words are not ideal for conveying tone.

If You Do Email

When it is appropriate to email instead of calling your patients, use the following best practices:

Use email messages to supplement your existing patient relationship, send reminders and offer general health tips.
Only use email if you have a firewall-protected server and both you and the patient are using encryption technology. Most standard email does not meet HIPAA requirements.
Educate your patients about when it is appropriate to email the office instead of calling.

Learn When to Call Your Patients with Vetters Enterprises

How the 2018 Flu Epidemic Can Prepare Your Practice for the 2019 Season

Posted on August 15, 2018 by VettersEnt

The 2018 flu epidemic caused a frenzy across practices, the internet and communities throughout the United States. While many flu seasons over the past few decades have been unremarkable, the 2018 flu epidemic was notable for the severity of the virus and the deaths that occurred as a result. As in any field, it’s important to learn from the past to improve the future. The 2018 flu epidemic has many lessons to offer the average practice.

Communicate Clearly with Patients

Communicating with patients and employees is critical for triaging potential flu patients before they ever come in for an appointment. Doctor’s office and emergency room visits are not necessary for the majority of people experienced mild flu-like symptoms. Your practice should educate patients early on what symptoms are cause for concern and what symptoms do not mean they need to head right into the office. This limits both unnecessary strains on your resources and prevents exposure in your waiting room. If you can, include the most worrying symptoms that should lead to medical care (trouble breathing, chest pain, confusion, dizziness, etc.) in a brochure or email blast that you send out to patients.

Offer Protection Tools in Your Practice

When patients with flu-like symptoms arrive in your office, provide them with tissues and surgical masks. Always have hand sanitizer available for any visitor to your practice. If possible, keep patients with influenza symptoms away from other patients. If it isn’t possible to maintain more than one waiting room, mark off a specific area or prioritize patients with flu symptoms when filling exam rooms. This stops the spread of flu inside of your practice and makes patients visiting for unrelated reasons feel more comfortable coming in.

Educate About the Flu Vaccine

One of the key hallmarks of the 2018 flu epidemic was many patients ignoring the influenza vaccine because of perceived ineffectiveness or other concerns about vaccines. When visiting with patients, take time to explain why flu vaccines are important, even when the past year’s vaccine was perceived as a “failure” in some circles. Answer questions with respect, and understand that patients are often undereducated or misinformed on the subject of flu vaccinations. Start promoting the vaccine’s availability early in the year and reach out to patients who haven’t been vaccinated by the start of flu season to make it clear that it isn’t too late.

Flu Epidemic Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

Ending the Revolving Door of Patients at Your Practice

Posted on August 1, 2018 by VettersEnt

A general practice with a revolving door of patients is one that always seems to be losing patients at the same rate that they are attracting them. New patients are showing up for appointments, but most of them vanish off to never be seen again. While it’s tempting to invest most of your marketing efforts towards attracting new patients, without making an attempt to keep the old ones, you’ll end up with a revolving door of patients.

Why Are Patients Leaving?

One survey of patients who chose to leave their medical practice of choice found that patients have 4 core reasons for putting their medical care in someone else’s hands:

Feeling neglected
Poor communication or misinformation
Feeling rushed
Lack of detail or description for procedures, tests and results

At the heart of all 4 of those things is that sometimes, doctors do not have enough time to satisfy patient needs fully. What does that mean? You should go above and beyond to provide patients with additional resources and also distribute the patient retention responsibility throughout your practice. It isn’t just the doctor who is responsible for keeping patients. Instead, it’s also the receptionists, nurses, technicians and more.

Educate

Invest in resources that can educate your patients. While you might not have time to explain a procedure to a patient in one visit thoroughly, you could show a video, offer them literature or direct them to a page on your website. When patients know where to find the information that they need, they will be much more likely to seek it out and sate their curiosity.

Ask and Reassess

Regular patient surveys are another great way to see how you’re doing and make changes to suit the needs of your patients better. In some cases, patients value the opportunity to express themselves more than actual changes taking place! Make it clear that you care about your patients, their health and their experience at your practice and you will be much closer to retaining them.

Follow Up

When a patient leaves that means that they’re gone forever, right? No! If a patient leaves your practice, despite your efforts to retain them, you should place a follow-up call to see why they chose to do so. Many patients are willing to give you valuable insight on why they left, which could help you pull more patients out of the revolving door of patients.

Additional Retention Tips

Ensure that patients are informed of when their next appointment is.
Reward patient loyalty.
Send appointment reminders.
Make scheduling as easy as possible.
Keep track of important patient information, like birthdays and contact information.

Practice Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

What PCPs Should Know About Asking for a Hospice Consult as a PCP

Posted on July 18, 2018 by VettersEnt

Once you’ve determined that hospice care might be the best course of treatment for one of your patients, it’s time to formulate a plan to discuss hospice care and arrange for a hospice consult. Making that recommendation can be easier said than done, especially since hospice care has many connotations that go along with it. What do you need to know about hospice care for your patients?

What Is Hospice Care?

Whenever someone is facing a life-limiting illness, the goal of their medical care should be a team-oriented approach to care, pain management, emotional support and spiritual support that is customized to the patient. In surveys, many caregivers and families of terminally ill patients indicate that they would have liked information about hospice care when the diagnosis was labeled as terminal, not later in the process. While communicating this might not be comfortable, you should keep this in mind.

Delivering Bad News

One of the best methods for delivering bad news in the medical field is SPIKES. SPIKES represents a 6-stage process: set up, perception, invitation, knowledge, emotion and summary.

Set Up: Choose the right environment for the discussion and ensure medical consensus beforehand.
Perception: Ask the patient what they know about the illness and any information they already know. Ask the patient what matters most to them and what their wishes are. You should also ask if the patient has heard of hospice care and what they know about it.
Invitation: Ask the patient if it’s okay if you share information about hospice care with them.
Knowledge: Provide the patient with information before the hospice consult. Let the patient know that hospice can help them meet their goals of staying at home instead of going to the hospital, pain management and emotional support. Also, let the patient know what hospice care provides.
Emotion: Express sympathy for the patient. For example, “I know this isn’t good news to hear,” or “I’m sorry that I have to be the one to tell you this.”
Summary: When patients get a lot of information at once, it can be hard for them to process things. At the end of the conversation, ask the patient what they understood. You should also state clearly your recommendation that the patient have a hospice consult so they understand what the next step should be.

Recommending a Hospice Consult

You should determine whether or not a patient is eligible for hospice care. Medicare mandates that patients have a life expectancy of 6 months or less if the illness runs the expected course. You must be able to certify the terminal diagnosis and prognosis or re-certify them. To obtain a hospice consult, you must request it from a hospice service provider. The provider will evaluate the patient, determine eligibility and establish a care plan.

Practice Guidance for Your Practice from Vetters Enterprises

The Effect of Social Media on Patient Health

Posted on June 20, 2018 by VettersEnt

From late nights spent staring at Instagram feeds to thumb injuries from scrolling too much (seriously), social media has a serious effect on patient health. While the impact on physical health might not be as prevalent, the effects on mental and emotional health can be very serious.

The Power of Social Media for Public Health

One of the most beneficial effects of social media and mobile connectivity on public health has been the opportunity for more healthcare providers to meet patients where they are. The Suicide Hotline expanded to add chat and text messaging options, allowing people of any age to receive crisis mental health consultations anywhere in the country at any time. Facebook has also added a feature where friends can anonymously report a post that another friend makes as concerning, and the platform will provide the friend with mental health resources. These are just two examples of how social media can provide people with health resources when they are at their most vulnerable.

Social media also makes health information more accessible, which can be a good or bad thing. While it makes it easier for people in food deserts to learn creative ways to prepare healthy food on a budget without access to a great deal of produce, it can also make it easy to disseminate false medical information.

Social media can also be an excellent place for vulnerable patients to connect with one another. It can be especially empowering for patients with rare conditions to meet people, across the country or the world, who are experiencing the exact same thing. While some patients would have suffered their entire lives with loneliness, social media can provide them with a place to connect.

The Negative Effects on Patient Health

Social media addiction is a growing problem, especially in young adults and teenagers who are used to spending the majority of their time on digital devices. An estimated 210 million people are suffering from addiction to social media. Young, single females are the most likely to deal with an addiction. Don’t think you’re a compulsive social media user? 50% of people driving while using a smartphone are checking social media apps. Over 70% of adults sleep with or next to their cellphone. Finally, almost 75% of Americans check Facebook on a daily basis.

As providers, it’s important to realize that patients might be using social media as a stand-in for other healthy parts of life, like spending time with friends and family. Or, they might be using social media to distract themselves from mental health difficulties.

What are the potential negative effects of social media on physical patient health?

Carpal Tunnel Syndrome from typing and swiping on a mobile phone too frequently
Eye problems can occur from staring at screens for long periods of time
Chronic fatigue is common in teenagers who stay up late to check social media networks instead of getting enough sleep
Lack of exercise or an increased risk of leading a sedentary lifestyle
Distraction while walking or driving, which can lead to accidents or injuries

Improve your Practice Health with Vetters Enterprises

3 Ways to Increase Patient Satisfaction

Posted on February 24, 2018 by VettersEnt

Maintaining high levels of patient satisfaction isn’t easy, and it can be frustrating hearing negative responses on patient surveys despite your efforts to offer a great experience. Behaviors like empathetic communication can raise patient satisfaction and improve actual clinical outcomes for medical problems including diabetes and the flu. Here are three ways that your practice can increase patient satisfaction.

Improve the Waiting Process Before the Appointment

How can you streamline the waiting process?

Provide things to do in the waiting room, like free Wi-Fi or tablets pre-loaded with magazines and books. Unoccupied time will always feel longer than productive wait time.
Get patients checked in as quickly as possible, as they are more patient once their basic information has been taken and they feel that they are being taken care of.
Always tell patients what amount of time they should expect to wait. Unexplained, uncertain wait times will lead to higher amounts of anxiety and frustration.
Provide an excellent amount of quality once patients get into their appointment. Great appointments can offset a long wait.

Spend Time with Your Patients

Most doctors will hear this advice and wonder how they can possibly spend more time with their patients amidst a packed schedule and piles of paperwork. The most satisfied patients have one thing in common—their visit felt like it was long because all of their questions were answered and they didn’t feel rushed. Your practice can make up for lengthy wait times by sitting down and chatting with patients instead of brusquely going through the motions. In one study, 52% of patients preferred a doctor who sat when talking to them, and they perceived that seated visits were 25% longer.

Communicate with Precision

Finally, you should always be clear with patients about their situation. If a patient comes to you with a cold, instead of merely diagnosing it and sending them out the door, go through a timeline of what they should expect from their symptoms. Offer patients an explanation of what they can expect and what to do if things don’t improve. Patients often have an idea of what is wrong and they come to your office for expertise, not just a one-word diagnosis.

Increase Patient Satisfaction with Vetters Enterprises

Patient Payments Simplified

Posted on October 6, 2016 by VettersEnt

Most practitioners don’t know that you are 50% less likely to recoup a patient copay if they leave your office without paying. This impacts your cash flow more than you know.

I wanted to share with you a great idea from a great company – Payspan. Some folks who work with Medical Assistance or any of the Beacon Health Options carriers may be very familiar with logging on to Payspan to pick up their EOPs but they have a great program for helping you get that payment up front that you need. Check out this webinar if you can.

Webinar: Simple Techniques for Accelerating Patient Payments

Join us Thursday, October 6th for the Simple Techniques for Accelerating Patient Payments Webinar

If you missed Simple Techniques for Accelerating Patient Payments Webinar join usOctober 6th, 2016 and let us help you accelerate patient payments.

The abundance of high-deductible health plans is presenting unique revenue challengesfor healthcare providers, and many practices are struggling to quickly and accurately collect patient financial responsibility dollars. There are simple tips and solutions every practice can adopt to increase patient revenue and improve operational efficiency.

SAVE YOUR SEAT TODAY

Please join us on Thursday, October 6, for a complimentary webinar titled, “Simple Techniques for Accelerating Patient Payments.” We will be speaking about:

Best practices for dealing with the increase in patient responsibility and high-deductible health plans;
Best practices for accelerating patient payments; and
Innovative patient payment solutions that will get your practice where it needs to be today.

With the shift to new reimbursement models and the increase in out-of-pocket patient responsibility, it is more important than ever for providers to adopt innovative tools in order to stay financially viable. If you are interested in maximizing revenue in today’s evolving healthcare economy, join us at 2:00pm, EDT on October 6th, 2016.

Sincerely,

The Payspan Team

ABOUT PAYSPAN
With the largest healthcare network in the U.S., we provide payment automation services that improve administrative efficiency, meet regulatory requirements, and enable payers and providers to manage new reimbursement strategies. We bring together healthcare expertise with proven financial services technology to empower a new generation of healthcare economics. CONTACT US