October, 2011

On behalf of our newest client, I'm posting this request for questions relating to FASDs.  For those of you in NJ especially, please send in your questions.

AAP NJ has received an FASDs visiting professorship grant and is planning two webinars that will be transmitted live in January and then will be available as a recording for everybody.

When our visiting professors asked what questions pediatricians would like to be discussed, I decided to take the request literally and to ask pediatricians themselves. Thus, I posted the survey link https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BV3YRCG.

I need to know what exactly you think about the FASDs - do we have a problem here? Or may be it is somewhat overblown? What question(s) do you have about the condition? Or, if you don't have any questions - just write "none" in lieu of the first question. You can provide your contact info if you want more communication about the project, or you can be absolutely anonymous. 

And please, ask your colleagues to participate too, as the more responses, the merrier :)

Thank you in advance,
Alla

Alla Gordina, MD, FAAP
Clinical Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Drexel University College of Medicine and
UMDNJ
- Robert Wood Johnson Medical School

Global Pediatrics
International Adoptions Medical Support Services
7 Auer Court, East Brunswick, NJ 08816, USA
732-432-7777 (voice)
732-432-9030 (fax)

www.globalpfm.com
drgordina @globalpediatrics.net

Sometimes, other people ask me questions and sometimes they then even publish what I say.  Here is a piece about the unique demands of pediatricians have with EHRs over on the EMR and EHR blog.  They ran my email exchange with them verbatim - I always wish I'd said something else in retrospect, but please share your experience as a pediatrician so we can spread the word about your unique challenges.

During the NCE, Dr. Couchman suggested that I whip together a spreadsheet to show how to quickly calculate the divot made when you drop a poorly paying insurance company.  Here it is.

The concept is fairly sound and simple: if you have an insurance company that pays you less than the rest of your payers, dropping them does not require a 1:1 visit replacement ratio for you to do well. If you average $100 visit from most of your payers, but only average $50 from the company in question, you really only need to replace 1/2 of their visits to be revenue neutral, right?

And, given that some percentage of your patients will stay with you at your typical revenue rate(somewhere between 30-60%, usually), you will need to replace even fewer than you think.

I have written about this phenomenon before and have done some spreadsheet/sketches for my own use, but I've attached a working copy (M$ Version here, OpenOffice version here).  

For it to work, you only need fill in five cells.  The first four you can get from your PMS (right?!): the number of visits and revenue per visit of the company you want to examine and the rest of your payers.   You then need to estimate the percentage of patients from the plan you expect to keep.  In essence, just update the fields in light blue.

The spreadsheet then calculates the impact on your revenue and the number of visits you'll need to replace in order to be revenue neutral.  For example, I've tossed some numbers into the form - the insco represents 1000 visits @ $85 visit while the rest of the practice is 5000 visits @ $100 visit.  If 50% of the patients stay with you and generate "average" revenue, you lose only 6% of your revenue and you only have to replace 350 visits to get back to "break-even" (vs. the 500 most people expect).  

Play with the numbers for a little bit and you can see how it works.  Once you realize that your practice probably has 100s or 1000s of kids overdue for their well visits, ready to fill in the divots, it might not be so bad.

I usually don't talk much about PCC's actual "business" here, but I can't help myself today.

Although we've known for a little while, it's official now: PCC has passed ARRA certification!  Woohoo! I wanted to throw an image of the certified seal up here, but I didn't want the Gods of ONC to come down on me.

If you see a PCC developer, designer, or training, pat him or her on the back.

I had planned to write about the 5010 software upgrade scam today, but this topic takes precedence!

10/17/11, 8:30-11:30pm, Kinsale Irish Pub, Boston

The official invite.