There is absolutely no excuse for making such a basic error as NOT having all you need.
Especially when invoicing online. Equally applicable to PDF invoices however is the attention to detail when raising invoices.
Real example: an MHM client has practicing rights in a number of hospitals. It’s not unusual for the invoice to be queried as the pre-authorisation confirmed a consultation (for example) happened at Hospital A and not as stated on the invoice Hospital B.
Over time the invoice will get paid. But then there has been a delay whilst this query is resolved. If the client can be billed online the invoice can’t even be processed unless the issue is resolved beforehand.
It’s even worse when there are multiple consultants within a group. Sometimes the pre-authorisation is recorded against an individual consultant and NOT the group practice under which you are attempting to invoice. Once again, if attempting to do this online, the invoice will not get processed.
Another detail often processed and an error is a patient’s date of birth. My favourite is the patient who was born in 1945 and not 1845 – I know the consultant is good but even I raised an eyebrow at a 169-year-old patient!
Whilst some of these seem minor the reality is they’re not.
If you want to have your invoices processed efficiently and paid straight away make sure ALL the details are right the first time, every time.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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If fees differ between insurance companies how can they be checked and monitored?
For example, a fee for a fictitious CCSD code XY4321 can differ between the big five insurance companies by as much as £100. Add to the equation another code. AB9876. It may or may not be performed at the same time as the XY4321 dependent of the insurance company concerned. Then the problem may become complicated.
AB9876 has 5 different fees anyway PLUS some insurance companies allow 50% of the AB9876 fee when invoicing alongside XY4321. Others, however, only allow 25% and the remainder don’t let AB9876 be invoiced alongside XY4321 at all!
Take a moment to realise why this is very important. It’s because if there is an error in the calculation, the chances are the consultant will UNDERCHARGE.
So how do you track and monitor the situation?
The solution is to create a grid that details all the codes you perform – most consultants do a relatively few different types of a surgical episode – and program the grid to calculate the correct fee for each code and the correct fee for each individual insurance company combination.
This is exactly what MHM does for all its clients by way of the “MHM Grid” and thus very, very rarely does MHM over (or more importantly) undercharge for anything.
Even more interesting is MHM don’t actually charge for building and maintaining a “Grid”. Clients get it free.
Do not, however, think, once programmed the Grid will always be correct.
The other factor is that fees and their combinations will and do alter over time. For example, if you check fees with BUPA you’ll discover the fees are correct up to October 24th at which point they may (but not necessarily will) change!
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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Most consultants are concerned, quite rightly, with how and why a patient has chosen to see them. Before asking the question why and how does a patient choose you as a consultant an early question is asked. Why have the patients taken out private medical insurance originally?
There are three major reasons.
Empirical research on the patients of MHM clients indicates whilst most private healthcare originates via a patient’s employer, even if the insurance is paid for privately, the number one reason for holding private healthcare cover is to avoid and cut short NHS waiting lists. This is the primary reason patients have private medical insurance cover.
But whilst private health cover gives prompt access to treatment, the second reason for having private healthcare insurance is that it offers the additional benefit of when and where the patient may be treated. Aligned to this is the ability to recover, if surgery is necessary, in a private suite, which is more convenient to both the patient and his/her family.
Thirdly, and finally, private insurance offers a choice of a consultant to the patient.
Before considering why a patient should choose to see you as a consultant, it is equally useful to consider why the patient has private medical insurance in the first place.
The major reasons patients choose to take out or receive private medical insurance are, in the main, three:
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There was a story on the BBC website regarding the safe use of mobile phones when driving.
Apparently, there are still those who hold the phone to their ears. There are those who read emails and text too. It’s all to do, or so it’s claimed, with the concept of working over and above that which is normally required.
Maybe I’m the exception to the rule as I have a wonderful and 100% safe way of using a phone whilst driving.
It all goes back to a Friday afternoon on the M25 last year when I was happily talking away on my Bluetooth kit to a friend of mine. And totally failed to realise I’d just driven past the junction for the M40. Since then I’ve had the phone switched off. No more beeps as an email arrives and no more distractions.
But I hear you say, I could possibly miss an important call? Yes, I could. For at least two hours i.e. in between motorway service stations anyway. Will the world end in those 2 hours? Doubtful.
Modern technology is great. You can be in constant communication with anyone, anywhere in the world. I have clients who email me at obscure times of the day. As consultant surgeons, they don’t exactly work 9-5 hours. I email them at odd times too. But seldom does an email require an immediate response either from them or to them. Of course, it requires a response at some point but it does not require a knee-jerk reaction. Most likely the best thing to do is not respond immediately anyway. Much better to understand the issue and then give a measured and fully considered response for the client’s benefit. Much better for my clients and much better for my business.
My clients are the single most important thing in my business. They require total commitment and a consistently high level of service. Just the same as any business.
Yet this concept of working over and above normal requirements to satisfy a client persists. I’m not against working really long hours. I’m absolutely not against providing an extremely high level of service. I do it. My clients provide an incredibly high level of care to their patients i.e. they do it too.
What I am against is this notion that working really long hours and answering the phone or emails proves dedication to a task. I suggest in reality, long hours may prove counterproductive sometimes or in the case of using a phone/answering emails etc whilst driving proves there is always an accident just waiting to happen or a motorway junction to miss.
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I was literally 70% through billing for a client’s clinic lists from last Friday. Eight separate patients and a mixture of initial and follow up consultations.
All was going well until I noticed the details of one of the patients on the clinic list were incomplete. The only solution was to speak to the patient’s insurance company. I need accurate data to bill effectively and efficiently. So I called the insurance company but like many when you call them you join a queue and have to wait.
So far I’ve been on hold for 16 mins.
Yet this problem could have been so easily avoided if the correct details had been taken down and checked. The problem was the policy number had not been recorded, as it should be.
Just got through and it transpires the date of birth is also wrong. The patient was born a year earlier than stated on the clinic list.
Three observations really:
The insurance company may well clear and pay the invoice even if the details are incomplete and/or incorrect, there again they may not.
If the details had been checked originally before the clinic list had been produced, none of this would have been necessary and the invoice would have been processed for payment much quicker.
Finally, if your med-sec is handling your billing, whilst he/she is on the phone for 20 mins to an insurance company she’s not actually talking to patients and booking them in or typing your letters. Indeed patients can’t call her because she’s on the phone sorting out issues such as the above.
So it’s taken around 20 mins to sort this one single issue and that is what can take up so much time!
How many times have I said most clearly: INVOICE RIGHT = GET PAID RIGHT??
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One MHM client provides expert reports for actions that are publicly funded i.e. invoices are passed to the Legal Services Commission.
Scenario:
Consider there are FOUR parties to an action, all of whom are publicly funded. The first item to establish is how much is chargeable and at what rate together with what is NOT chargeable. Earlier this year (for example) the hourly rate was reduced so actions commenced before a change date becomes chargeable at one rate, those after at a lower rate. For the purposes of this example, assume the current rate is £125 per hour. So, the expert took:
4 hours to read the report 3 hours to dictate it 1 hour to proof read and amend if necessary.
Therefore it took a total of 8 hours – 8 hours @ £125 per hour = £1,000.
But there are FOUR parties to the action and therefore four completely separate invoices need to be raised for £250 each. It is not advisable to send one invoice to the lead party for two reasons: (1) you are expecting them to collect your money for you (2) you are relinquishing control of who precisely owes you your money and what’s happening with it.
That said, your invoice MUST show the number of hours for EACH separate item i.e. reading, writing etc. If an invoice just stating £250 is raised it WILL be rejected.
Consider the issue of a Court Appearance.
The number of hours at Court is also chargeable at £125 per hour. Time taken in traveling to Court is also chargeable but only at £40 per hour. Mileage is another area that causes confusion. MHM overcomes this easily. Take the postcode of the expert’s start point and the postcode of the destination and look them up on www.theaa.com or another route finder website. It doesn’t really matter which.
What is important is that the distance is based on a fixed source. This is infinitely better than just saying 90 miles for example. If the allowance per mile is, say, 40 pence, then 40 times 90 = £36.00.
Hopefully, the above gives and an indication of how to tackle how to invoice for a publicly funded report.
However… Do not consider instead of stating 4 hours to read a report, put a claim in for 7 hours in order to increase your fee because the Legal Services Commission guys are seriously switched on. They know only too well, how long a “standard” report takes to prepare. There may well be nonetheless a perfectly genuine reason why the report took longer and therefore you should say so.
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Most consultants, and certainly when they first start a private practice consider how best they can set their fees. In reality, however, it is not the consultant who sets his or her own fees. It is the patient’s insurance company in all but one area.
Consideration of fee setting should be viewed from two distinct areas:
1: Consultation fees 2: Surgical Fees
Consultation fees first.
Consultation fees (for both initial and follow up) will be agreed at the point of recognition by the respective insurance companies of the medical professional e.g. consultant surgeon, anesthetist etc.
Clearly, if you have 20 years post qualification experience and are one of the few consultants within your geographic area in a particular specialism, then you can command a higher fee.
In reality, most likely you not be in such a position. You will be offered consultation fees at a level set by the insurance company you are dealing with. In return, the insurance company will refer patients to you.
In the case of self-funders, however, there is nothing to stop you charging any consultation fee you like. Save of course if there are other consultants in your area then the fee levels they charge will influence that which you yourself charge.
Surgical fees, if anything, are the easier one to deal with.
The insurance company with whom your patient is insured will always set surgical fees. You may feel the fee is too low and therefore charge more. Almost certainly your invoice WILL be rejected or at the very least shortfalled to the patient. Keep sending invoices in for fees greater than that allowed by a particular insurance company and you run the risk of being de-recognised.
Whether it is right or wrong for insurance companies to hold such power over the setting of surgical fees is for another article and I have very firm views on it but at this point, the stark reality is that the insurance companies do hold such power.
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There are certain items that are mandatory when you call a patient’s insurance company. Such requirements are dictated by the Data Protection Act and, put simply, it’s highly unlikely without the right information you can make an enquiry regarding a patient.
In the ideal world, you will have:
The Policy Number Patients name Patient’s FULL address The POST CODE (don’t forget it) Patient’s Date of Birth Treatment date CCSD code
The pre-authorisation number is very useful too.
But what do you do if you don’t have the policy number? If you have the patients name, full address (inc the postcode!!) and date of birth you stand an extremely high chance of the insurance company telling you the policy number. Indeed often I’ve had to speak with an insurance company to obtain the policy number.
With the above to hand, it’s not an issue. Use the opportunity to confirm or obtain the pre-authorisation reference as well though.
On a parallel note, some insurance companies will only let you raise three queries per phone call with them. Some may, if they are not too busy, do more but generally speaking three is the limit.
This despite what many think, is important for if you have say 12 to do, it’s going to take time. Especially if you are on hold for 10/15 minutes BEFORE you get through to the insurance company.
So, the very best thing to do is to make sure the clinic list has absolutely everything you need in order to invoice correctly. That way, you won’t have to contact the insurance company first. Also of course, if there is an invoice query after you’ve billed the consultation/episode you will have all the data in front of you when you DO speak to the insurance company.
Without it, you will struggle.
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The normal item when I get asked to review a consultant’s invoicing process is the potential for weakness in the area of records on his/her part.
Sometimes, I’m presented with a carrier bag full of invoices, remittances, and receipts. My favourite though remains the cardboard box stuffed full of pieces of paper. That was the filing system. Close examination of the pieces of paper in the cardboard box suggested they were invoices. Many in fact did not have an invoice number on them. Indeed the majority did not actually have the word INVOICE printed on them either.
That can be a problem when I come to reconcile payments against such payments IF they’ve been paid at all. That is important because it’s difficult to contact an insurance company and discuss invoices for one individual patient if the invoice does not show a specific invoice number. In fact, the only way you can tell them apart is if the values are different and they are on different dates.
It’s always best to have a unique reference number on an invoice i.e. an invoice number and a date. And don’t forget to print the word INVOICE on it. At least that way, you stand a chance of knowing which ones have or have not been paid.
Then the hard part starts as you begin to look at what is or is not on the invoice and get a feel for what was likely to be paid anyway and what was likely to be rejected due to total lack of detail. Normally this is followed by a request to see clinic lists and the process of obtaining the right data off the clinic list for submission to the insurance company.
There is also an additional cost to not keeping accurate records. When it comes to tax time, its going to take a lot longer – and thereby cost much more – for your accountant to do the necessary computations. At worse you could end up paying too much tax.
All because records aren’t kept correctly. Please keep accurate records if only because it means you stand a much higher chance of being paid!
Please email me if you want details of the bare minimum records you should be keeping for invoicing purposes.
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This issue came up during a meeting with a consultant surgeon recently regarding the relationship between benefits and fees. More specifically how fees are accounted for against a benefits package.
Consider the total benefits payable under a patient’s insurance policy. For example, the benefits payable may be £100. Obviously, it could be considerably more as will the possible fees mentioned below.
To continue, however, against such a benefits package fees are deducted as follows:
The patient attends for an initial consultation at a cost of £20. Therefore the £20 is paid out and the total benefits figure reduces to £80. Subsequently, the patient requires a surgical episode at a cost of £50. This too is paid. The benefits accumulator, therefore, reduces to £30. But of course, the hospital tenders their account (say £20) as does the gasman (£15). The benefits accumulator, therefore, further reduces to ZERO. Thus the benefits package is equal to the fees charged.
However….
If the initial consultation fee is £21, the surgical episode fee £51, the hospital account £21 and the gasman’s account £16 then the total fees total = £109 against a total available benefit package of £100.
Thus, if when the fees are calculated against the benefits accumulator they exceed the total available a shortfall will be created.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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I spent some time yesterday looking at the invoicing of a consultant surgeon.
I noticed that the invoices for initial consultations going out to one particular insurance company were being charged at exactly the same fee as for follow-up consultations i.e. £125 each.
Instead, they should be £175 for initial and £125 for a follow-up.
So… £50 multiplied by the number of errors spotted so far over the first month I’ve checked (9) = £450!
The bad news is that this has been happening for, so far as I can tell at the moment, for at least the last four months.
Potentially, £1,800 worth!
It is easy to lose money
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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A couple of examples recently where consultants who have tried to base their fees on the best rate available. Take the consultant who realises that PMI company Num 1 pay £300 for a procedure whereas PMI company 2 pay £400. He decrees he will charge PMI Company 1 the PMI Company 2 rate.
Great idea. Right up to the point PMI company 1 receives the invoice for the higher amount. They will decline to pay that fee. Most likely they will shortfall it. But, replies the Consultant, no problem. The patient is ultimately liable for any shortfall. I know of one consultant who even puts on his website “we use PMI Company 2 rates to calculate our fees and therefore there may be a shortfall which you will have to pay”
Yes, the patient is liable for a shortfall BUT not when the consultant is fee assured he isn’t.
Most likely a letter addressed to the Consultant will arrive sooner or later from PMI Company 1 pointing out that such “inappropriate billing” is not acceptable; carry on doing it and recognition is at risk.
It’s incredibly similar to unbundling. Continue doing it over a number of months and for sure eyebrows will be raised. Even if there is no “fee assured” status PMI Company 1 will be well aware of regular and consistent charges that are in excess of their published fee schedule.
Notwithstanding the above, of course, consultants want the best possible fee for a procedure but attempting to obtain the same by “inappropriate billing” is not the smartest way to go about it.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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Another question asked at the recent Medical Defence Union presentation.
Insurance companies use medical coding to identify and detail a medical procedure.
For example, an Orthopaedic surgeon will understand what a Multiple arthroscopic operation on the knee is. But that is an awful lot to put on an invoice every time. Plus there may be variations on such an episode.
It’s better to put the code W8500 on the invoice which will specifically identify the episode.
Most codes can be located on the CCSD website: www.ccsd.org.uk
The Clinical Coding and Schedule Development Group (CCSD) consists of the five major healthcare insurers. Aviva, AXA-PPP, BUPA, Vitality and Simply Health. Its purpose is to maintain a common standard of procedure codes. Consequently, CCSD publishes a Schedule of codes which reflect current medical practice.
However, be warned. Whilst the example above of W8500 will be recognized, a CCSD does not publish a suggested rate of remuneration.
The rate payable for each code is up to the individual insurance company concerned. As a result, the surgeon has to check with the patient’s insurance company.
A CCSD code is imperative IF a surgical episode is required. The patient will need to quote the code to his or her insurance company when pre-authorisation is being requested anyway.
Thus when an invoice is sent to the insurance company for your fees, the code should appear on the invoice. It will reconcile to that expected by the insurance company.
If alternatively, you do NOT use CCSD codes payment will be substantially delayed if made at all!
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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Just taking ONE client as an example.
Week ending Friday, January 25th: out of 15 consultations, 4 (four) came back with excess/shortfall deductions totaling £575. So for a total of £2,500 worth of revenue from outpatient consultations £575 or 23% came back short. Looking back to the same week in 2018, the number of shortfalls/excess were roughly half this.
The question as to why this is happening is not the concern. The concern is what are you going to do about it. If 23% continues the downside and potential loss to the consultant is significant. There is only one real way to resolve this issue. Phone them!
Sure you can write letters and even email but nothing gets a response like a ringing telephone. Most patients are unaware of the issue but some think this is an issue between them and their insurance company. In other words, the patient thinks they need to pay the insurance company. They think the consultant gets paid in full by the insurance company. There are variations on this but the crucial point for the consultant is not to establish why; its to ensure he recovers the shortfall/excess efficiently.
But if telephoning the patient is the most efficient way to tackle the issue, it does not automatically follow its the easiest. It has to be done professionally and with due diligence. The long-suffering med-sec really won’t have the time to do this as professional and caring as she undoubtedly is. I promise you faithfully, she won’t want to phone patients for money and will be thinking this is the least enjoyable part of her job.
There is an alternative though: do nothing. Some patients actually will pay but this assumes they a) are aware of the shortfall/excess and b) make it good straight away.
What if they don’t?
Assume it’s not £575 or 23% a week or £27.6k a year (£575 multiplied by 48 – not 52 weeks as you will have 4 weeks off a year). Assume instead its 10% for 24 weeks (i.e. roughly half of the current numbers) and allows for some patients paying without being contacted.
The potential losses for the consultant, in this case, reduce to £13,800 per annum. That’s a chunk of change in anybody’s book still.
What’s significant is that at a number of client meetings recently I’ve asked what the client considered the biggest threat to the practice during 2019.
Most popular was a further reduction in private insurance fees. That may indeed turn out to be a big problem.
But at this point, empirical evidence suggests its potentially leaving the back door wide open so to speak and enduring £13,800 worth of potential losses right off the bottom line.
I’d be really interested to hear from anyone who is seeing an increase in shortfalls etc and their views on remedies.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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The normal item when I get asked to review a consultant’s invoicing process is the potential for weakness in the area of records on his/her part.
Sometimes, I’m presented with a carrier bag full of invoices, remittances, and receipts. My favourite though remains the cardboard box stuffed full of pieces of paper. That was the filing system. Close examination of the pieces of paper in the cardboard box suggested they were invoices. Many in fact did not have an invoice number on them. Indeed the majority did not actually have the word INVOICE printed on them either.
That can be a problem when I come to reconcile payments against such payments IF they’ve been paid at all. That is important because it’s difficult to contact an insurance company and discuss invoices for one individual patient if the invoice does not show a specific invoice number. In fact, the only way you can tell them apart is if the values are different and they are on different dates.
It’s always best to have a unique reference number on an invoice i.e. an invoice number and a date. And don’t forget to print the word INVOICE on it. At least that way, you stand a chance of knowing which ones have or have not been paid.
Then the hard part starts as you begin to look at what is or is not on the invoice and get a feel for what was likely to be paid anyway and what was likely to be rejected due to total lack of detail. Normally this is followed by a request to see clinic lists and the process of obtaining the right data off the clinic list for submission to the insurance company.
There is also an additional cost to not keeping accurate records. When it comes to tax time, its going to take a lot longer – and thereby cost much more – for your accountant to do the necessary computations. At worse you could end up paying too much tax.
All because records aren’t kept correctly. Please keep accurate records if only because it means you stand a much higher chance of being paid!
Please email me if you want details of the bare minimum records you should be keeping for invoicing purposes.
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Most MHM client have reported issues with self-funders when we get involved. It is also the source of many calls made to MHM. With the self-funding market increasing, it is important to understand the major reasons self-funders can be a problem.
But what are the three most common reasons a self-funder hasn’t paid:
The first issue is always the same. When the patient is contacted as a self-funder, he/she claims never to have received an invoice originally. Whilst this is obviously easy to rectify (send them a copy!) how many are 100% certain the invoice was sent in the first place? Obviously, some self-funders will, generally speaking, they will pay if sent an invoice.
The second issue concerns the use of debit or credit cards. In 99.9% of cases when a patient arrives at a private hospital he/she will be asked to provide a swipe of their card. Sadly many times, the patient is unaware that the card only covers the hospital fees. It does NOT cover the consultant’s fee. The MHM solution is when the patient first makes contact he/she is advised the card swipe will NOT cover the consultant’s fee. This should be followed up by a note on the consultant’s invoice stating: This invoice is NOT covered by any debit/credit card details you may have provided to the hospital.
The third issue is the easiest of all to resolve. On frequent occasions, a self-funding patient has called upon receipt of the consultant’s invoice to say they are insured. This must be addressed immediately. Invoicing the wrong person is absolute insanity. The cause is a failure at the patient’s initial point of registration to ensure the correct details are taken.
If the above three items are correctly managed and a firm process put into place to manage the minority of self-funders who don’t pay, the number of outstanding self-funding invoices drops in most cases by over 80%
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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Surgeon A is an ENT consultant surgeon. He performs an E1910 on two different patients. The surgeon bills both the patient’s insurance companies £1,600 each.
Patient ONE’s insurance company fee structure is £1,600. Patient TWO’s insurance company fee structure is £1,945 for the same episode.
By invoicing Patient TWO’s insurance company £1,600 i.e. the fee he gets from Patient ONE’s insurance company, the surgeon has undercharged.
The surgeon will be paid £345 less than he should.
A similar issue was faced by Surgeon B. He is a gynaecologist. He has the same issue. He performs a Q0800 on two different patients who are insured by separate insurance companies. He invoices both insurance companies at £636 each.
Patient ONE’s insurance company’s fee structure is £636 however whereas Patient TWO’s insurance company’s fee structure is £800.
Surgeon B, by using the fee structure for Patient ONE only has undercharged and been paid £164 less than he should.
Both carry on billing not realising that the fee depends on whom the patient is insured with and different private medical insurance companies publish different fees for the same surgical procedure.
We checked four different medical insurance companies this afternoon in order to confirm the fees for an E1910. The fee was £636, £676, £775 and £800 dependant on the insurance company involved.
We then turned to Surgeon B and the medical code of Q0800 and found the fees were, dependant on which of the four medical insurance companies we checked, £636, £676, £775 and £800 respectively.
Don’t set fees at the level published by a single insurance company.
Check which fee is paid by which insurance company for the same procedure. Do not assume they are the same because they may not be.
A surgical fee can and does alter between private medical insurance companies. It can also alter over time.
In every single case, it’s always worth checking the fee structure paid by the patient’s insurance company. Do not assume it is the same across all private medical insurance companies.
Invoice for two different codes in the same surgical episode incorrectly and it’s easy to get into even more trouble. For example Insurance Company X may allow 100% of the higher value code and 50% of the second but Insurance company Y may allow 100% of the first but only 33% of the second.
Imagine what happens if all episodes are billed at 100% and 33%.
Immediately you’ve lost 17% of your second fee!
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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All MHM clients are very dedicated individuals. Having spent approximately 15 years training and finally becoming a consultant surgeon, they go on to work incredibly long hours.
They do so because they actually love what they do.
All at some point, however, have taken the decision to start a private practice. It’s unlikely they would be my clients otherwise if you think about it. They start a private practice because they wish to make more money. To have any other objective is either (a) silly or (b) engaging in self-delusion. There is no shame in admitting you start a private practice to make money.
At that point however your private practice becomes a business.
As I’ve blogged many times previously, it must be run as a business. A business with more than a little social conscience but nonetheless still a business. Yet, sadly, many consultant surgeons make the mistake of believing their practice will grow. It will make them rich if they continue doing what they love they do. Sadly that is not true.
That means, as much as you love being a Private Consultant Surgeon, you must measure the performance of your business. This is the point the private consultant learns to understand financial numbers. It’s not all that complicated. Supplying data to your accountant every year isn’t the same as understanding the numbers behind your practice though.
Let me give you a real example. I was contacted recently by an established private surgeon. He claimed to be working all the hours God sends but said he was always broke. It didn’t take long to work out why. The first indicator was a complete lack of financial analysis other than a tax report a little over one-year-old. No debtors ledger was available. So the surgeon didn’t have any real idea how much he was owed. It transpired both patients and insurance companies were only invoiced monthly.
So I took the last six months worth of clinic lists and checked how many had not been invoiced. Quite a lot had not. I did the same with surgical episodes with the same result. This was followed by an investigation into how much had not been paid even if invoiced.
But it was also a simple case of adding up the total revenue generated for each month, calculating the total costs (room rental, monthly indemnity insurance premiums, secretarial costs etc) and subtracting one from the other. Even if any type of provision was made for tax liability was ignored the results were not encouraging.
The really bad news is that the consultant looked very blank when I asked which percentage of patients were referred to him from which source i.e. how many GP referrals, private referrals, recommendations from previous patients, insurance company referrals etc.
It was clear this particular consultant had no real idea of how his practice or business was performing.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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There are only 24 hours in a day.
All of my guys are incredibly busy. I’m amazed at the volume of work they get through in a single day. They are either on-call, doing a ward round or in theatre. Then they have to see their private patients. That explains why most of them call me either very early in the morning or in the evening. One prefers a Saturday morning. It doesn’t bother me. It’s my job to fit in around them and make their life easier.
Recently however I was asked to review the private practice of a consultant who was having serious difficulties generating any cash into his practice. And following my question to his long-suffering medical secretary, it didn’t take long to establish why. The question was: what is the biggest problem you have this week. The reply said it all:
“I never get a response to the queries or receive the information I need after I’ve asked Mr. Surgeon. He always seems too busy to deal with the things I need”
Yet most of the information the med-secretary needed was fundamental to generating cash into the practice. For example: two clinic lists from last week were still unprocessed (result: no invoices sent out) or remittances from an insurance company (no idea who had or hadn’t paid) or the post Mr. Surgeon picked up and put in his bag one day last week (it had cheques from patients in it)
So I sat down with Mr. Surgeon and asked him what he thought about it. His response was a classic: “I just don’t have time to deal with all that. My private patients are paying to see me so they must come first”
The stark reality is he is right enough to be dangerously wrong. He is right as regards putting the patients first but he needs to ensure his administrative support is first rate too.
The reason Mr. Surgeon is having difficulty generating the cash due is in him not dealing with such issues as the missing clinic lists or not passing over remittance advice.
Mr. Surgeon needed to make very sure, the support facilities of the practice were dealt with. The word “support” suggests these things can be demoted to a “Too busy to deal with that and they are not that important so I’ll deal with it later” category.
Eventually, they catch up with you. In the case of Mr. Surgeon, they were the reason he was struggling to generate cash into his practice.
Compare and contrast that with another real-life MHM client: Mr. B Surgeon. He is very different from Mr. A Surgeon save curiously they see a similar number of patients each week and are in the theatre on the same day too (but in different parts of the UK)
Mr. B Surgeon will send his clinic list the day he sees his patients. His theatre lists arrive the same day too. All of which means his invoices are out the proverbially electronic door within 24 / 36 hours. In the unlikely event, there are queries, a response comes back to me either that same day or at the latest the next. His cash flow is many, many times greater than Mr. A Surgeon.
In case you are wondering why I don’t have such issues with MHM clients its because every single week my clients take their post or clinic lists etc scan them to me and promptly proceed to forget about them thereafter.
pete@medicalhealthcaremanagement.co.uk
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I was literally 70% through billing for a client’s clinic lists from last evening. Eight separate patients and a mixture of initial and follow up consultations.
All was going well until I noticed the details of one of the patients on the clinic list were incomplete. The only solution was to speak to the patient’s insurance company. I need accurate data to bill effectively and efficiently. So I called the insurance company but like many when you call them you join a queue and have to wait.
So far I’ve been on hold for 16 mins.
Yet this problem could have been so easily avoided if the correct details had been taken down and checked. The problem was the policy number had not been recorded, as it should be.
Just got through and it transpires the date of birth is also wrong. The patient was born a year earlier than stated on the clinic list.
Three observations really:
The insurance company may well clear and pay the invoice even if the details are incomplete and/or incorrect, there again they may not.
If the details had been checked originally before the clinic list had been produced, none of this would have been necessary and the invoice would have been processed for payment much quicker.
Finally, if your med-sec is handling your billing, whilst he/she is on the phone for 20 mins to an insurance company she’s not actually talking to patients and booking them in or typing your letters. Indeed patients can’t call her because she’s on the phone sorting out issues such as the above.
So it’s taken around 20 mins to sort this one single issue and that is what can take up so much time!
How many times have I said most clearly: INVOICE RIGHT = GET PAID RIGHT??
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