Revenue Cycle Management
- Provider Credentialing
- Billing and Collections
- Payor Contract Negotiation
- Auditing / Corporate Compliance
As doctors, we understand the personal commitment it takes to establish and grow a successful dermatology practice. However, faced with the ever-changing landscape of medicine and technology, we recognize that it can be exasperating and time-consuming trying to navigate the snowballing operational demands, regulatory challenges and reimbursement burdens while still delivering world-class patient care.
Arsenault Practice Development, along with Arsenault Dermatology, has a proven practice model that can minimize your worries and reduce your stress. We have engineered the perfect practice environment, allowing dermatologists to focus on what they enjoy most: treating patients. Financial benefits from our efficient and staff-friendly operations naturally flow form this centralized processes.
Routine customer engagement revealed a small but significant grouping of patients unhappy with specimen turnaround time. This problem is compounded by data regression analysis showing strong and ongoing growth within this division.
A deep data dive of over 2.5 million individual elements of information was expertly reduced to a single graph revealing that the problem was not only located at the callback stage, but specifically related to a significant drop off of productivity of a single agent.
Management met with problem agent and structured resolution. Moving forward the practice adopted an ongoing process of data feedback to ensure optimal biopsy result productivity.
Without clear data feedback to describe both the incoming demand and the available supply, provider schedules are filled incompletely. Every empty space on a provider’s schedule represents irretrievable revenue to the practice.
Data retrieval and processing protocol was developed to analyze new patient inflow (demand) and provider schedule efficiency (supply). Using a “big data” approach we created a protocol in which the Front Office Coordinator can now spot check both the level and spread of incoming patients. The result is that the Front Office Coordinator can determine how “full” each providers’ schedule is and direct incoming demand accordingly.
An unexpected outcome of this approach was the discovery that individual patient representatives develop patterns of behavior that distort the distribution of incoming new patients. This surprising discovery allowed us to develop an improved protocol, side-stepping inherent biases, which allowed for the maximization of distribution of incomming patients, thus evently scheduling patients across all providers.
Medicine is an experiential service. As technology advances, creating and cultivating a rewarding consumer experience begins from the first phone contact and continues through peer-to-peer communication, including social media. Aggregation of new patients has always been dependent upon word of mouth. Understanding the expanding opportunities to engage the consumer through technology and social media allows a practice to achieve recognizable growth.
Partnered with a world-class marketing/technology firm to execute an integrated marketing strategy, which included patient surveys, practice reviews, content distribution, SEO and SEM. Through this strategy measurable engagement has been realized. The practice also developed a new advertising campaign that has won several ADDY awards, and identified as one of the best dermatology campaigns in the state of Florida.
This concerted effort achieved the desired objectives, increasing consumer engagement by 600%, leading the practice to realize exponential growth, allowing expansion plans to move forward on a hastened timeline.
Billing is the lifeblood of all medical practices. As our practice grew at an accelerated rate, it ultimately outstripped the resources of the existing billing and collections department. In effect, the limitations within the billing department presented an obstacle to facilitating future growth.
After reviewing options to grow the billing department internally, it was determined that the most effective approach would be to outsource billing and collections to a leading national billing company. The operation was seamlessly transitioned to a company with a documented 99%+ reimbursement rate for dermatology practices.
Through this manuever we were able to complete backlogged A/R within weeks rather than months. Additional automation within the practice's EHR system was achieved, allowing for much more efficient eligibility confirmation protocols. Patient insurance verifications can now be performed on the spot within seconds, using a digital bridge through the clearinghouse and into individual insurance company databases. Finally, real-time analytics are now available through the national company, which allows the practice to develop improved strategies to address discrepancies in payer reimbursement rates.
Patient appointments are considered a perishable element in medical practices. To keep the practice no-show rate below 4.5%, significant manpower is required to manually call and confirm each appointment. Manual calls are able to retain/reschedule cancellations. Removing any one of the three elements (calls, emails or postcards) measurably increased loss rates.
Leveraging the technical capabilities of the EHR and internal IT support team, the practice developed protocols to link with a nationally recognized company capable of automating the call and confirm process. Patients who were unable to keep their appointment and wished to reschedule are now redirected to the practice in real time. Digitizing the process dramatically reduced staffing requirements and allowed those patient representatives to focus more energy on in-office customer engagement.
This solution worked so well the practice decided to work further with the company, retaining services for scheduling of incoming new patients. New patients responding to marketing efforts are now redirected to a dedicated call center. This call center is capable of both scheduling patients and providing enhanced marketing, which generated greater awareness of additional service offerings and provided up-sell opportunities, while reducing staff requirements.
"Our team brings over 50 years of best-in-class practice management, marketing and experience. I look forward to the opportunity to speak with you personally to share how we can help your practice grow."
Total. This is the advantage of our model. Naturally, it hurts the reputation of the practice if patients are cancelled last minute, so we appreciate advance notice. Beyond that, your schedule is yours to control. The same approach holds true on blending out. Let us know how/when you want to reduce your schedule and we will ramp up additional resources to cover the practice.
For office support staff, as much or as little as you’d like. Once we work with each other for a while, you may ultimately defer these decisions to us. Our plan is to recruit a strong manager who is aligned with our customer service plan (unless you have a qualified practice manager on staff now). This on-site manager will work together with you regarding staffing decisions.
PAs, on the other hand, require a more collaborative discussion. Mid-levels are an extension of you and your practice style. Because of this, the selection or removal of PAs is as much as business decision as a staffing discussion.
We believe:
Your primary duty as Medical Director is to be available in the event the mid-levels or clinical staff have problems. We do not subscribe to a ‘check the box’ type bureaucracy. You will not be expected to attend formal meetings, fill out paperwork, or anything else that takes time away from patient care.
No. We respect your established referral relationships and we believe it would be counterproductive to change those relationships.
You, your PAs and the practice all have free-standing malpractice policies. Effectively there are three veils of protection against malpractice claims. We have developed our approach toward PA training and implementation over the past 10 years. We understand which PAs work well in our setting and how to train them properly. We believe comprehensive training and strong clinical oversight helps to mitigate future liability.
Our model is a quality-driven approach and your reputation is the single-most important element of this deal. Everything we build will be based upon the strength of your reputation. We will work to enhance your reputation in the community, not adversely affect it. You can have as much input as you’d like into the marketing approach. Our marketing consultant recently developed a poster campaign which won a gold-level ADDY for the entire state of Florida and the Caribbean. We feel confident that your reputation will be enhanced as a product of this partnership.
Absolutely. Our IT infrastructure is second-to-none and, in fact, is the cornerstone of the whole process. We can not only integrate with whatever legacy platform you are currently using, but in the event you do not have EHR we will purchase it for the practice. The future of medicine is electronic records. All of the analytics and data processing necessary to comply with governmental programs and maximizing efficiency depend upon it. Your office will run much more smoothly with the benefit of our elite IT team.
