If you don’t have a clear and expertly drafted Personnel Policy Manual, then you are attempting to build your team on quicksand. Today’s employment law is a legal minefield and you must have a policy manual that is fair for all employees and that you follow (no special treatment for “special” team members). Just one wrong word, from a set of policies that you copied from someone else or downloaded, can have serious monetary consequences. This is way too easy to do right. We recommend Bent Ericksen and Associates Personnel Policy Manual. This is an easy way to establish fair policies for all your team members and to be compliant with your state regulations (which in some cases take precedence to the federal government’s regulations) as well as ensuring compliance with the federal regulations. A significant benefit of going with a company that researches employee policy daily is they stay on top of the changes. If you are not already using their information, ask us about it, it really is the most comprehensive we have found out there. No one wants to believe an employee will leave their employment and sue the Doctor and the practice, but it happens.
Category: management
5 Ways To Thrive During Tough Times
A great reminder from Jon Gordon:
5 Ways To Thrive During Tough Times Continue reading “5 Ways To Thrive During Tough Times”
Personnel Policy
How many dentists are in full compliance with labor laws? We just completed 2 days of Human Resources Recertification Training with Bent Ericksen and Associates and were reminded of just how vulnerable most practices are to very expensive labor disputes. This is a growing trend and we encourage you to protect yourself and your practice from exposure! Contact us if you have questions about this important area of your practice.
What’s your Brown M&M?
Just read an interesting article in Fast Company Magazine, The Telltale Brown M&M. Van Halen’s lead singer was known for asking for a bowl of M&M’s backstage during his concerts, his request was that the bowl not have ANY brown M&M’s. This clause was clearly stated in the middle of the contract each performance venue signed. Many people assumed that David Lee Roth was just a diva for not wanting brown M&M’s. How he really used the Brown M&M clause was to check to see if they actually read the entire contract. If he found a brown M&M in his bowl, he would force the venue to do an entire check of the set for technical errors. This was his canary in a coal mine, it was how he could be assured that the stagehands were paying attention. Most dentists do not have the time or energy to do a complete check of every facet of their practice. What are your brown M&M’s, what is your check that things are going well?
What can be shared on email with patients?
The following question was posted to the Academy of Dental Practice Management Consultants which Linda and I belong to. I thought you would all want to know the answer.
How specific can email to patient be reminding them about treatment? Can you mention specific treatment needs or only make a general statement to contact the office? Is this covered under HIPAA?
The answer below is from: Linda Harvey, MS, LHRM, DFASHRM •
Email is a great source of confusion for everyone.
HIPAA requires that patient info must be kept secure. Regular email transmission which includes responding to email received from patients is not secure.
That being said, there are several options:
1) use a secure portal such as eDossea or subscribe to a service thru Eaglesoft or Dentrix (I believe they both offer such a service).
2) use an email encryption service (there are free ones)
3) implement an office policy that limits what you are allowed to email to patients such as appointment confirmation. I just met the Practice Administrator who said they have a strict policy against emailing patients or responding to patient emails.
4) get the patient’s permission to communicate via unencrypted email. This is an important piece of information one can gather on the Acknowledgement Form new patients sign. BUT, I would still limit the type of information emailed.
Referring back to your question about treatment, I would not mention specific treatment in an email. For example, an email reminder that the pt has unused benefits would be better than saying “are you ready to schedule for those extractions and implants.”
HIPAA is quite serious about enforcing the regulations; plus the random audits are in full force. Have already met one dental Business Associate that was audited. I just got back from Tampa working with a doctor whose staff gave a patient the wrong records on a CD…patient then complained to the Office of Civil Rights. They are now under investigation and have a narrow window to correct and reply to the complaint.
Linda Harvey is a great source of information regarding risk management and being HIPAA compliant. If anyone needs a speaker for a study club she would be fabulous! Her website is: http://www.lindaharvey.net
Happy Valentine’s Day to all!
Growth
Most practices we work with believe in continuous personal and professional growth. They realize they and their team have lots more potential to unlock. So…ask yourself:
How do you want to grow personally?
Are you a better person today than you were yesterday?
What are you doing to get your team to grow personally?
Are you learning something everyday? What? Is it positive?
What can you do to help your team better understand the practice mission and vision?
How are you planning to grow professionally this year?
How are you challenging and stretching yourself?
These are not easy questions, most require thought and introspection. Really think about it, “Are you a better person today versus yesterday? How?” It is a challenge, it means focusing on personal growth as much as professional growth or the latest clinical courses and procedures. Improving your clinical skills or learning a new procedure to add to your mix of services certainly helps growth and production in the practice. Personal change is by far harder, and it is what will put your practice head and shoulders above the rest. Numbers are important. How you and the team feel about yourselves and what you are contributing to your community, is far more rewarding. We challenge you to spend the time you need to get your team onboard and focus everyone on working on improving themselves. Growth in production will happen naturally as a result.
Insurance Processing
We have been in a few office recently that were not using some of the tools we commonly recommend to assist in processing of insurance claims- to refresh your memory here they are again:
1. Insurance Solutions Newsletter – find it at: http://www.dental-ins-solutions.com
2. “Coding with Confidence” by Dr. Charles Blair – also found on the above website. We recommend using the most updated version due to insurance codes changing.
3. Marianne Harper’s Book “Cross Walking – A guide through the crosswalk of Dental to Medical Coding” found on her website: The Art of Practice Management
http://www.artofpracticemanagement.com
4. The website for the National Association of Dental Plans and specifically the free subscription to FastLook which provides current attachment information by procedure code. Sign up under the FastLook tab at http://www.nadp.org
5. For those we have seen since the ADA Meeting know we are recommending you look at “Practice Booster” which includes our first two recommendations. It is more important than ever to be sure you are using the right codes. Take a free test drive of Practice Booster and see what it can do for your administrative team. http://practicebooster.com
6. Always use the latest version of the ADA CDT code book for claim submission
Insurance processing is becoming more complex. From a risk management standpoint you must do all you can to ensure you are using the right codes for the procedures you are doing – it is your license that is on the line. Be sure your team is properly equipped to do the job you think they are doing.
Great Quote from Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh of Zappos
If you have not ordered shoes from Zappos you are missing an experience – it is a great lesson in trusting the customer as well as providing top notch service. Here is the quote from the book Delivering Happiness by Tony Hsieh. It is in our resource store and a interesting book to read on how Zappos came about.
“There’s a lot of buzz these days about “social media” and “integration marketing”. As unsexy and low-tech as may sound, our belief is that the telephone is one of the best branding devices out there. You have the customer’s undivided attention for 5 to 10 minutes, and if you get the interaction right, what we’ve found is the customer remembers the experience for a very long time and tells his or her friends about it.”
When is the last time you talked about your patient intake calls as a group? Are your patients and potential patients excited and happy about their interactions with the practice over the phone?
Raising your Fees
Many Doctors have hesitated to raise their fees. Whether it was fear that lower priced competitors would take their potential patients or that they “could not raise fees in this economy”, fees have remained the same since 2009 for many practices. Other practices feel they should “maintain the status quo” because they will only take a bigger write off from an insurance plan. Some doctors have gone so far as to “negotiate” a lower fee with some patients, thinking that if they could get this patient and the case, it would fill the book. Somewhere in this belief is the idea that more patients will offset lower fees, and will lead to higher profitability.
We look at profitability numbers each month with our clients. Our busiest practices are not the most profitable, and the practices that do the most large fee cases are not as profitable either. Why is that? In a word, overhead. The more patients you see, the higher your overhead. The more large cases you do, the greater the likelihood of not pricing the case right for the amount of time it takes and more likelihood there is of providing one or more of those crowns in a multiple unit case, for only the lab fee.
Overhead has not stopped increasing because of the economy. You and your team would like raises, the lab wants to be paid, supplies are costing more – you cannot not raise your fees. We recommend raising fees on an annual basis. Many teams struggle with raising fees because of the anticipated reaction from patients. We hope you are subscribed to Words Matter for some suggestions on how to handle this challenging topic.
Raising your fees is one of the best steps you can take to improve profitability. The chart below shows the relationship between a specified percentage fee increase and the effect this increase will have on profitability.
% Fee Increase
| 3% |
5% |
10% |
||
| 80% |
15% |
25% |
50% |
|
| 75% |
12% |
20% |
40% |
|
|
Overhead |
70% |
10% |
16.6% |
33% |
|
% |
65% |
8.6% |
14.3% |
28.6% |
| 60% |
7.5% |
12.5% |
25% |
|
| 55% |
6.7% |
11.1% |
22.2% |
|
| 50% |
6% |
10% |
20 |
When is your next fee increase?
Dental Fees are on the Web for your Patients
There are websites designed to help consumers estimate what dental services will cost them. One for you and your team to check out is:
http://www.fairhealthconsumer.org
On their website they state: “Fair Health is a not-for-profit organization whose mission is to help consumers understand the out-of-network reimbursement system and estimate out-of-network medical and dental costs. Our free website has an easy-to-use cost estimator tool to help with your health care expense planning. We also offer clear and unbiased educational articles and videos about the medical and dental reimbursement system.”
Fair Health was formed in 2009 as a result of a fraud investigation by then NY State’s Attorney General Andrew Cuomo. The ADA granted access to the CDT codes in February of 2011. They will have medical information available in August of 2011.
We have always recommended that you submit your full fee to the insurance company on a dental claim form. It now becomes even more important to not submit contractually discounted fees. Not only because this will skew the maximum allowable fees determined by carriers based on data submitted by practices but it will skew the costs posted on websites like Fair Health. This will cause consumers to question the fees you are charging when they have a “non-biased” resource about what your fees “should” be.
Have a team meeting and make sure everyone knows about this website and how your fees compare to what is posted on the Fair Health website. Talk about how to deal with patient’s concerns and what to say. As always if you need help, don’t hesitate to get in touch with us.
