I’ve written earlier about how a health care practice should respond to and use new technology. This post deals with nuts-and-bolts accounting, something as old as Hippocrates himself.

How much is your monthly A/R (accounts receivable)? Quick economics refresher: accounts receivable is money owed by patients, not yet paid. A/R is recorded as an asset on your balance sheet. If your practice’s A/R exceeds 1.5 times your monthly charges, it’s time to take a closer look at how your billing company is operating.

First, check your 0-30 days A/R; this is your current A/R. It’s also where you’d like the majority of your claims to be. Next, take a look at your 30-60 days A/R and pay attention to the payer mix in this category. Remember that Medicare claims are supposed to be paid within 14 days; if there are Medicare claims 30-60 days old, it’s time to give your billing company a call. A/R more than 60 days old should only consist of worker’s compensation, liens you take, or some private insurance funded by specific states.

Make sure your billing company has an organized system for dealing with unpaid claims after 30 days. Another easy fix if you find problems with your A/R is double-checking to make sure you’re sending clean information to your billing company. A misspelled name or inaccurate policy number can cause unnecessary headaches for you and your staff.

The better your practice is about turning accounts receivable into cash on hand, the more you can invest in your business to continue growing it.

How do you decide where to go to dinner? A lot of us head to restaurants after a friend (or Yelp) gives us a recommendation. If we hear that the food is great and the bar is incredible, we go. The food and drink could be stellar, but if the service is horrendous … we’re not going back, and we tell our friends the same.

Service makes a huge difference in our overall experience. When patients come into a health care practice, the way they’re treated matters a great deal. Unfortunately, we’re more likely to share negative experiences with friends than we are positive ones. Unfriendly staff, along with doctors and nurses who have a poor bedside manner, get bad reviews. Sites like RateMDs and Angie’s List are used by thousands of people to review doctors and practices before they decide where to go.

Everything has a review on the Internet. Yelp users can review restaurants to airlines and beyond.

The trend of treating patients like consumers has been popping up on the Internet lately.  I’m not discussing putting the burden of decision-making in the hands of a patient, as discussed on Bloomberg Businessweek in January. I mean treating a patient like the paying customer they are. It keeps your practice competitive, encourages loyalty and creates more business.

Make sure your staff is friendly (even on the phone). Keep patients informed of delays so they’re less likely to get stuck in the waiting room. Take credit cards and HSAs (health savings account cards) if you don’t already. Making it easy to pay means you get paid.

We live in a world that’s all about you, the consumer. It affects every business, from restaurants to a health care practices.

Electronic Medical Records, (EMRs) seem intuitive to the younger generation. I’m writing this article in Microsoft Word and publishing it on SaportaReport – there’s no reason for me to use paper. So why is it that so many health care practices and hospitals still rely on paper filing systems?

The records we’re discussing migrating from paper are incredibly sensitive, complex, and important. Medical records are vital to the individuals to which they belong. The transition is made more difficult by ever-changing protocols and government requirements. Even with the difficulty, it is inevitable that the medical industry will make the shift.

Paperless records can improve patient care and reduce the incidents of duplicated tests. They have the potential to be easily transferred from doctor to doctor, which can be life-saving in an emergency.

In America, 40% of doctors and 25% of hospitals use EMRs. Piedmont Hospital is one of them. Greenway is an EMR company that is based out of Georgia and whose services are fairly widespread here. The federal government, as a part of the ’09 stimulus plan, offers financial incentives for practices that adopt EMRs.

EMRs are by no means a perfect system. There are documented security breaches and many kinks to work out. Privacy standards must be stringent, and we must all work towards that goal. Common steps already in place to ensure privacy include every individual having a user name and password. Audit trails record who looked at what records. Finally, doctors and nurses must be directly involved with a patient in order to gain access to their file. Epic Systems, to which Piedmont will be switching soon, has other security features. While doctors can view patient data on laptops, smartphones and tablets, it cannot be stored. Thus, if the device is stolen, the data cannot be misused.

There are many people already aligned either for or against EMRs, and yes, there are some bugs to work out. But think about the way I wrote this article. How many of us read books on a Kindle, newspapers on a computer screen, and use e-vites instead of invitations? The paperless world is permanent, and the medical industry can’t avoid it.

Not too long ago, patients relied almost exclusively on doctors and nurses for medical information. Since the advent of the Internet, individuals have access to a slew of information about their health. Most patients in the waiting room have done at least a little research about what’s ailing them. How should we handle the changing dynamic in the doctor-patient relationship?

My feelings are mixed regarding these sites. As long as they are regarded as a useful adjunct for information, but not by any means the final word, they offer easily accessible information to interested readers. When patients seek to self-diagnose and arrive certain about what’s wrong, doctors have some extra work to do. Health care professionals have to un-teach their patients so they can treat them properly.

When making a diagnosis, it might be a good idea to warn patients away from health sites. A symptom checker provides a plethora of possible maladies. A sore throat can return results as benign as a cold to something as harrowing as scarlet fever! Patients might cause themselves unnecessary anxiety they could otherwise avoid.

Online sites can be a good thing if a patient is seeking to educate themselves about their condition and uses a reputable source. Doctors refer patients with new diagnoses to books, brochures, and support groups. Most of these resources have an easy-to-access home on the web, and we shouldn’t eschew good information on the Internet.

As health care professionals, we need to continue to educate our patients. While online resources can be helpful, we must make sure our patients know that they are never a substitute for the expert and eyes-on opinion of an actual provider.

“Upon our first meeting David understood that social media marketing is about the relationships, not the medium.” Stated Andrew Katz, Founder of Thumb Friendly, who’s company specializes in Mobile and Social Media Marketing.

With all the new technologies involved in our field, you may not have time to sit down and learn about using social media. Since I believe that using social media is an important way to engage with patients, I wanted to give you a quick overview of how we should use one of the many social media platforms available: Facebook.

I want to tell one thing right away. Don’t be discouraged if flocks of fans don’t like or follow your pages at the very beginning. This is a process, not an event. We had our Facebook page for almost a year before we began engaging with users, and now we post daily and have unique engagers each day.

I’ve become pretty interested in Facebook for several reasons. Not only do I use it because everyone and their grandmother are on it, but also because it’s a great marketing tool that shows interesting insights. Once your page is created (remember to create a separate page for your practice), you or whomever you hire should write on its wall frequently. We post health tips, medical news, news pertaining to veins or vein-related issues, promotions and anything we find that might be helpful to current and future fans.

After a few months of posting, take a peak at the “Insights” tab on the left side of your page under your profile picture. (Only administrators are privy to this information, don’t worry.) Here, you will see your total likes and if they have increased or decreased in percentage value for the last week. You will also see how many “Friends of Fans” you have, which is more important than you’d think. Once your fans start sharing your posts, all of their friends will see it and in theory click to “like” your page also.

You’ll also be able to see weekly total reach and the reach of individual posts on the Insights page. Virality of each post and the number of engaged users are shown too, which lets you see which posts are most popular. After you get a sense of what your fans like, you will have a better idea of what you should be posting about.

We post videos, photos, links and everything we can on our page. We not only post about vein-related news and tips, but also news and cool sites from other fields. Google will rank your page higher if you link to relevant sites and information. I think it’s important to have photos on your Facebook page… maybe not all of them from the holiday party, but definitely the photo of your office volunteering last week.

I know there are several risks associated with becoming active on social media sites. I also know that there are several rewards, and personally, I insist my medical practice is involved on social media sites.

First, a practice having an online presence depends on if they have someone willing and able to post frequently on its behalf. You may be worried about employees’ productivity decreasing if they’re always posting to Facebook, but not me. I was smart enough to hire a reputable public relations firm that is experienced in social media strategies. The firm works directly with my in-house marketing team and posts to our social media sites daily. If hiring a PR firm doesn’t sound feasible, be sure to put a social media policy in place in your practice. (Here’s an example: Social Media Policy) This will spell out to your employees what is acceptable behavior and what is not when interacting with your practice’s social media sites. Also, limit the administrative access to only a few trusted employees and monitor the site routinely for posted content.

Another common concern is privacy, including HIPPA compliance. Some easy tips to avoid HIPPA violations are don’t talk about patients… even in general terms, but do talk about conditions, treatments and research. For example, avoid “I saw a patient Wednesday with ABC condition…”, but “Patients with abc condition typically present with these symptoms…” is OK. Some other helpful nuggets are if you wouldn’t say it in the elevator, don’t say it online and don’t mix your personal and professional lives. Let patients become a fan of your page, but don’t friend them.

A recent survey by the National Research Corporation found that 41 percent of patients look for medical content from social media sites, and 94 percent of those patients turn to Facebook. I don’t know about you, but when my prospective and existing patients are searching for answers… I want them to find my practice.

Hello and thank you for visiting the Health Care Practice Thought Leadership site, hosted by David Martin, President and CEO of VeinInnovations in Atlanta, Ga.

This site is positioned to be an informative site for issues concerning the medical field. David Martin is a health care professional who has owned and managed several successful medical practices in Atlanta and Athens in the past decade.

VEININNOVATIONS was founded in Atlanta, GA in 2002 to meet the challenges and opportunities presented by the remarkable technological advances in the diagnosis and treatment of vein disease. These advances included new, more sensitive imaging devices, and an entirely new array of treatment options that were catheter based, and designed for the office, thus eliminating the need for hospitalization. It was, at the time of its founding, the only vein specialist facility in Georgia operated by physicians board-certified in vascular medicine, and which offered every treatment option available. It remains to this day, the only practice to meet those criteria.