Practice Management

Safety is an unspoken yet fundamental expectation of almost all personal and business relationships.

As discussed in recent articles, conducting clinical research provides an opportunity to offer additional treatment options to patients and to add income to your bottom line.

Almost any medical practice is prone to ebbs and floods in cash flow. But when the decline in revenue becomes a downward spiral and you're strapped for cash, there is cause for major concern.

Given current Medicare policy, we do not recommend billing either 64450 or 64430 in conjunction with prostate biopsy.

A patient's first impression of his doctor is formed, in large part, when he walks through the door of the practice.

There are 12 sources for patient recruitment that will help drive patients to your study and that are available to almost all private practices.

Audits of hundreds of urologic encounters show that work, documentation, and charges do not match in most cases, for most urologists.

More of our colleagues are turning to clinical research to offer additional treatment options to patients and add income to the bottom line.

A failure to delegate is the silent culprit that steals your time and quickly erodes your practice's profitability.

Busy urologists seeking relief from the demands and responsibilities of running a practice are likely to entertain the possibility of bringing in a partner. But a rush to judgment can lead to mistakes that might otherwise be avoided.

Unless Congress steps in again, physicians participating in the Medicare program will see their fees reduced by an average of 9.9% for 2008, a move that already has prompted a call for action from the American Medical Association.

Many challenges face the group urology practice, but one issue that doesn't get much attention is the cultural challenge of mixing physicians from different generations.

The shift of surgical procedures from the hospital to physician-owned outpatient facilities has been the prevailing trend over the past 2 decades and will continue into the foreseeable future.

Positive sum competition can be a solution for the current system's ills.

When there's conflict among the troops, it can get ugly in a hurry.

Value-based purchasing actually has little to do with outcomes in patient care, and has more to do with cost-containment in health care delivery.

The federal government is pressing forward with an initiative launched by the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 (MMA) to implement a national system of electronic prescriptions intended to increase both efficiency and patient safety.

Most urologists have patients who come from many different backgrounds, speak different languages, and have different attitudes toward Western medicine.

The Physician Quality Reporting Initiative (PQRI) is a program established at the end of last year to provide incentive funding for physicians to begin submitting data that will be used to make Medicare a smarter purchaser of health care.

Many physicians are concerned and confused about all the discussion on pay for performance, and urologists are no exception.

Life in the fast lane of a busy urology practice can often be plagued with telephone traffic that is out of control.

Performing a non-ASC-approved procedure in an ASC is billed by the physician for the physician's service(s) at an outpatient procedure rate with ASC listed as the place of service.

Urologists have largely been under the radar as the quality industry has focused on non-urologic diseases. That is rapidly changing.

Communication of charges from the physician or mid-level provider to the billing staff is often a weak link in the billing process in a physician's office.

As the Bush administration continues to push for greater expenditures for national defense and the war in Iraq, Medicare physicians are facing a tighter squeeze in the name of stabilizing the program for future generations and giving patients more information about their health care providers.