Practice Management

Strategies & Tactics to Improve Efficiencies for Better Patient Care

In response to member feedback, we have expanded on continuing education content to include a full day of content on the business of medicine. When asked what keeps you up at night, you responded vehemently on issues tied to practice management, improving office efficiencies, staffing, and best models for utilization of staff resources, contracting, coding, billing, and practice transitions. In an effort to help you sleep better at night, we have developed a full day program focused on these practice management issues to help you navigate the healthcare arena both now and as it goes through its own metamorphosis.

According to Doug Dawson, MD, AAOA Socioeconomic Chair, “What a great day of content! A huge amount of important information from multiple angles to help improve your fund of knowledge in the business of medicine in one day. Sure to be time well spent while out of your office to hear excellent speakers with practical information”.

We will kick off our Saturday program with Strategic and Tactical Practice Management: Ten Things Every Medical Practice Should Be Doing in the New Healthcare Environment presented by Ron Howrigon of Fulcrum Strategies. Through his experience, Ron recognizes many physician practices are not operating their business as successfully as they could be if they had certain business tools at their disposal, especially in light of recent changes with healthcare reform and the macro issues facing medicine. Most groups are wonderful at customer service, fantastic in clinical care, but are they running a successful business? This program will cover complex business principles and apply them in a physician-friendly format to help assure everyone walks away with some take home ah-has.

Ron Howrigon is President of Fulcrum Strategies and a frequent presenter for the Association of Otolaryngology Administrators. Ron’s career started on the payer side with 18 years in the Managed Care industry as a Negotiator and Network Manager. He has held Senior Management level positions with three of the largest Managed Care companies in the nation, including Kaiser Permanente, Cigna Healthcare and BlueCross BlueShield. His experience with these organizations covered the North East, Mid-Atlantic, and Western areas of the country. During his time on the payer side, Ron became disillusioned with what he saw happening to the independent practice of medicine. In 2004, he realized he was working for the wrong team, and decided to leave the Managed Care industry. He founded his own consulting firm, Fulcrum Strategies, to help doctors and hospitals succeed in negotiations with Managed Care companies. Since 2004, under the leadership of Ron, Fulcrum Strategies has helped over 200 medical practices in 29 states, having produced over $100 million dollars of revenue increases for clients. This experience should play well to help highlight key things we should all incorporate into our day-to-day practice.

From here, our day breaks down into intimate, concurrent sessions geared to allow real back-forth dialogue with attendees to help address current practice challenges. Several of these sessions will be repeated to help assure you, your partners, your administrator, and even your staff have choices to help build an educational program that delivers on your practice needs. Our breakouts feature well-known experts. In addition to expanding on Ron’s portfolio with sessions on Managed Care Contract Negotiation and Patient-Centered Health Care and Physician Performance Indicators, we have Teresa Thompson, BS, CPC, CMSCS, CCC offering coding and documentation workshops to help assure you and your staff are using the latest coding protocols to help assure compliance and reimbursement;Cheyenne Brinson and Kim Pollock from Karen Zupko Associates (KZA) will cover a plethora of topics from relationship marketing and practice transitions to optimizing revenue and managing and developing your most valuable resource — staff; Ken Hertz a nationally recognized medical practice management consultant with over 43 years experience in consulting and managing medical practices with expertise in revenue cycle management, strategic planning, mergers and acquisitions, organizational behavior and information systems implementation will offer a keynote on Surviving & Thriving in Challenging Times, as well as breakouts on analyzing your practice culture to improve structure and performance and analyzing and improving Your workflow for process efficiencies that lead to improved patient care. The renowned experts will be complemented by panel presentations by Association of Otolaryngology Administrators leadership, Society of PAs in Otolaryngology leadership, and a panel featuring AAOA leadership along side of the KZA team, AOA, and SPAO.

Having attended similar programs, Cecelia Damask, DO, Director of Educational Programs says, “I am very proud of the program we have been able to put together. We have recruited some outstanding speakers who can help deliver content each of us can use in our practices. We look forward to seeing the interaction with members and key walk-aways to continue to build on this type of practice support and education.”