BIG Ideas from The Business Intelligence Guy

Today’s BIG Idea comes from data analysis projects I do for healthcare consultants.  This consultant is working with a group that outsourced their billing and then had revenue cycle challenges.  Today’s podcast describes an unusual challenge — the billing company was not consistently and correctly charging the billed charge per the fee schedule.  The podcast describes how we used Excel’s Pivot Table feature to track variances in billed charges.  You may be very comfortable that your billed charges are going out correctly, but the bigger question is what parts of your revenue cycle do you assume are being done correctly that are not?  Where are the holes in your revenue cycle?  I hope these podcasts give you something to think about. The post Track Variances in Billed Charges appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Today’s BIG Idea is from a practice in the Midwest who had a payer deny a claim because the pre-authorization was for one day and the day of the procedure moved.  Are pre-authorizations giving your practice headaches, too?  Listen for ideas from both AthenaPractice and AthenaOne on how to build an exception report to track appointments that may be a problem.  The first step is to reliably filter those appointments to only find appointments that need pre-authorization.  That may take standardization and consistency from your scheduling team.  The second step is to data mine to find appointments without authorization.  Some pre-authorizations are based on dates and other authorizations are based on procedure count.  Some patients have more than one appointment/procedure that needs authorization.  Matching the right authorization to the right procedure takes work.  Standardization really helps.  The process is not easy, but catching even one procedure that is has a missing or an expired authorization is well worth your time. The post Find Missing and Expired Authorizations appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are you tired of seeing payments reduced due to advanced practitioners and incident to billing rules? You are not alone. Today’s BIG Idea is from a group of general surgeons in the Midwest whose policy is for physicians to review advanced practitioners’ charts to ensure maximum reimbursement.  The analysis in the accompanying graphic shows some of the analysis we did to determine which surgeons had the opportunity to review the advanced practitioners’ charts, which advanced practitioners most frequently did not get their charts reviewed, and the procedure codes most frequently reduced by failing to comply with incident to rules.  Listen to the podcast for ideas on how we made the analysis work and how something similar could save your practice a considerable amount of reimbursement.  I hope you find incident to billing opportunities in your practice.  Thanks for listening. The post Find Incident To Billing Opportunities appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are you missing patients? Today’s BIG Idea podcast is from a Rocky Mountain practice who wants to find patients that should have been seen by now but do not have a future appointment.  The idea to look for patients you expect to have followed up with in a certain time period is common to many specialties and can help retain patients you may lose.  After all of the marketing efforts you expend to invite patients to your practice, do not lose them by failing to help them follow up with your providers.  The podcast also discusses how the report can be customized to choose how far back to look for patients you should have seen by now.  By combining a macro-enabled spreadsheet with an input cell and a text box, you can add power and flexibility to your spreadsheets and your analysis.  I hope these podcasts help your practice. The post Find Patients We Should Have Seen By Now appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is estimating patient charges time consuming for your practice? Medical practices are used to good faith estimates, but what if a self pay patient’s charge is more complex than a simple procedure code?  Today’s BIG idea is from an orthopedic practice that wants to estimate more complex patient charges.  Their idea is to grab all patient encounters with a given procedure code on the encounter, then use that historical data to estimate a patient’s charges and payments based on all encounters containing that procedure code.  The podcast will give you some ideas about aging the claim to ensure the claim has had a chance to be paid and some ideas about how you might use this data.  How would your practice use data like this?  I hope these podcasts give you ideas to make your practice better. The post Estimating Patient Charges appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Still thinking about payer transparency data and knowing what your competitors are getting paid? So am I. Today’s BIG Idea is an overview approach to what competing medical practices are getting paid.  The example is from an orthopedic practice in the Boston area.  I took 5 major procedure codes and compared what Anthem is paying competing providers in four counties around Boston.  The graphic accompanying the podcast shows orange for the highest contract for the provider I chose and blue for competing practices.  This market overview report shows this practice is at the lower end of the scale for all 5 procedure codes.  Note that for some codes there is a wide range of maximum contracted amounts and for other codes the range is more narrow.  Either way, this practice is toward the bottom of the scale.  As I play more with this data, today’s market overview report may be an ideal place to start with this payer transparency data.  I said this the past two weeks and I will say it one more time.  There is real opportunity in understanding and leveraging this data.  Thanks for joining me. The post Payer Transparency Market Data appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Did you find last week’s podcast about payer transparency data interesting? Today’s BIG Idea is another way to look at your practice’s competitor’s contracts.  The graphic accompanying the podcast shows a OBGYN practice in Central Florida and how contracted rates vary widely in two counties.  The benchmarking report shows where the practice’s contracts fit across all published contracts for that procedure code in that area.  Listen to the podcast to hear why there are multiple contracted rates shown in the chart and why the highest rates shown may not be the most common rates paid.  Even if your practice cannot negotiate your rates to the highest level, even moving up from one column in the histogram to the next may mean over $500 per procedure.  Per patient.  There is real opportunity in understanding and leveraging this data.  I hope you find these podcasts helpful. The post Benchmarking Payer Transparency Data appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are your competitors being paid more for procedure codes than your practice is? How much more? Happy 2024 everybody.  I am playing with a new toy this year.  Insurance carriers are required by law to publish contracted rates by procedure code, but they have made it very difficult to access those rates.  Until now.  Would you like to see contracted rates by procedure code, payer, NPI number, and more?  I have an example of the data in the graphic accompanying today’s podcast.  You will see major procedure codes for an orthopedic practice and a competing orthopedic practice in the same market.  This analysis compares Anthem, Cigna, and United rates for those top procedure codes for the two practices.  Interestingly, for these codes in this market, Anthem is paying the two practices the same rate.  That is not true for Cigna and United.  You will some wide discrepancies between the two payers for the two practices.  For the same service.  How would this data change your payer contracting?  How would knowing what competitors are being paid influence your strategic plans, whether that means expansion, mergers, or major changes in your practice?  This data may drive the most important decisions and the most profit to your practice this year. The post What is Your Competing Medical Practice Being Paid? appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How long has it been since you analyzed your practice’s revenue cycle? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes several steps I use when analyzing a practice’s revenue cycle.  Listen for the data I gather and for a general approach to get started.  The graphic on my web page shows several columns you might build in a Pivot Table analysis.  I start by looking at the major procedure codes for the major payers.  Then I build columns to look at charge dollars, the average charge, the total number of units billed, the allowed percentage, the allowed amount in dollars, and the amount paid in dollars.  There is more information in the podcast, but you would be surprised how often billed charges or allowed amounts are not consistent.  There are also payer contracting insights gleaned from analyzing a revenue cycle using this approach.  Watch for an example in the graphic where the average payment is more than the average allowed amount.  What could be causing this?   How healthy is your revenue cycle?  Are you sure?  In today’s medical practice environment, you cannot be too sure. The post Medical Practice Revenue Cycle Analysis appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Recent podcasts have discussed tracking how patients come to your practice and how patients leave your practice.  Today’s podcast is from one of my sessions at the recent MGMA Leaders Conference in Nashville about following patients through your practice.  Which provider does the patient see first?  What procedure codes and diagnosis codes are on the first visit?  Where does the patient go next?  How does the path the patient travels through your practice influence their care and your revenue cycle?  Does the first provider seen impact how long it takes for the patient to be eventually treated?  I hope these ideas help you and your practice. The post Follow Patients Through Your Practice appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

I apologize for being a bit behind in podcasts lately.  Three weeks ago I spoke at the ASCENT conference in Chicago.  Two weeks ago was MGMA’s Leaders Conference in Nashville.  Last week was Connecticut MGMA in Mystic. I am back in the saddle and today’s podcast is an idea to mine clinical data.  The example in the podcast is a group in the southeast who needs to mine clinical data from eMDs.  The practice needed to identify patients with a high A1c who have not been seen recently.  Listen to the podcast for ideas on how you might approach similar projects.  Focus especially on ideas to integrate clinical data with appointment data so your team can efficiently act on the information.  As I’m posting the podcast, a practice in the west reached out for help to identify rheumatoid arthritis patients with an onset date in the past 6 months.  Canned reports are typically inadequate for these types of requests, but once you have access to the data, there is no limit to the time you can save or the patients you can help.   The post Mine Clinical Data appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Want a sneak peak of one of my presentations at next week’s MGMA Leaders Conference? One of the top things savvy practice managers are focusing on now is looking beyond charges, payments, and adjustments to follow the paths patients take through the practice.  Today’s podcast shows an example of a practice tracking new patients’ experience in the practice to see which patients end up being treated and which patients are not treated.  Is the variance in medical treatment rate due to provider, insurance, location, the month of the new patient visit, or something different?  Part of this analysis is obviously a financial benefit to the practice, but there are clearly clinical benefits to patients who need to be treated.  Listen for ideas on what and how to track these patients and potential pitfalls when analyzing your practice data.  I look forward to seeing you in Nashville next week.   The post Medical Treatment Rate appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Need a new way to see your practice’s revenue cycle? Waterfall reports for medical practices are a helpful way to trend payments.  Today’s BIG idea describes how to track payments by date of service and get a true collection ratio by month.  As that collection ratio fluctuates, look for changes in payer mix, procedure mix, and revenue cycle performance to discover opportunities to improve cash flow.  How long has it been since you looked at your revenue cycle with fresh data? The post Waterfall Reports for Medical Practices appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Several podcasts have discussed tracking patients coming to a practice.  Have you tracked how patients leave your practice? Today’s BIG Idea is from a physical therapy group where we track the average number of patient visits by provider over time.  Listen to today’s podcast for ideas on how practices besides physical therapy can track patients flowing through their practice.  You will hear some ideas and some applications to look at data showing how patients leave your practice.  Are those patients leaving your practice too soon, either from a financial or from a quality standpoint?  Which providers retain patients better?  Why?  For as much marketing effort as practices make to encourage patients to come to a practice, what are you doing to retain those patients?  I hope you find these podcasts helpful. The post Track Patients Leaving Your Practice appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Looking for more medical practice revenue? How long has it been since you have reviewed your reason and group codes? Reason and group codes are the way insurance companies communicate how and why your charges have been adjusted and not paid.  Today’s BIG Ideas podcast encourages you to review those codes to ensure you are being reimbursed appropriately.  The more ways you can slice those adjustments (by provider, procedure code, department, primary insurance, date, location, etc.) the more ways you can find discrepancies and opportunities to help your practice.  Listen to the podcast for ideas on how to improve your revenue cycle today. The post Watch Reason and Group Codes appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How are your new patients volumes? What is driving those changes? Today’s BIG Idea is to gather as much data as you can around your new patients to understand by age, insurance, location, referral source, diagnosis and more why patients are coming to your practice.  When you track new patients, you track the lifeblood of many practices.  The more ways you can slice your new patient volumes, the more ways you can decide where to direct marketing, outreach, and related efforts to bring patients to your practice.  The practice in today’s example is a pediatric specialty practice and looked at age at first patient visit to analyze patient volumes.  Which factors influence new patients in your practice? The post Track New Patients appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are your efforts to market your practice working? Today’s BIG Idea is to track urgent care referrals in your practice.  The example comes from a Midwest orthopaedic group that offers urgent care.  The question is how often the advanced practitioners who staff urgent care refer patients to other providers in the practice and which provider teams get more referrals.  Tracking which advanced practitioners referred where yielded interesting insights into volume by team.  There were surprising differences between how often advanced practitioners refer within the practice.  Listen to the podcast to hear how we data mined practice notes to look for standardized language indicating a referral.  If you can’t data mine provider notes to find referrals, the podcast offers another suggestion of tracking patients who have an urgent care visit followed by a second visit to a different provider.  Following patients through your practice and contrasting the different paths patients take can yield actionable insights to drive practice revenue.  I will have more examples at MGMA’s Leaders Conference in Nashville next month.  I hope to see you there. The post Track Urgent Care Referrals appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are your E&M codes billed consistently across providers? Do you have an easy way to tell? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast shows a Pivot Table, slicers, timeline, and Pivot Chart I built for a practice to track their E&M coding levels.  Listen for ideas on how to structure the data and how to  build the Pivot Table.  There are also some benchmarking ideas to help give your data context.  I will also discuss a more advanced technique to include benchmarks in your chart by using formulas to combine the Pivot Table data with the benchmark data.  I hope these podcasts help you. The post E&M Coding Levels appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Looking for a new marketing idea? Today’s BIG Idea is from a pediatric orthopaedic practice that found prevalence rates for a variety of conditions in one of their provider’s textbooks.  Prevalence rates give them a sense for how many of a specific diagnosis they could expect from a sample of 10,000 children.  The savvy practice administrator combined those rates with census data to get the number of children by county to calculate an estimate of how many cases the practice could expect by county.  With that calculation as a denominator, we data mined their practice management system to see how many patients with those diagnosis codes the physicians are seeing by county and by age.  If the physicians expect to see about 100 of a given diagnosis in the county and are only seeing 18 patients, there is a potential opportunity.  Conversely, if the practice is seeing 250 patients with that diagnosis in the county, that market may be tapped out.  What is the potential market for your specialty in your area?  What percentage of that market have you captured? The post Marketing Opportunities with Prevalence Rates appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How do you compare to similar practices? Would you like to know more? Today’s BIG Idea is an example I’m building for a group of dermatologists in Florida.  We are using Medicare Provider Utilization Data to compare Evaluation and Management coding levels, market share, and billed charges.  If you want to get a sense of how your practice compares in any of these areas, Medicare’s Provider Utilization data is a great place to start.  Listen to today’s podcast for the details.  The good news is that the data is free to use and is packed with insights to improve your practice.  You will likely need IT help to deal with the sheer amount of data (10 million rows), but the effort is well worth your time. The post Medicare Provider Utilization Data appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Have you changed practice management workflows recently? Are things getting better? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast is from a practice that dramatically changed workflows around obtain prior authorizations.  Listen to see what they are tracking to see if changing the workflow made things better or worse.  For this practice, tracking surgeries canceled by the office is a key indicator of the success of the change.  You will hear ideas of what the practice is tracking, short-term vs. long-term results, and ideas on how your practice can implement similar reports to ensure you are changing for the better.  With all of the transition medical practice are experiencing over the past three years, tracking those changes is critical.  This will get you started. The post Track Workflow Changes appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Costs up?  Revenue flat or down? And your providers are working harder than ever? A recent MGMA Stat survey showed 89% of medical groups’ operating costs increased in 2023.  You are not alone.  A proactive approach to this problem is to run a custom report that shows all of the adjustments that are within 95-100% of the billed charge.  Today’s BIG Ideas podcast has the details.  A group in the southeast tracked their adjustments and found a lot of questionable denials, but they also found a lot of adjustments that wrote off most of the billed charge, far in excess of the allowed amount in the contract.  Listen for details on how we first looked at historical data to decide which adjustments we wanted to see.  The next step is to build an automatic email so that the team can daily track and respond to these denials.  In today’s cost environment, every little bit of revenue helps.  This report has the potential do a lot more than that for your revenue stream. The post Adjustments From Billed Charges appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Looking for ways to improve productivity in your medical practice? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast comes from a practice in the southeast that is trying to qualify for MIPS measures but has a very manual, labor intensive process to gather the required data.  Listen to hear a brief introduction to Microsoft’s Power Automate tool.  We have used Power Automate to replace a process that would have taken a full time employee over a month.  The process takes about an hour to run and will read data from our data warehouse, scan specific PDF files for the information we need, and write that data back to our data warehouse.  We have found Power Automate to be be very powerful.  The free desktop version has met all of our requirements so far.  If your practice is like many practices — struggling to staff and to increase productivity after the pandemic, this podcast could be exactly the solution you need. The post Power Automate appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How hard are you working on managing your practice’s reputation? How hard are you working on your patient A/R balances? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes a recent New York Times article about a health system that was criticized for denying care to patients who had not paid their balances.  Two days after the article, the health system changed their policy.  Imagine the hit to the practice’s reputation.  Listen for ideas about how to better manage your practice’s patient accounts receivable balances.  I hope you will also get some motivation to avoid a similar challenge in your practice.  Whether you need to double down on your efforts to collect at the front desk, reach out to patients with balances, or speed up your revenue cycle, today is a great day to get started. This article and topic will be part of one of my presentations at MGMA’s Medical Practice Excellence Leaders Conference in Nashville in October.  If you have not registered, here is a link to get started. The post Patient AR and Reputation Management appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Looking for a way to reduce patient accounts receivable and increase patient satisfaction at the same time? How well do you track copay assistance programs? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes ways to track copay assistance programs in your practice management system and ideas on how to make sure your patients who qualify have access to the programs.  Listen for ideas on how to look in patient accounts receivable for patients who may qualify and then for ideas to be proactive, find patient appointments and sign patients up in advance. Especially if your copay assistance programs have relatively short time frames for patients to qualify after treatment, being proactive about identifying copay assistance programs and helping patients register can mean the difference between getting paid and bad debt.  Copay assistance programs can be complex, especially with government vs. commercial payers.  The better the information you can provide in your practice management system, the better the data we can report on and save both you and your patients money. The post Track Copay Assistance Programs appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are you absolutely certain that payers are taking appropriate contractual adjustments from your charges? Watch contractual allowances carefully in your practice. Today’s BIG Ideas podcast is from an onsite visit to a practice in the Midwest last week.  The Revenue Cycle Director asked for a report of all adjustments that equaled the billed charge.  After I wrote the code in SQL Server, we were surprised to find a payer writing off the entire charge as if it was a contractual allowance.  Listen to today’s podcast for why that adjustment is a serious concern and how you might discover similar problems in your practice, with or without SQL code.  This is another example of revenue leaking from a practice at a time when we need to find and collect every dollar.  I hope these podcasts are helpful for you. The post Watch Contractual Allowances appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

I really am going to stop talking about finding missing revenue for your practice. Just not today. Today’s BIG Idea is actually two ideas to find missing practice revenue.  The first example is for practices who get revenue information from an outside source.  Listen for how a pathology practice in the Southeast looks for potential missing revenue by data mining for gaps in the feed of accession numbers coming from the hospital.  If you have hospital based charges or other ancillary services that do not flow through your revenue cycle like traditional charges do, this idea may save you time and money.  The second idea is from a practice in the Midwest who is building a customized claim scrubber.  We started by looking for visits where a new patient visit was about to be charged where an established patient code may have been more appropriate.  Then the practice manager suggested we automatically find the reverse — established patient codes that were about to be billed for a patient the practice had not seen in over three years.  Again, potential revenue for the practice.  I hope these podcasts are changing your bottom line, too.   The post Even More Ways to Look for Missing Revenue appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Have you found all of your unbilled charges? Today’s BIG Idea follows up on last week’s podcast about looking for missing charges.  The example is from a practice that uses Greenway’s Intergy product, but the principles apply no matter which practice management system you use.  Listen for ideas on how and where to look for missing charges, but the biggest take home idea may be the approach to looking for missing charges.  I am not trying to find one missing charge.  I am far more interested in a pattern or a workflow or a process that is somehow leaving money on the table.  If finding a missing charge can show me a crack in my revenue cycle, I will find a lot more missing revenue than a single charge.  Listen for ideas on casting a wide net and then categorizing what we find to make the analysis as powerful and efficient as we can.  I hope you find these podcasts helpful in your practice. The post More Ways to Look for Missing Charges appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How sure are you? Today’s BIG Idea is to make absolutely sure you are billing all of your patient visits.  The example is a practice who wanted to make sure that a patient who saw two providers on the same day was being appropriately billed by each provider.  The project led us to question some assumptions the practice management system made that all patient visits has been billed.  You do not have to find many unbilled visits to come out a hero.  It may be well worth your time to get your IT team looking to make sure there are no holes in your revenue cycle, especially in today’s medical practice environment.  Listen to today’s podcast for ideas to get started. The post Are You Sure You are Billing All of Your Patient Visits? appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Do you have patients show up to see the wrong provider? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes an orthopedic practice who data mines their clinical data and then compares the results to their appointment data to catch patients scheduled to see the wrong provider.  The example I describe is primarily used to catch patients scheduled to see a doctor when they were supposed to see the advanced practitioner next, and vice versa.  It took some standardization from the providers to be able to do this type of analysis, but the exception report I describe is so much more efficient than having staff try to catch these mistakes.  The process I describe can be used to combine a variety of clinical and practice management data to better practice operations.  How much longer will your practice do things the hard way? The post Provider Scheduling Exceptions appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Ready for a new analysis dashboard idea? Today’s BIG Idea is an analysis dashboard I’m building for an orthopedic practice in the Midwest.  The revenue cycle team has a variety of Pivot Tables, dashboards, and other tools to monitor data.  The new analysis dashboard is designed to give a high-level look at several revenue cycle areas at once so that the team knows where to drill down for more information.  In the example dashboard, we look at charges, payments, denials, pre-authorizations and more.  Trends and major areas to focus on are quickly available across the practice so the team can quickly identify potential problems.  If the high-level information isn’t enough detail, the team can quickly access more granular information to find exactly what needs to be done.  You might consider adding a high level analysis dashboard to your practice.  Saving time with better information in today’s medical practice environment is becoming more essential every day. The post Analysis Dashboard appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are you ready to start a business intelligence project in your medical practice? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes a great place to begin — a charges dataset.  I think of a dataset as a table with rows and columns.  A charges dataset has a row for every procedure code and columns describing that procedure code.  For example, I would want a column for the patient, patient demographics like age, city, state, and zip, the amount of the charge, the procedure code and modifiers, the rendering and referring providers, primary insurance, location, primary diagnosis, and a lot more.  In a perfect world, that charges dataset would live in SQL Server and connect to Excel spreadsheets with Pivot Tables that automatically refresh.  All I would need to do is to open Excel to see the same analysis I had yesterday, only with fresh data.  Listen to today’s podcast for ideas on how you might use a charges dataset in a variety of settings to drive change in your practice. The post Start Business Intelligence with a Charges Dataset appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Does your practice have credit balances? Is the stack of credit balances to work only getting larger? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast talks about credit balances and has some ideas for reducing the balances to work in the first place by putting in workflows to make the numbers more accurate.  More accurate numbers leads to more believable reports which should then lead to less time working each balance.  Also listen for ideas about building reports to show any other balances on the encounter, patient, or guarantor to expedite the work required to process credit balances.  My credit balance experience with a local hospital left a positive impression.  What impression is your practice leaving? The post Credit Balances appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Still thinking about monitoring productivity in your practice? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes how a surgical practice in the Midwest is measuring medical transcription productivity.  Whether your practice deals with transcription or not, there are several ideas in the podcast about accessing data outside of your EHR, where to put the data, and how to integrate the data into your business intelligence reporting.  You’ll also benefit from ideas about what to measure and how to report what you measure to maximize productivity gains.  I hope these podcasts make your practice better. The post Medical Transcription Productivity appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Interested in speeding up your revenue cycle? How long has it been since you analyzed your days to bill? Days to bill a claim is the subject of today’s BIG Ideas podcast.  The story is from a pathology practice with delays in billing claims coming from the hospital.  The practice administrator wants to make sure the hospital claims are being submitted timely and wants to keep an eye on the billing company.  If you aren’t in pathology or do not use a billing company, keep listening.  You will hear ideas for other practices with lags in billing and how practices have subdivided the days to bill metric to add accountability to their revenue cycle processes.  I hope these podcasts drive change and profitability in your practice.   The post Days to Bill appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How long has it been since you really saw your practice data? Would it help to visualize your medical practice data geographically? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes how a practice used Excel’s 3D Maps feature to see the growth in patients at a new location.  Microsoft has not done much with 3D Maps since it was introduced years ago, but 3D Maps can be very helpful in seeing where your patients are coming from, where your referring physicians practice, or how your marketing efforts are progressing.  The maps are not super fancy graphic design masterpieces, but they are in Excel, making it easy to write formulas to analyze your data before mapping.  Listen for ideas on how you might get started using maps with your data.  Using 3D Maps is a very helpful way to see your practice in a new light. The post Visualizing Medical Practice Data Geographically appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How do you generate medical dashboards from a data warehouse? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast comes from a slide I’m using at next week’s MGMA Financial and Operations Conference in Orlando.  After I finish a presentation about using business intelligence in a medical practice, I will often get questions about how the business intelligence is built.  Listen to discover how I build a data warehouse in Microsoft’s SQL Server and then leverage that data throughout the practice.  Once you get your data into SQL Server, you can build all kinds of customized logic to drive value in your practice.  SQL Server is also an easy source for a variety of different tools to consume that data.  If you are still stuck with the same old canned reports, think about investing in a data warehouse instead. The post Medical Dashboards from a Data Warehouse appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is staffing still an issue in your practice? Would it help to know which staff you need where tomorrow? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes a practice that needed to know how many imaging patients they could expect tomorrow, but similar principles can help your practice, too.  Listen to see why and how the practice chose to mine appointment data to estimate when and where staff would be needed.  Once you have the data, you can project staffing needs throughout your practice tomorrow, next week, or for as far out as you have appointment data.  Why fly blind when medical practices know better than almost any other business what future staffing needs will be?  I hope these podcasts help your practice. The post Mine Appointment Data to Project Staffing Needs appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Do you track second opinion patients in your practice? Do you know how many of those patients end up being treated? Today’s BIG Idea is from a neurosurgery practice in the Midwest who decided to track second opinion patients and wanted to know how successful the practice is at turning those patients into surgeries.  Here is another example of data I have never seen in a canned report but that SQL Server can track for you.  Once you know how successful at converting patients you are overall, it is easy to drill down to see success by rendering provider, referring provider, patient demographics, and more.  Even if you do not see second opinion patients, similar analyses can provide similar benefits for patients who come to your practice from a variety of sources. Just because you can’t get the data you need from a canned report does not mean the data will not benefit your practice.  Most of the valuable information I see does not come from canned reports. The post Track Second Opinion Patients appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

How do you manage medical AR in your practice? Could you do better? Managing medical AR is the topic of today’s BIG Ideas podcast.  We will focus specifically on how many claims staff work daily and when the work gets done.  As practices continue to struggle with staffing shortages and work from home, getting good data about staff productivity can really help your bottom line.  Too many medical practices have too much old accounts receivable.  Listen to how a practice using Greewnway’s Intergy product mined actionable data to better manage their team. The post Manage Medical AR appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Did last week’s podcast get you thinking about valuing patients in your practice? So did we. Today’s BIG Ideas podcast is a follow up to last week’s discussion about using business intelligence to analyze how many patients seen by one specialty see another specialty in the practice.  Since we can follow a cohort of patients that saw a specialty to see where those patients go and the revenue they generate, this week’s project was to follow patients in the same specialty.  We tracked patients who first saw a provider in 2019 and then followed those patients through 2022 to see what other providers in the same specialty the patient saw.  We took that analysis a step further to see whether providers generated more revenue for other providers or whether the other providers sent more revenue to a specific list of providers.  If you followed your new patients, what would you learn?  What would you do differently? The post Payments by Provider Based on First Provider Seen appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is your practice synergistic? Do different specialties drive patients to your practice, even without formal referrals? Can you put a number on it? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast comes from a group in the Northeast with two distinct specialties, a main specialty we’ll call specialty A and an unrelated specialty we’ll call specialty B.  The question is how many patients who start at B end up seeing patients at A.  In your practice, the question may be how many urgent care patients drive revenue to the rest of the practice, how many patients use an ancillary service, or many other synergies.  Listen to today’s podcast for ideas on how to track and then value patients throughout the practice.  The calculation is complex in Excel, but very doable in SQL Server.  The information you glean may change your entire approach to the practice. The post Valuing Medical Patients appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Are the procedure codes you authorize the procedure codes you actually bill? Are you sure? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes an advanced orthopedic practice in the Midwest who developed workflows to support an automatic email that tracks procedure codes that were billed without being pre-authorized.  Listen for ideas on the workflow changes you need to make to get this data automatically and in time to add the procedure codes to the pre-authorization.  How often do your providers add un-authorized procedure codes?  How many of these do you have to catch and get paid for to make it worth your time to look? The post Unauthorized CPT Codes appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Does your medical practice have more denials than you have time to appeal? You are not alone. Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes how a practice tracked appeals to see which appeals were most successful by payer.  Listen to get insight into how your practice might do something similar.  If you know which appeals are most likely to be worth your time, you can prioritize those appeals and get the most bang for your buck.  You can even justify hiring more staff to do the appeals.  Your providers have done the work.  Your practice has incurred the cost.  It is time to get paid accordingly. The post Successful Medical Appeals appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Do patients who miss an appointment get rescheduled? Are you sure? Today’s BIG Idea comes from a cardiology group that tracks patients who no show or cancel their appointment to make sure those patients get rescheduled with the practice.  We built a report that automatically finds patients who no show or cancel, but do not have a future appointment.  Since it is an exception report, you only see the patients your team needs to focus on.  Listen for ideas on how you might prioritize which patients to call back. Occasionally podcasts like this get me in trouble with practices who have more patients than they can see, but this report is not just about driving revenue for the practice.  There is a significant patient care aspect to this report as well.  I hope these podcasts are helpful. The post No Show or Cancel Without Future Appointment appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is it taking your medical practice longer to get paid? How do you know? How much longer? Today’s BIG Ideas Podcast describes what a savvy practice in the Southeast is doing to track how long it takes payers to respond to a clean claim.  You will not be surprised to see that we use Pivot Tables to analyze the data, focusing first on payers.  The data behind the Pivot Table also allows to track days to pay by insurance plan, provider, procedure code and more, while trending the data by month and year.  What would your practice do with this kind of data?  Would you change workflows or processes to get paid sooner?  The pandemic, quiet quitting, and inflation have all taken a significant toll on medical practices.  Those same factors have also impacted payers.  What do your numbers look like? The post Days to Pay appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is your practice offering a new service post-pandemic? Do you need to find ancillary patients for that service? Today’s BIG Ideas podcast describes how a general surgery practice tries to find ancillary patients for their new surgical center, but the principles can help a much wider variety of practices.  Listen for ideas on how to identify potential patients.  Once you have refined your criteria of how to find potential patients, listen for ideas on building an exception report so SQL Server can sort through all of your patients and tell you which patients to focus on.  If your practice is thinking about adding an ancillary service, there is an idea or two here for you. The post Find Ancillary Patients appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Is it time to get better Allscripts® reports in your practice? Today’s BIG Idea is to obtain faster, more flexible Allscripts reports and dashboards for your practice.  Rather than waiting for reports to run, listen to today’s podcast for ways to speed up the reporting process by connecting a data warehouse with Allscripts data directly to Excel, Pivot Tables, dashboards, email, and much more.  You get better data faster, with much more powerful custom analyses.  Once of the big advantages of Allscripts is that the data is generally hosted inside your network in SQL Server, so getting better reports is a lot easier than having data stuck in the cloud.  I talked to a practice in Wisconsin today whose practice management system wants $1,500/month for the practice to simply access their own data.  Allscripts makes it much easier than that if you own your data.  If you’re an Allscripts practice ready to take your reporting to the next level, we should talk. The post Allscripts Reports appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Have you calculated your medical practice hit rate lately? Today’s BIG Idea is to calculate how many new patients turn into surgical or other procedures.  Listen for ideas about calculating how many new patients turn into procedures and for ways to slice the numbers to get a better feel for which providers are more successful with which payers.  Trend the data over time to see whether patients are getting procedures faster and share best practices throughout your organization.  Patients who need those procedures most will thank you. The post Medical Practice Hit Rate appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.

Quiet quitting, the great resignation, and turnover got you down? The front desk is a prime target for turnover in a medical practice.  Today’s BIG Ideas podcast talks about automatically finding and reporting patient registration errors.  The front desk is early in your revenue cycle.  Improving the front desk processes can speed up your entire revenue cycle, but finding and and fixing front desk errors can be time consuming.  Listen for ideas on how to automate the error finding process as well as the reporting back to the front desk.  Fixing patient registration errors early on can save you time and trouble down the road.  Today’s podcast will help you get started. The post Patient Registration Errors appeared first on Moore Solutions Inc.