Do hospital CEOs really want your hospital based group to succeed? As to clinical performance, the answer is “yes.” But as to everything else the answer is a resounding . . . “maybe.”
How to Navigate the Rising Tide of Aggressive RFPs – Podcast
Listen to Mark discuss how to Navigate the rising tide of aggressive RFPs.
Karl Marx, M.D.
For the most part, physicians are stuck in a Marxian world of reimbursement: Pay is based upon the value of labor, whether measured in ASA units or wRVUs. It’s a mistake to assign value on the basis of input (labor) when the real measure is in the value of the output, whether seen as cure,…
Weaponized RFPs
More and more hospitals are disrupting their longstanding hospital-based group relationships as they seek to cut stipends and get more for nothing. The favored tool? A “weaponized” form of the request for proposal, called a “Fulcrum RFP™, designed to get a group to grovel for the continuation of its contract. Of course, the concept of an…
Why Hospitals Don’t Want Employed Physicians to (Really) Succeed
You’d think that after spending millions of dollars setting up a foundation model entity to employ physicians, or even going out, in those states without prohibitions on the practice of medicine, and employing physicians directly, that hospitals would want you to succeed. Well, they do, sort of — but only to a point. Historically, physician…
Accountable Care Organizations: A Reactionary Grasp Not a Revolution in Patient Care
Proponents of the ACO model argue that this time it’s different, that the model is not about controlling physicians, it’s about clinical issues and getting physicians integrated with other providers…
How to Extract More Than Fair Market Value
Healthcare deal compliance, in terms of antikickback, Stark, and tax exempt entities, often turns on the propriety of the consideration paid. And that turns on the concept of fair market value, which is often neither fair nor indicative of value. That’s because fair market value is defined for those purposes in a fashion that ignores…
Self-Referral of Imaging Studies as Weapon
According to a report in the January issue of the Journal of the American College of Radiology, a study reveals that the total amount of Medicare payments to non-radiologist physicians for non-invasive diagnostic imaging is greater than that paid to radiologists. The reason: self-referral within non-radiology practices. No real news as to the role of…
New Years UnResolutions for 2011
The notion of a fresh start is important; a clean break from the past.
Customer Service Services You
I’ve written before about the importance of customer service (see, for example, my blog posts of September 26, 2009, and June 3, 2009, or my article Securing Customer Satisfaction). Many medical groups have trouble focusing on improving customer service, and in getting their providers to implement tactics to support the group’s customer service strategy, because…